My Sci Fi
My mother, the English teacher and writer, was very concerned about my reading habits. I was in junior high and for most of my life, though I’d read a good number and variety of books, my focus in reading was fairly narrow. I loved comic books. Superman and Batman at first, with a sojourn to Archie when I fell in puppy love and the object of my affection was enamored of Archie, Betty and Veronica, Reggie, and Jughead, then on over to Marvel Comics and every Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, and Captain America I could get my hands on. When the comic book phase finally failed, though to this day I sometimes sneak peeks at what’s going on now in that graphic four color world, science fiction became my fixation. Andre Norton’s animal-human telepathy books, starting with Daybreak 2250 (AKA “Star Man’s Son”), got under my skin. Then I tried a little Heinlein, some Asimov and settled in on Arthur C. Clarke for the long haul. I literally read everything Clarke ever wrote. I loved his sense of wonder wrapped in science. I just couldn’t get enough. Then, slowly, I branched out into Tolkien and The Hobbit, then The Lord of the Rings. I was knee deep in Clarke and Tolkien when Mom finally voiced her concerns, “It’s time you moved on to the classics!” she said. I spared myself the battle of explaining to her that Clarke and Tolkien were classics of science fiction and fantasy. To Mom, in those genres, the word “classic” simply did not apply.
It was a good while before I finally discovered Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Forster, Willa Cather, Hardy, and finally Shakespeare, Becket, O’Neil, Wilde, Blake, Yeats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Thoreau, Emerson, where I have spent years and years submerged and from which I am unlikely ever to emerge again. Why emerge? Great classic literature is the world. Always contemporary, always relevant, always transcendent.
I have never given up my love of Clarke and Tolkien, and they have led me on little side trips to Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and even re-runs on cable TV of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. And yes, I still take those mini-vacations into graphic story telling in comic books and more recently graphic novels from time to time at my boys’ urging.
In the sudden and unexpected cascade of my own writing, that has occupied me since my retirement in 2016, among my main self-made journeys into the literary land of the north and the villages where life is lived in these latter days, I have taken a number of self-driven side trips, as an author, into the world of science fiction and fantasy. They’ve been sitting as bytes of words in my computer files for a number of years now, as the Hunter Lake Book Series has been published. At times I have wondered if I’d ever return to them. At least one story, Oracle, has been in the works for close to 20 years, but most, including the science fiction/fantasy novels and the short stories, were written since my retirement. They range from pretty dark to fairly comic. A close reading of any of this work will reveal the influences I’ve mentioned above.
I think this web-site is quite well suited to publishing science fiction, and I don’t know if any of these will ever come out as actual paper books with actual covers, especially considering there are still three more completed Hunter Lake books, two of which contain four novellas each, waiting on the complications of our current world to straighten out a bit, before publication. Also, not to be morbid, I’m not getting any younger.
Anyway, starting tomorrow, there will be a long string of science fiction/fantasy short stories, followed by chapters of science fiction/fantasy novels published one short burst at a time, in this vector of this website, on a pretty regular basis, free of charge. All I ask is that you give these characters and premises a chance. If you’re like me, you may like some of them, even most of them. That’s the hope. But don’t get so wrapped up in them, or anything else I’ve written, or anything else any contemporary writer has written, that you neglect the classics!
There, Mom, I hope you’re happy now. —B.G. Bradley, November 23, 2020
Crossroads
Crossroads
“Quantum theory yields much, but it hardly brings us close to the Old One’s secrets. I, in any case, am convinced He does not play dice with the universe.” —Albert Einstein in a letter to Max Born (One of the fathers of Quantum Mechanics.)
“God makes us ask ourselves questions most often when He intends to resolve them. He gives us needs that He alone can satisfy and awakens capacities that He means to fulfill. Any perplexity is liable to be a spiritual gestation, leading to a new birth and a mystical regeneration.”—Thomas Merton
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”—William Shakespeare
Prologue
Danny O’Leary always got into a muddle when his wife was gone. This was more than a muddle. It hadn’t been this bad in a while. It wasn’t at the level that had sent him to the psyche ward when he was 36, but if he pushed it much further, it might be.
Was he the one pushing it? When it got this bad, he always felt like somebody else was pushing it. Not some thing, somebody: a personage.
“Yes, okay, a voice that talks to me.”
But it wasn’t like that. The psychiatrist he’d seen those two times after the worst such event of his life, all those years ago, had told him that at first when she’d examined him she’d thought there might be some bi-polar element to this, but then she said, no, that he’d had a psychotic break and that it was unlikely to recur at this massive level ever again. He just had to take care of himself. So he had, for 22 years. It is a matter of pride with him, and maybe it shouldn’t be, maybe he was just lucky, that unlike so, so many people in this society, he was able to deal with these inner turmoils, these episodes, without meds. He wrestles with the angels nearly every Spring and Fall and has ever since that one stop at the psyche ward. He knew what it was now. He knew he was having an episode, and as long as that was true, he would simply talk to himself about it, be the physician who heals himself. So far, that had worked.
But this was a bad one. It was an attack of toxic nostalgia…completely poisonous.
Janine had been gone for nearly two weeks, getting some credits at a special medical symposium in Chicago. She loved Chicago. She’d given up being near the cities for him. She’d come to the Upper Peninsula and settled with him. He’d even made noises about maybe seeking a job with Madison Magazine in Wisconsin at first, something he had thought about once before in…another life. An old dream deferred. He wasn’t sure if Madison Magazine even existed anymore. If it did, so what? He was retired. All that was behind him. All the deadlines from when he worked at the Mining Journal all those years ago, all the deadlines from the North Wind at Northern Michigan University, all the children he’d taught, young men and women, so eager, so ready. He’d never liked deadlines, but he’d been good at them. They kept him focused in the present. They kept the worries away, the past and future, neither of which, in the absolutely literal sense, really existed. That was part of what was nagging at him right now. In particular the past: He called it as quite a few people do, the “What ifs”.
He hated Janine being gone. She said often, and she was right in saying, that it wouldn’t do any good for her to be with him for this. And the maddening thing about his wonderful wife was that she wasn’t a sharer, she wasn’t a pat- your-hand woman. She was tough and expected him to be tough and because of her, he was tough, much of the time. But he wasn’t her, and sometimes when he reached out he really needed her to reach back and she would do so, because she was wonderful and good, but she wasn’t good at this. And because he was insecure, though not so much so as he’d once been, would still be if he’d never known Janine. Sometimes this detachment of hers really made him angry, exasperated. He’d try to convince himself that she was cold to him, but that wasn’t true. She was warm, but not warm in a way that suited him, because he was a selfish, needy, asshole sometimes.
Usually, when these episodes came in the Spring, he would be alone at his camp north of Newberry on the Tahquamenon River, and he could walk it off hiking through the woods, or paddling down river and back up a few miles. When these episodes came in the Fall he’d quell them through the meticulous preparations necessary for hunting. Right now though, some of the boys from Newberry, a couple of his old classmates and their sons, were putting a new roof on the camp and doing a few other odd jobs there in return for a week of use. It was a great deal for Danny. He was only out parts and supplies, no labor, but it left him here, in his current state, alone with nowhere to go. No place of sanctuary where he could howl at the moon, and cry into the stars.
And so, he’d taken to his bike. When camp wasn’t an option, and the snow was gone and with it cross country skiing, the bike was the best option. He’d get on his bike in the garage and ride east from his home in Diorite. Ride away from the lake and the eighty foot bluffs that sat by Boston Lake, head on down Diorite Road to US 41. He hated the traffic, but it was only for a few miles, through the Aspen Ridge School parking lot, down the hill to Westwood High School’s parking lot, down the Westwood Hill and south to the “rails-to-trails” converted Iron Ore Heritage Trail, onto the lovely crushed gravel to National Mine, back on the pavement into Ishpeming, down the hills to the park in Negaunee, and then he’d head back home again, mostly up hill. If nothing else stopped an episode, the effort coming home often did.
By the time he got back he was usually exhausted and able to sleep, but not this time, or at least not much. This time it was just excruciating! As he approached the ponds and little wooden benches in National Mine, beneath the slag mountain from the mine off to the south and east, he’d been crying. And he had said aloud, then looked around hoping nobody had heard him, “What is this all for? Let it serve a purpose at least! But what purpose?”
He looked down at his old bike. His brother had given it to him and he’d had the guys at the bike shop in Marquette completely remake it. They’d put a basket on the front, changed out the butt wrenching racing seat for a big, wide, comfortable one, and taken out the gears at his request. Now, it was a true luddite bike. One speed with hand brakes; that was it. He loved it. His college students had hummed the Wicked Witch of West’s theme whenever he approached and laughed with him. They liked him. He liked that. Why couldn’t he focus on something like that, something pleasant and silly and true, until Janine got back and things became all right again?
Details. Details of events that had happened years ago. Some as many as 40 or more years before: the girl with the curly red hair (he didn’t even know her name) puts her arm not so subtly around him and laughs. That had been on a paddle ball court at Emmaus College in the Fall of 1977; Jill Mattson’s beautiful face at the door, of her house, a look of surprise which surprised him in 1979; Millicent kissing his chest and moving down his body as they lay on the floor of his apartment in Emmaus, in the Fall of 1980; Wendy reaching across the table in the bar in Newberry, Summer 1980; the dark haired girl he’d been too shy to buy a drink for in the basement bar in Marquette a winter Friday night 1981; the Valentines candies Tess had sent him when it wasn’t Valentine’s Day, February 1979; looking up from the dorm bed where he was with, what was her name? when Mary came through the door and gasped a startled, “Oh! “and quickly made her way through the room to her room next door beyond the shared bathroom fall, 1980; the ball bouncing back and forth between he and Kelly, in the basement of the college center, outside the radio station, both of them smiling, her long hair sweeping back and forth, Spring 1978; oh God! Darlene coming up to talk to him as he talked to his friends and he hitting her with a plastic bat to ensure that they didn’t think he had a crush on her, my God! Summer 1974; And another truly old one, Karen saying, “I am.” when he’d made some joking comment about ‘his woman’ in French class in 1974; Joan on that night in the bar, waiting for him to pass by and his turning the other way summer 1980; Rhonnie telling him she had some regrets in the back seat of her car, when they were just friends Fall 1980; the tall gorgeous, flighty girl he barely knew, telling him he had a great, unforgettable face, when Janine was home downstate, summer 1982; the waitress in the Munising bar saying his name; the bank teller in Munising asking, in an apparently rehearsed sentence or two about his life, clearly flirting, he again too shy; the new kid in town, Megan at the paper in L’Anse, fresh faced, friendly; hitting the water in the Tahquamenon, long blonde Laura watching, and he, again, too shy; and Sara from next door at the camp who’d loved him since they were kids, this memory from summer 1986, both of them married, he and Janine had been there with some friends from Newberry and when Sara had seen him she’d hung on too long remembering the few nights they’d been together, and oh my god, worst of all, Molly, so many memories of Molly from all that summer of 1981, so many memories of that! Jesus, like they were yesterday. Bedroom scenes, and walks in the woods and promises, and hints at promises. Sitting with her parents. Everybody smiling. Introducing her to Mom. Thinking “is this it? Is this it?” The long subdued pain again, because of this episode, so present. Wake up, Danny! Jesus, she’s 53 now! You’re 58! What the hell!? You and Janine have been married for 33 years! But it won’t go away, none of it, especially not that last part, the last time, finally on the phone Molly’s voice when she heard his voice, Dec. 16, 1981, “Oh, I haven’t thought of you in a long time…” That had bitten so hard, ate his heart, 36 years later.”
Exact details. Exact conversations. Items in and features of rooms. Colors of clothes. Expressions on faces. Smells. Thoughts he’d been having at those precise moments…
And what if one, just one of these details had been different? What if he hadn’t been quite so shy a few times. What if he’d committed to somebody else? What if he’d taken a different action at a single one of those moments? What if he’d turned back and chased something? Gotten in his truck and driven away? Taken somebody by the hand and confessed a love he’d felt, or hadn’t really felt? What if just one of them had, had a change of heart, or had asserted themselves just slightly more in one of these situations? Intervened. Would everything be different? Would their sons, Rich and Tom, now well into their careers and marriages in other states even exist? And what about those grandchildren on the way? Celeste and Mary were both pregnant. It was a joke between the two of them, who would pop first? Would that…could that all be different? The old free will versus fate argument. Why did this all bother him so? God, so…so crazy!
Danny was a person who depended on other people to intervene. Janine had intervened more than any of the other women he’d known. He’d been out at camp, May, 1981, and the phone had rung. His mother, now gone, had picked it up. Told him it was his friend Jerry. Jerry thought he should come into town.
“What for?”
“You should come into town,” Jerry had repeated.
“You gonna tell me why?”
“Somebody wants to see you.”
“Is he carrying a badge?”
“Ha…no. Not this time. Seriously, you should come.”
He had. Janine, a friend of Jerry’s sister from nursing school at Northern, wanted to see him. He’d only met her once and that briefly. Janine told him later she was absolutely sure of what she was doing and she didn’t know why. She just knew it was right. Janine didn’t do things like that. This was the one time in her life she had. And the results, had been ninety percent good, at least for him. He’d never asked her how she felt about it. If he ever did, she’d probably tell him she had some things to take care of and kiss him on the cheek. He hated that, but it wasn’t changing. Janine had intervened once. She would not do so again. She’d set things on the path she wanted and they’d been there for 35 years. That was good enough. Why, all of a sudden, wasn’t it good enough for him?
Were there other paths? Were there still other paths? Was this just a late middle age identity crisis? He had a longing for other ways. Face it, for other women. That was normal. He told himself over and over that the other women his stupid, childish side still sometimes longed for no longer existed. They were at least 35 years older than the last time he’d seen them: different people by now. Who knew what other turns their lives had taken? No doubt, absolutely no doubt there had been divorces and deaths and turns of good fortune. Some were rich, some probably destitute. Some were, face it, dead. You could find out these things with technology now, damn it! and he had a time or two, but that was no cure for anything. It fact, it made things, all the yearnings for impossibilities, a lot worse. Images of people older than they had been. Words on a page. Not life. Not real in any sense that mattered.
What didn’t he know? What couldn’t he know? Had there been phone calls, messages, almost delivered to him? Had he misunderstood one word, one facial expression, and missed an opportunity which would have changed his life utterly in ways about which he knew nothing? Yes. The god awful maddening answer was, yes! Almost certainly. Given the probabilities, something like that had certainly happened at least once, or was going to happen once, was happening right now for all he knew. Maybe somebody else was going to intervene. Should he intervene? How? With whom? All this then followed by guilt at even having such thoughts. And so the endless cycle went.
It was normal enough to think these things. He’d had such conversations with his friends. The tenuous nature of reality and so forth, but for him, right now, it didn’t stop there. In his writer’s mind…was that it? Was that all it was? Was it all caused by his gift for the creation of scenarios? Alternative life scenarios? The scenarios just kept playing out, to the level, to such a concreteness, that he seemed to be living elsewhere. To the point where he had children and grandchildren by a different wife, by a whole string of different wives or girlfriends, and these kids had faces, and lives and their own girlfriends and wives and children and he could see them and he was weaving in and out of these alternate worlds and the people in them thought and talked! And now, people he didn’t know who might be real or imaginary or might be or may be, were living lives right here in front of him almost as real as the wheels of his ancient bike going around and around… And now, for just seconds, in and out, on and on, more real all the time.
Yes, more real. That was it. These lives for just seconds, but firmer seconds all the time would take over. Was this just a masochistic game he was playing with himself? Or…and this was the scary part…was somebody else playing it with him? Now that idea was just crazy talking. Scary as hell. That thought had no basis in reality. Had it? That was a dangerous line of thought. But it wouldn’t go away.
Jesus.
Over and over, the possibilities, half realities, just kept recycling. To what end? For what possible purpose? Usually there was a purpose, but he couldn’t imagine one here other than this masochism. Sadism? It really all did seem to be coming from somewhere else. Again, though, that was crazy! Was it? How could he fight it? Was it best, as he’d done in the past with other such thoughts, to engage this thing with his fully conscious mind?
He’d read all kinds of things, too many things. His life as a journalist for a while and as a professor and free lance writer for a much longer while, had been nothing but reading and writing. There were theories, about human psychology, about the nature of the universe, about intersecting lines within each and he’d tried to focus on that, be logical about all this, but the details of the past just kept rushing in and drowning it out.
He pulled up by the little bench, beyond the crossroads of the highway and the railroad siding in National Mine and tried to take a few deep breathes. It was no good. He cried again. Okay, then, he would cry. That was okay. Tears were real. Tears kept him in the present place and time with his present life. Only a nut would have a thought like that. A nut trying not to be nuts.
“Janine.”
Chapter 1
Grandpa gives me hope. Not that I’m going to live. I’m ten, I’m not an idiot. I’ve spent most of my life in hospitals and now I’m in my last one, probably my last hospital room. It was too much for Mom. She left. One day she just stopped coming to visit. I half knew that was going to happen. I could see it in her eyes the last time she came to see me. I have her red hair. I have her green eyes. She got those from her mother, my grandmother. Gradma’s name is Constance. Connie, Grandpa calls her. She’s pretty, just like Mom, but old like Grandpa. She looks a little older though. I think she lived harder than Grandpa. Or its all the dry air in the West. That’s what Grandpa said and then he laughed. I’d ask him why Grandma looked older, and I couldn’t help noticing that he smiled. I like to see him smile. He deserves to smile. He gives me hope.
He’s retired now and he worked hard for a lot of years as a newspaper reporter. He wrote about all kinds of things. He’s always worked here in the Upper Peninsula. Says he couldn’t leave it. Grandma told me once that he loved the land here more than he loved her, that’s why she left. I’ll say this, Grandma is honest. I don’t think she’s right, though. I don’t know the details. They won’t tell me. Grandma says I wouldn’t understand. Grandpa says I would and that’s why he won’t tell me, because it’s all too dumb and sordid. I’m too good for sordid he says. I looked sordid up in my dictionary he gave me after he left that day. I like looking into there. One word leads to another and you learn all kinds of things. And I like the smell of the book because it was in Grandpa’s study. It’s a nice musty smell. That’s another word Grandpa taught me. He gives me hope.
He gives me hope about a lot of things. He says that just because today is bad or good, that doesn’t mean that tomorrow is going to be either one. It just means that today is what today is. I told him the other day that I was going to die soon. And he teared right up and all he could do is nod. He really doesn’t want me to die. It’s the last thing he wants, but he can see it hurts me to keep on living and he could see when I said that I was going to die soon, that there was hope in my voice, like that was the best thing I could imagine was for this fighting to be over. I’ve been a fighter. After a couple of moments when he was holding tears back, he said that, if I wanted, maybe it was time for the fight to be over. He started in telling me that when I was gone I wouldn’t really be gone and that I’d wake up a moment later with new things to do, feeling a lot better. I asked him how he knew that and he said he just did and I told him, “Me too.” And he wasn’t crying then, he was just matter of fact about it. We’re in agreement on what comes next. We both just know it and we don’t know how. He gives me hope.
He has faith, and I’ve heard him praying, but not just that kind of church faith, not just the kind that goes with rosaries and crucifixes, but the kind that’s earned and learned by living a long time. He figured out, because he’s an old reporter, what’s true about the universe and what isn’t. He says you can’t expect the world to balance out right now, it will take a while. He says some people get the short end of the stick. I like those words because I can see the stick. That’s a metaphor, but it’s an old one so Grandpa tells me that makes it a cliche. That’s another one I looked up and it says cliches are dead language. Language that’s lost its meaning because it’s been written or said so many times. It’s funny, though, it’s not a cliche to me because it’s the first time I heard it. I had Grandpa look up where the phrase came from because he said off hand he didn’t know. He found out that it came from the time of knights and that the person who got the short or wrong end of the stick got the sharp or pointy end. He also said it might mean somebody picking up a walking stick at the wrong end and getting the dirt or mud on his hands. Either way, he told me, it’s a bad deal. And his blue eyes kind of flashed, but he didn’t cry that time. I don’t want him to cry. He gives me hope.
If I was going to hang around a while, which I’m not, I’d fiddle around with words like Grandpa. He says he’s gonna write a book about me, after I go away. He says that because I told him he had to and sometimes I almost wish I hadn’t, but I want to give him something to do and I know he’s going to think about me like all the time and once Grandpa starts thinking about something he can’t get it out of his mind, it just runs there over and over, and I can see him kind of muttering to himself. Grandma told me he’s always been like that; she said it was kind of cute, but it was hard to live with that. She’s always very honest, Grandma, but not in a way that’s always nice. She says what she thinks. She’s kind of loud, really, always the loudest person in the room, but she’s fun too. And her husband now, Tom, well he’s fun too. They’re fun together. It’s not Grandpa’s kind of fun and I can see him roll his eyes sometimes when they get going and he’s in the room. It’s not something he does for my benefit. He doesn’t even know I see it. I ask about why he and Grandma aren’t together sometimes, and he mostly says the same thing. He’ll say she was too much fun for me and then laugh and I’ll say, no really, tell me, and he’ll say well Grandma says she couldn’t stand it here anymore, he means in the U.P., but he says that isn’t really it because he says he told her he would relocate wherever she wanted, but then she said she couldn’t take him away from here because that would kill him. And when Grandpa gets that far I always ask if maybe she was already seeing Tom or somebody else when she was telling him this, and he says he thinks, probably.
He gives me hope not just that I’m going to wake up in another place, maybe another world like this one or maybe a world where I’m moving between worlds, or a world where pain is gone and hope isn’t necessary, I’m not even sure what that means, but it makes a kind of sense to me I’m not really old enough to have the words for. Grandpa has absolute faith that it’s going to be like one of those things and that the main thing is that it’s going to be better and certainly different from all these tubes and having to lie in bed all the time. He gives me hope.
I just barely remember being able to run around. I remember, or maybe it’s a dream, running around in Grandpa’s back yard with Mom, and that her dress, she had on a dress, was white, and I remember there was a man about Mom’s age sitting there with Grandpa on the porch and talking and laughing, and drinking something out of a glass, maybe a beer. It was dark beer I remember. I think that man may have been my father, but I don’t know. I asked Grandpa about it and he took a couple breathes and said that was up to Mom to talk to me about that, but she never did. And now she’s gone. I don’t ask Grandpa where she is because it makes him sad. I don’t ask him if she’ll come back because I know the answer to that. He gives me hope and I don’t want to take his away.
Grandpa and I have talked about almost everything at one time or another. Now that he’s retired from the newspaper business, he has a lot of time and he says there’s nobody he’d rather spend it with than me. I’m starting to think that maybe that isn’t quite true, and I don’t mean that in a mean way, and I’ll tell you about it in a minute. Like I said, we’ve talked about almost everything, and I’ve asked him a couple of times about how he and Grandma met and he told me that they were in a college class together, a college class about the New Testament he said, and I knew what that meant which impressed him, and he said Grandma saw him in that class and liked the way he looked and asked him to play paddleball with him. He had to explain what that was and he said it was like racquet ball before the racquets and handball after the hand. He’s funny like that. It’s weird, but right there in that he told me something about time and how it changes, even though I’m never going to see much of it. Enough about that, though. He said they played paddle ball together and Grandma put her arm around him, because he was pretty shy, and then she leaned over and kissed him. And, he says, the next thing he knew he was tagging along. I think that means sex, but I didn’t ask Grandpa if it did because when I ask about it, it makes him mumble and go all red and that’s funny to see, but then he usually finds some reason to leave for the day, and I like him around as much as possible, so I don’t ask him about sex. Like I say, he gives me hope and I need hope.
I have talked to somebody about sex, though, and she doesn’t get embarrassed about it at all. That’s Nurse Janine. Nurse Janine is cool. If I was going to live longer, I’d have a hard time picking between being a reporter like Grandpa or a cool nurse like Nurse Janine. She’s pretty and smart. She’s an old lady like Grandma, but she’s not big and brassy, that’s the way Grandpa puts it, like Grandma. She’s kind of smart and quiet and witty. She takes care of serious stuff and she’s always focused on what needs to be done right now. Now this is what I mean about maybe Grandpa having someone else he might like to spend time with more than with me, that’s Nurse Janine. They really hit it off like Grandpa would say. He teases her and she teases him and I think if Grandpa gets a little less shy about women and asks her out maybe she’ll go, in fact I’m sure she would. Her husband died a few years ago, right in this hospital, Nurse Janine told me. He was a good man, she says, but something about the way she says that kind of implies that there was something she didn’t like about him or maybe just something that he didn’t have that she needed and I think maybe Grandpa has that something. In fact, I’m sure he does, and that gives me hope.
I hope that the two of them get together after I’m gone, or maybe even before, and I’ve told Nurse Janine that, and she says I’m a little cupid. And I told Grandpa what I was thinking and that maybe he ought to just out and out tell Nurse Janine he thinks she’s cute, and he went all red and finally said, maybe I’ll do that and then remembered he had an appointment and he’d be back in a half hour or so, and when he came back he was with Nurse Janine and they were all smiles. I don’t know if they’re together now, but I think they’re going on a date soon and I have high hopes for them. Nurse Janine told me a great story about them. She says that a long time ago, like almost forty years ago, they’d met. She says, she was a friend of Grandpa’s best friend’s sister and they met one night over in Newberry, but he didn’t talk to her much, and that later, when she moved back to the U.P. in Marquette to stay from where she grew up down state, she’d been back in Newberry one night with the sister and Grandpa’s friend again but Grandpa wasn’t there, and that she’d almost had his friend call him out at the camp, I’ve been there a time or two when I was well, I think that’s the porch I remember, but that’s beside the point, anyway, she’d almost had his friend call him, but then chickened out at the last second. She says not to tell Grandpa that, so I won’t. But I wonder what might have happened if that brother of her best friend had made that call to Grandpa. What might have happened? Maybe they would have gotten together then. Grandpa says, he was already pretty involved with Grandma then, but that they were on-again-off-again for a long time. I like that phrase too; it’s like a sing song, but, anyway, they were like that for over five or six years, but Grandma kept calling him back and he couldn’t resist her. Once he told me he almost wishes he could have, but then, he says, I wouldn’t have you. And that’s true enough. And I’m glad I got to be here, if only so I could know Grandpa, but maybe, maybe it would have been better for everybody if it didn’t come out this way this time.
Nurse Janine says that souls and spirits are different from each other. She says they’re two parts of what people are along with our regular bodies, and aren’t locked into being one body, and that they can come and go. That surprised me that she would say that because, you know, she is a nurse and they stick to facts.She says those are facts too, just another kind, and when you’ve been in nursing a long, long time you see lots of things that aren’t in medical books and she doesn’t talk about these things to just anybody she says, only to people like you. I said, what do you mean people like me, and she says people like me who have been here before and are going to be here again lots of times until they get everything they should have and it all works out. And that sounded a lot like the kinds of things Grandpa said about me waking up in another place and that made me think they need to be together even more. I told Janine that maybe it would have been better if that had worked out so that she had had that friend of Grandpa’s make the call, even though that might mean I wouldn’t be here, and that’s when she told me I would have been here anyway one way or the other and about the souls and spirits. I think she’s right. I told her that and she laughed and said not to tell anybody what she’d said, and that sometimes she just said things she thought and maybe she was just a crazy old lady. I said she sure was not, and she said that meant a great deal coming from a smart little girl like me. She said there was a reason for me to be here, and there would be a reason next time too. Nurse Janine gives me hope too.
I asked Grandpa if he thought he and Janine would be together soon and he got all red and I told him not to leave the room to just tell me. And finally he got out, “We’ll see”, which is what he says when he can’t think of anything else to say, or if something I’ve said makes him sad, or if he’s just at a loss.
I asked Janine the same thing and she said, “I don’t know”. And then I got a little mad and it showed on my face and I started complaining a little about being hungry and that the hospital food was gross and she frowned and asked me what had made me cranky, and I told her that it was probably because I wanted she and Grandpa to be together so bad and I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. And Janine laughed and said, “You’re a regular match maker.” Then she explained what that was because I was confused and thought she was talking about actual matches and we both laughed really hard and that felt good. And I said to her that maybe she should learn from not having made Grandpa’s friend make that call all those years ago and that maybe this time she ought to intervene harder and she said that was a good new word I had there, and that maybe she would intervene really hard this time and I said, “Promise?”, and for the first and only time, I saw tears coming into Nurse Janine’s eyes and she said, “Okay, darling. I promise. For you I’ll promise. I will intervene really hard.”
And that gives me all kinds of hope because Nurse Janine never goes back on a promise, and she doesn’t promise anything that can’t happen. And I just know that she’s going to make this happen and that she and Grandpa will be great together, and together like it seems like they should have been always. And I said to Nurse Janine that good things come to those who wait. And she laughed and laughed and said I was the smartest little girl in the world, but I’m not. It’s just that I get to see things quicker than other people do, probably because I’m not going to be here that long, but things like this with Grandpa and Nurse Janine really give me lots of hope. And I hope when I wake up again it’s in a world where they are together and happy and I hope I meet them and I hope that I’ll somehow even in some small way remember who they were and who I was and that we all were here this time.
At the crossroads Danny sat back against the wood of the bench and looked out across the water of the pond and up towards the slag mountain from the mine in the distance. There were loons on this water sometimes, and ducks and geese. It was strange to ride up to them on a bike. It seemed like the crossing of two worlds, one slightly more civilized and he wasn’t sure which was which. What was that girl’s name? He must have known it at one time. He could see her face and her curly red hair and feel her arm around his shoulder.
And suddenly, it was there, it was really there and he looked up and he could see her what? 20-year-old face and it morphed into a face she might have, a face somehow she did have and that he’d seen and known at 58 or 60. She sat close to him, very close right there on the bench.
“Hello, Danny.” Her voice was sultry and deep.
“Hello…”
“Constance.” There was a kind of force behind her reminder. It made him uncomfortable.
“Yes, of course. Constance.”
“Are you ready to go. We’ve got a plane to catch. To Arizona. You love it there, Danny.”
“I do?”
“Oh yes. You say it’s just like the U.P., the people at least, only warmer.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…I mean maybe.”
“There’s no maybe. That’s where we live.”
“That’s where you live, with, what’s his name…Tom…”
“Who?”
“Your husband, Tom. Nice guy. That’s who you marry. Don’t know how I know that.”
“Maybe…”
“No. No that’s who you marry. Don’t you remember? I excused myself, after the kiss, wanted to take it further, really did, but I was way too shy. I left the paddle ball court, feeling stupid and intimidated, you took a few steps after me. Then you couldn’t help laughing a little. I don’t blame you. I was a goofy kid. That’s how it happened.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes. Thank you, but yes.”
“What about our little Addie?”
“Oh…yes. Addie. Little Adeline…”
“What about her?”
Danny looked over at Constance then reached around and patted her hand. Then straight at Addie who was sitting on the facing bench, perfectly healthy and ready to get up at any moment and run, smiling right at him, and suddenly morphing herself, her freckles disappearing her red hair turning dark her skin becoming a chocolate brown, and her face becoming that of a little boy, but the smile staying exactly the same.
“Oh Addie is…okay…will be okay wherever she wakes…” and he saw the little boy get a quizzical look and then resume the smile, wink, and take off running down the trail, when Danny said, “wherever he wakes up the next time.”
He felt Contance’s kiss on his cheek and it was sweet and just for a second the longing hung on and then she and it were gone, but there was still so much more, so very much more to unravel, an easing was clear for a moment though, just a bit of easing, enough for a breath before the grinding pain came back, and he wished Janine were here and knew it wouldn’t matter.
“Stay the course.”
Chapter 2
Well, this was a mess, but it didn’t have to be. Danny St. Amour, attorney at law, could take these letters to the nearest fireplace and drop them in. He supposed that’s what he would do. It was funny, this whole thing was about letters. Jill and Danny’s whole life together had started with letters and there had been letters during their life when Jill had taken the job with the company in Sweden after the baby died.
Jill was so flighty then. Danny had been so terrified for her. She had just disappeared one day while he was at work without telling him where she was going. And I sat with Danny as he cried and tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He held out the letter she’d left him.
“Don’t try to follow me,” she’d said as though he would ever do anything else but exactly that.
“She’s always been like this, Jerry,” Danny said between shots of whiskey there at his kitchen table. “Well…you know. It isn’t just losing the baby.”
I did know. Jill had always been like this. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and flighty. Too sensitive for her own good. Inscrutable, unreadable. She was way too much for me. When we’d dated in high school I couldn’t make head or tail of it. So to speak. Sorry, that was bad. Anyway, I gave up when I saw how difficult she was. No amount of beauty was worth that. But not Danny. Not our boy. No, he was locked into the friend zone for years until that one time when he was away at school, his freshman year at Emmaus, and Jill, who was a senior in high school (God people that age do so much damage!) wrote him about what a mess everything was and how troubled she was and how she really needed to see him, and wouldn’t he come home? And stupid Danny, he just dropped everything, called in all the favors he could think of, hitchhiked through a snowstorm home from down state, most of the way with a “three-fingered trucker”, that’s how he told the story, Danny was always so good at telling stories, who dropped him off right outside Jill’s door and sat there watching to see what would happen, because, of course, Danny had told the three-fingered trucker the story too. Oh, Danny…
Danny said that just for a second, the door came open and Jill stood there, as Danny told it, not looking concerned at all, just fine, and Danny says for a second he thought she was going to close the door, say goodnight and leave him standing there in the snow with the three-fingered trucker looking on. But Jill does have some level of compassion and who could not feel something for Danny, who was such a good guy and had come all the way there through the snow from down state because of her letter, after all, at least she could have him in for a while. And that’s when Danny made his pitch. Right there at the door. He went all in. He told her right to her face that he had always had a thing for her, that he didn’t want to be friends anymore, that he wanted more, and he says that three times, by his count, she tried to talk him out of it, said how flattered she was, how she wished it could be different and Danny had said, “It can be, Jill. You’re not looking at this right. It can be. Who do you really love more than me? Think about the guys…other than Jerry I mean…Jerry is solid, Jerry is aces. If you want to be with him I’ll get out of the way, but think about the others. They’re all no good for you, Jill. But I am. I’m really good for you. And I really love you. I want to be with you, and I’ll stick by you no matter what.”
You may be wondering why I know what he said so well? Well, Danny told me it in exactly those words. So did Jill. It was the moment. It was the very moment when it all changed. Jill listened, and they were together after that. Oh not that she didn’t get calls, didn’t even go out on dates with some of those others…she knew how to pick’em…what losers! But she always came back to Danny, until the baby died. And she took off, left the damned country! Took a job in marketing with this firm in Stockholm where her family had some connections. Her mother, who was just as flighty as she is, thought it was a great idea, she’d never thought Danny was good enough for her really. Jill’s father was dead by then. He would have put an end to it right away. He liked Danny. Well, it was nuts anyway.
Danny didn’t hear from her for almost two years. He must have gone over to the Mattson’s house 200 times. Mrs. Mattson wouldn’t budge. She put on to be just as worried as he was, even told him for a while to keep looking and let her know if he heard anything. That woman is kind of heartless sometimes, not unlike her daughter. Then, one day Mrs. Mattson called Danny over and said she had heard from Jill and that she knew exactly where she was and gave Danny her address. And of course, Danny wrote her. And he could be very convincing in writing, but even he couldn’t get her to budge. When she wrote, a couple of letters later, that he should divorce her, Danny said to me, “If she wants to be rid of me why doesn’t she divorce me?”
And I explained to him that he had the better grounds and it would be quick that way, and he said, “I don’t want it to be quick. I don’t want to be divorced from Jill. I love her!”
He wrote her back and said he was coming there. And she wrote back and said that if he did, she’d move somewhere else. It was over. It was just over.
Well, Danny went into a funk. His old man, Harv, nicest, gentlest, father anybody ever had, raised all three of those O’Leary boys, and they were a wild bunch, single handed on a barber’s salary. Danny’s mother died when he was just three. Harv, had me in the chair one day during all this and he said, “You making any headway with my youngest?”
“Harv, he’s a hard case, you know that.”
“You gonna see him tonight?”
“Well, it’s Friday, don’t know what else two young bachelors are gonna do.”
“Convince him he’s a bachelor. Because he is!”
“I’m tryin’ Harv.”
“So I called up Danny as soon as I got back to my apartment, and he said he was just gonna hang around at camp. It was spring time. I worked on him for a while, but he wasn’t having it.
“Nah,” he said. “I’ll probably go for a paddle in the morning. I’m turning in early.”
“Danny…”
“Jer, quit trying so hard. I’ll be all right.”
“So that night we’re down at Johnny’s, the usual local crew plus my sister, Nancy, who is home from nursing school at Northern with her friend, Janine. Now Janine is no Jill, not many women are, but she has that kind of subtle eastern European beauty like…kind of like Sophia Loren, only more wholesome, and she’s, well she’s Janine: solid, kind, smart, tough, just good. Janine was just what Danny needed. Somebody who would appreciate him, but not gush. Somebody who wasn’t going to fly off to Sweden when the going got tough. What’s more, one of the first things she did when she got to the bar that night was to ask about Danny.
So, I called him. I told him he should come in.
“C’mon, Jer, let me be. I’m not coming in there so I can get hammered and cry in my whiskey about Jill. She’s gone. I’m going to have to face that.”
“Okay, good. You’re right.” This was the first time he’d gone that far. “There’s somebody in here who wants you to come in.”
“Yeah, you. You’re a good friend, Jer…but…”
“No, not me, you idiot! Janine Mailer, you know, Nancy’s friend from nursing school…”
“Oh…”
“Yeah, ‘oh’, get your ass in here.”
“Really, she specifically asked for me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh come on. She didn’t. You’re just trying to fix me…”
“On the eyes of my mother, you asshole! Get in here.”
So he’d come in, and they’d hit it off, really hit it off. Nothing happened right away of course, but they kept seeing each other on and off for a couple of months. And then Danny had come to me ready to get going on the divorce papers, and then, out of the blue, Jill calls and says, like she hasn’t been gone for two years, “We could adopt!” Says it like it just occurred to her. And the truth was, and she told Danny this after a while that it wasn’t adoption really, that she had a son, go figure, by an American service man she’d met in Sweden, and that it wasn’t planned and they weren’t in love, and that there was no one who could be a better father to a child than Danny and, if she came back wouldn’t he adopt her child?
Well, of course the answer was yes. And Danny was the best father anybody could possibly be to Chet, who grew up in Newberry the only black kid in the school, and took some guff, but Danny was there for him, and Jill learned to be a great mother and they raised him up and he was brilliant and became a newspaper reporter, just like Danny, worked at the local paper that Danny was editor of by this time and then went on to U of M and then the Cleveland Plain Dealer where he was a sports reporter and now is an editor. You’ll see him now and then on some of those national sports shows, covering baseball. Chet O’Leary.
What about Janine, you say? And I don’t blame you. Well, Danny being Danny, he went right to Janine and told her the deal. That his wife wanted him back and that there was a child. And Janine toughed it out. Nodded her head. And cried herself silly to Nancy, but never let on to Danny. Danny did the right thing, I guess. And he and Jill stayed married all these years and raised up a fine son. And Janine just threw herself into nursing and married a nice guy from Marquette, a prison guard named Gus Ogea, and they raised four kids. And they were pretty happy. But Nancy told me once, about fifteen years ago that Janine never really got over Danny. And truth be told, every time Danny and I tied one on, which was less and less as the years passed, Danny would ask about Janine. And once he told me, that he was like Gatsby, that he’d put Jill up on a pedestal and that though they’d made a life together and though he loved her, she was not the ideal he had thought and that her beauty hid some pretty common things, and that Janine was rock solid and good and that Gus Ogea was a very lucky man.
Those nights made me sad, and I tried to make light of it with Danny, but we both knew it wasn’t light that it was just life. And I’ve said to my wife, Tess, on more than one night that the two of us are lucky to have fallen in love and be in love this whole time. College sweethearts. It all just fell into place. And that made me feel even worse for Danny and some for Jill too, because though she came to love Danny in her way, Danny was never her ideal. She always wanted those bad boys and she never got over that. Hell of a thing.
And now these letters. Let me tell you, there are a lot of them. It appears, Danny must have been writing one a week, because Janine sure was. For a while they went to Harv’s barber shop and Harv kept mum. Then for a while they went to Danny’s newspaper office, but he must have been afraid somebody would see them. So then, they came to a special box at the post office.
I’ve alway wished I could see what Danny wrote, but I’d never ask Janine for them. Nancy never mentioned anything to me about them, so I think it was just their secret, for 32 years. A letter a week, in language that wasn’t like Janine, at least not after while. The first ones were really reluctant. Telling Danny that what’s done is done, that they’d had a few nice months together and that was that, that she understood why he couldn’t abandon Jill in her time of need…I often wonder if she really did…I sure would have hesitated at least if I were Danny after the way she’d treated him, but there as a kid…and Janine told him that these letters had to stop. But that Danny, oh boy he could make a case, he could tell a story! Always too shy with women at first, missed lots of opportunities because of it, I always thought, but once he got warmed up he was like a dog with a bone. And he won Janine over after a while in these letters. Won her over for what, I wonder? So they could both eat their hearts out? Live a life in ink that they could never live for real? Or was it just that connection? Just that connection that Danny couldn’t put down, couldn’t file away somewhere, that connection that happened on that very first night at Johnny’s that there was no way either of them could deny, like if life happened over again a million times, they’d find each other, be special to each other in some way, sitting there joking with each other prodding each other to go further, to be the people they could be. Maybe neither one of them could just let that completely drop. Who could?
Anyway, there were thousands of letters that Chris Lawson, who was Danny’s associate editor for years and Chet’s old high friend and took over, since Chet wasn’t interested, when Danny passed. Oh…oh that was a hell of a thing. I saw it all. I was looking out my office window, nice place all mahogany, panels, little addition to our house, and I saw Danny riding his bike, old loon, took that up big time when he was about 50, across Newberry Avenue, when this car with its horn honking comes out of nowhere going over 100 miles an hour, and hits Danny full on. This 80-year-old lady’s accelerator had stuck north of Newberry and she just panicked, didn’t think to just hit the brake, I guess, ended up rolling it up onto the school lawn after she hit Danny. She managed to crawl out of there before the oxygen tank she had for her emphysema, in the back seat exploded. She survived. There wasn’t much left of Danny.
Who can predict something like that? Who could ever predict? Out of the blue. Just out of the blue. Well, Chet was pretty torn up, and Jill was just in shock for a long time. I wondered if maybe she’d run off somewhere again, but she didn’t. I’ve been over there a lot to see Jill. Sometimes with Tess. I don’t know. I don’t know. She doesn’t want to come out of the house much. And then these letters showed up. Chris found them, and he said he almost burned them himself, but he knew he could trust me.
I wonder if Janine wants them back. Maybe. Maybe. She and Gus sent a huge bunch of flowers. Though I doubt Gus knew anything about it. And flowers of the same kind keep showing up out at Danny’s grave. Jill never goes there. Can’t bear it, she says. Once a week those flowers are there. Surely, Janine isn’t making a trip all the way here each week just to drop those flowers on the grave, is she? I know she does some outreach here for the Marquette hospital. Maybe that’s how she does it. I haven’t looked into it.
And now, these letters. No, I don’t think I’m going to burn them. I think I’ll put them in a safety deposit box down at the bank. Maybe leave them back over to Chris when I go. Maybe some day he’ll give them back to Janine or maybe he’ll burn them.
Oh the possibilities. It makes me wonder. It really does. Poor Danny. Poor Janine.
Part of him would always be in that doorway. Having battled his way back through that god awful storm, picked up by that three-fingered trucker. Telling him the whole story and then standing there in that doorway, without the guts to make a pitch so that Jill would let him in. Sometimes, his shyness, his inability to really speak up for himself, was lucky, and that was so in this case. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe it was fate.
He looked up expecting to see Jill’s beautiful nordic face, but it wasn’t there. She wasn’t here. Truth was, she never would be, never had been. She’d smiled at him at that doorway, then told him that she didn’t really feel up to coming out tonight, though she’d looked fine. That it was nice of him to stop by and maybe she’d see him around later that weekend. Then the door had shut, and he’d walked out to that trucker and waved him away.
The man had said, “Tough luck.”
Danny had answered, “Yeah.” Then walked home through the blizzard surprising his old man who didn’t even know he was coming home.
“Goodbye, Jill.”
Truth was, Danny didn’t even know where Jill lived anymore. Didn’t care really. Didn’t care and that was the truth.
But now there was Chet who was shaking his head even as Danny looked up at him on the other bench. The expression said, “Don’t worry.” And he vanished.
He’d show up again, Danny was certain. Whom had he become, he wondered? Had he met Chet already in some other guise? Was he going to meet him later?
“Wow,” Danny said. “I died that time around. I died right about now.”
It was getting easier, but there was a lot more to do. A lot more. The possibilities, endless possibilities. How could he hold himself firmly in just one string caused by one moment, among all of them? What was holding him there? And the churning started in his stomach again. Sometimes, sometimes he’d been truly guilty. it wasn’t always him at the door with the look of rejection. it had gone the other way, more than once. He couldn’t make that up or make up for that, could he?
Chapter 3
Fuck Danny O’Leary. Well, I did. That and everything else I could think up, we could think up, together. We did everything that you can imagine doing to each other, both erotically and emotionally for two months and then on and off again for the better part of two years and I kept coming back and he kept letting me and I thought that would be enough to hold him, but it wasn’t. What can I say? I was desperate, and he was a horrible prick.
Okay, cleansing breath.
I’ll be with you in just a minute. Please, just hang on. I’ve got to finish this.
Okay… I didn’t pursue Danny just to catch a husband. In fact, he started it. I didn’t pursue him just for the sex, though that was great for a while. I pursued him because I loved him and I thought he loved me and I think he thought he loved me for a while at first, but the truth, the real truth is he didn’t. And he was kind of a shit to me, the way nice people are to other nice people sometimes.
Okay, I’m so sorry if I offended you just now with graphic language or made you uncomfortable by giving you TMI. If you had caught me a couple of months ago, I’d have been much more graphic, much more explicit, much more angry, but I’ve progressed, according to my shrink. I’m not usually like this; ask my shrink. I’m sorry for any offense of any kind, but I did mean to be somewhat crass and shocking; I had to be really. It’s part of the therapy. You showed up early. Again, I’m sorry.
See, I have to say all that out loud every now and then— less often lately— in order to make a point, with myself more than anybody else, and that point is that sometimes even the best people are awful to other good people and Danny is a case in point, because, well, he just was really a prick to me. And I hated him for it, and when I feel really vengeful towards him like I do sometimes, but less often lately like I said, just for rare moments here and there like that one just now. I have to do that when, say all that aloud, when I get feeling as though he used me like a whore. So I talk like a whore, curse him like one. And that shows me how off putting it is. How ugly I become. And then I realize that it wasn’t like that. That Danny’s not a bad guy. That I’m not a bad person either. Things just happen and good people do bad things to each other out of desperation, and jealousy, out of youth, and, the truth, out of love. Again, I’m sorry.
The worst thing? The worst thing is I still love him and there isn’t one damned thing I can do about it. I don’t blame him anymore though, most of the time, so that’s a step forward. at least my shrink thinks so, and he’s okay with me using that language, thinks it’s therapeutic. In fact, he prescribed it. So, I do it, and it works, at least until I have to start all over again, which is less often lately.
My name is Millicent Massey.
Danny knew me mostly at Emmaus College. I had come down there from the Mt. Pleasant area, on an academic scholarship and on money from the Rez. That’s right, I’m Native American. I’m First People. Don’t get your underwear and your white guilt, if you are white, all in a bunch; it’s neither here nor there in this story. It’s just a fact. I don’t regret going there to school. It was a good place to go and not the typical place everybody I knew was going, which was and is Central. Central Michigan University. Emmaus was a friendly place, a compassionate place. It’s not the institution’s fault that a boy treated me badly there. I got a great education, and I got a solid job through my education there, working in public relations for the tribe, but in some ways I wish I’d never gone there. Usually, I wish I’d never met Danny. At least that’s what I tell myself. There are some days, though, when I’m very glad I did. He was fun and funny and alive, and a believer in the possibilities in people and he truly liked women, and me, but, like I said, he didn’t love me. I wish, I so wish he had realized that earlier, because there was a time when he could have left me or I might have left him and it would have been mutual and nobody would have gotten hurt too much, but I waited too long and couldn’t see what was obvious to my friends, and my Mom, and everybody who knew us both: it just wasn’t going to work out. And this has nothing to do with Janine who didn’t know anything about Danny and me, until much later. By that time, I was just crazy, and everything that happened after that, I’ll put on myself, or, as my shrink would say, on my illness, my emotional state, whatever. Acceptance has been hard and is still ongoing. That’s just the truth.
So, I was a sophomore at Emmaus when I met Danny. He was tall and blond, handsome, and blue eyed, and bright. He was charismatic, but shy. Weird combination. My shrink says it’s not unusual in gifted introverts to cover with a facade of extroversion. His language, not mine. He told me that in order to help me understand Danny. Anyway, apparently Danny had seen me around campus, and he did the high school thing, told one of my sisters in my sorority that he thought I was cute. That was cute, I thought, so at our next mixer, which he not so coincidentally attended, I went up to him and well, I came on to him, something I don’t usually do, and we ended up together at his apartment, seniors, like Danny, were allowed to have apartments. We ended up at his apartment that night.
We had a lovely night, and I’ll admit to trying out a few bedroom tricks to pull him in and the next afternoon, after my walk of shame back to the sorority house, nothing is a secret in that little town, on that little campus, Danny called me and was sweet and we made a date to go out in Marshall that Sunday.
Oh, this is the sweet part. He was so nice and loving and complementary, and a little nervous at our dinner, and things went just great from there for about two months, October-November, 1980. I wish I could just lock it in there, break off the dial so to speak and just have us happy, and seemingly in love, and full of passion and young, with lots of hope. It didn’t end that way, though. You know, that’s one of the biggest lies, isn’t it? “The End”. There’s never an end. Every book, or play, or movie, or poem has an end. But in life, there are no ends. Things always happen after the good things and the bad things. You don’t get to end on a high note, and thank God for me, you don’t have to end in the pit of despair either, unless you choose to. I should know about that, but we’ll get to it later. This isn’t my shrink talking now. It’s me. This is what I’ve discovered. And I’ve moved on, but this Danny thing still lingers. And my shrink says it will probably, almost certainly, he says, always be a part of me. I just need to look it right in the eye and face the fact. Accept it. That it will always hurt some. By doing that, he says, and I believe him….I hope I’m not giving you the impression he’s not a good doctor or a good person, I just resent him for being right about me and Danny, he says that’s natural, and I think he’s right…anyway, he says, by facing the pain, I can probably make it hurt less. That seems to be true, but I am 55 now, so time is a’wasting. Oh, that sounded pretty cynical, I guess, but it’s honest.
So, we had our dinner and our couple of months of classes together. We were both English and Communication majors, and sometimes right in class I did little things to him, naughty things, while the professors were talking. That was fun. He loved it. He told me so. Ah…kids. But there were lots of wholesome things too, like the dinners when he could afford it, and nice walks among the oaks and along the river. We were sort of in love and Danny told me that come the Spring, he’d take me north to the U.P. and introduce me to his dad.
Crap, I’m getting all mushy just thinking about what might have been and is never going to be. Never could have been. Never could have been. Way too late now. I mean…this was…oh God…37 years ago! Wow. Wow.
Anyway, Danny got an offer to do his last semester in the U.P. at the Sault Evening News, as a beat reporter and, once summer came if he worked out in the spring, as the editor of their summertime supplement. I was happy for him, but my stomach churned right away at the thought of his being gone. I had half a plan already, I hadn’t discussed it with Danny, to do my last two years at Northern or maybe at Lake Superior State in the Sault, but I didn’t discuss it with Danny, his head was full of plans to leave and I didn’t know how he’d react if I started layering other things on it, making all kinds of demands or something. He loved me, I thought. He’d come around and suggest those things himself. But the time drew closer for him to go home for Christmas break, from which he wasn’t coming back to Emmaus except to graduate, and there was no mention of anything like that. No plans that included me. I was patient. Remember, I thought he loved me. I was wrong. In retrospect, if I had pushed any plans towards him it may have just made it all happen sooner.
So, the time of his departure was drawing near. And then one week, he didn’t call me. And he didn’t invite me over. And he didn’t acknowledge my presence on campus in any way, shape or form. And stupid me, despite what my sorority sisters were telling me and despite what my mom said over the phone, “Oh sweety,” she said, “can’t you see that the party is over. He’s going away. You’re not invited. He doesn’t love you.”
Well, I was in love, so I just wouldn’t believe and I couldn’t believe that if he really felt that way he wouldn’t just tell me so, much as it might hurt me, much as it might be really hard for him. He was nice. He is nice. That was the problem. He told me later he just couldn’t bear to do it because he cared about me. And I believe that. We knew things about each other nobody else knew. I knew that Danny, all American boy that he was, had a really dark side, I know about dark sides. Oh not perversion or anything like that, just a way of falling into a pit, where he felt like nothing connected, and that life was all arbitrary and random, and that with one little look to the side, that’s the way he said it, everything, all of society and certainly all of any individual’s life could come crashing down, or go running off on another track. And he also had this weird Idea, kind of pseudo science although he somehow connected it to Einstein, that there were many different tracks, endless numbers of tracks running simultaneously and that with just the tiniest flicker in the cosmic tumbler, that’s the way he said it, you could go off on that other track.
That’s where I made a big mistake. And I’ve often wondered if this moment is what ended it for us, or at least for me as far as he was concerned, I laughed and I said, “Sounds a little like Horton Hears a Who.” Now Danny is funny, and he has a great sense of humor, brilliant sense of humor really, and I thought he would laugh, like he did at so many other things I said, like we did together. But he didn’t. He didn’t at all. He got really grim and he said, “Yeah, right.”
And we went out a time or two after that, but he was a little distant. And then there came that week where he didn’t call. Was that the moment? Was that the time when the cosmic tumbler clicked, and I was out. If I had said something different… And here’s where my shrink says, that you can’t think this way. That every moment will drive you mad if you do. And my shrink asked me to ask myself what I could change by considering, obsessing over really, that particular moment. And I told him nothing. And he said, then why consider it? And the only answer is that I am compelled to.
It’s ironic really. This very thing, this very regret of mine, in a weird way, kind of proves Danny’s weird theory. Then again maybe not. As my shrink says, Danny was probably looking for any excuse to do what he did next, and that moment was just one he may have picked. Danny has always said he doesn’t even remember the conversation, but I don’t believe him. That’s just a defense mechanism so that he can laugh off the whole thing as just something a kid would think about the universe.
Anyway, because he was Danny, he finally did call me. And he asked me to meet him at our special spot on a foot bridge down by the river. Why did he do that? Why would he pick the spot where we were happiest together to break up with me? Was he trying to poison it, so I wouldn’t remember anything about him fondly? Was he that smart, or was he even thinking that clearly? Maybe he just didn’t want me to wreck his apartment. Like I could have! It was a mess. What a slob, kind of charming really. Well. my sisters at the house told me what was going to happen. You know, I had half a mind that maybe he was going to propose. They told me that didn’t make any sense, but I was in love.
So I got there to the river and he was waiting for me and he had a really concerned look on his face, because he told me later, he knew how volatile I could be, though I had never really thought of myself that way, and he was worried how I was going to take it. Long story short, he thanked me for being so good to him, and he knew how I felt about him and then he said, “I tried, Mill. I tried really hard to feel the same way, and for a while I tricked myself into believing I did. I was in love with the idea of being in love with you…but I wasn’t in love with you…if that makes any sense.”
Well, it absolutely did, and I could see just how Danny would do that to himself because I knew him and loved him, but I wasn’t going to let him off that easy.
“No, no…it doesn’t make any fucking sense, Danny!”
“Easy, Mill!”
“Easy hell! You’re leaving me…for…forever! There’s nothing easy about this for me!”
“Not for me either…” I remember the pathetic look on his face, almost a half smile and his eyes really wide, fearful. Well, he had reason, I guess.
“Oh yeah, yeah. You just had your way and now you’re heading off to the woods and I’ll…oh my god…Danny will I ever see you again?”
“Well…well…maybe at graduation…”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll give you a nice card…”
“Mill…”
I turned on him then. I tried to say about twelve different things. I finally got out, “Isn’t there something…”
He just shook his head and we stood there about three feet apart. And then, what happened next, I don’t know, I guess I’d read too many romantic novels, I just looked up into his eyes and then I slapped him as hard as I could across the face, and then I kissed him, maybe harder than I had ever kissed him before and I turned right away and walked really fast in the other direction.
I know, dramatic, right? An ending. And that was that. God, I wish that were true. Of course it wasn’t. Danny called me later that night, sweet boy that he was, and asked me if I was okay. I lied and told him I was. And two days later, he left.
And that was that. Except it wasn’t. It could have been. It could have been if I wasn’t an idiot. I could have just moved on, and eventually I did, but not for a while. At first, I just went on with my life. Dated a lot of other people. Slept with too many of them. All that summer I tried not to think of him. Never even wrote him. He never wrote me. I don’t know if that was out of simple forgetfulness or because he thought it would just hurt me more. I like to think it was the latter. I like to think he was that kind. I don’t know.
Well, he was gone, and he told me later that that spring and summer he had two other romances, the second, much more serious than the first. He almost married Molly, I guess. Would have if she’d said yes. And she stomped all over him, just left him cold. Nowhere near as nice to him as he was to me when the time came really, at least as he told it. I wanted to feel like, hey, there you go, Danny! How does that feel? Like, you got yours now! But I didn’t. I never did. I just felt bad for him. Wanted to sooth his pain. And I did, I guess, but not because I knew anything about what he’d been through.
The next spring, out of the blue, I decided to write him. I wanted a date, a really good date for the spring formal my house throws every year. So I wrote and asked Danny, if he didn’t have any other plans, if he’d mind taking me. “Just friends.” I said.
He wrote back almost right away. “Sure,” he wrote. “I’d be delighted.” And he didn’t mention or emphasize anything about “just friends” so, stupid me, I got my hopes up.
So he came down, was staying over at one of his old journalism friend’s house, and picked me up and we went out to the dance and came back in that stupid little VW bug of his and he was saying goodnight to me, and he told me trying to say goodbye for one final time, and one thing led to another, and he asked if maybe there wasn’t some place, other than his car that we could go and that somehow struck me as him being unkind or crass, or just insensitive, which maybe it was and I got mad and started to cry, and he held me.
He said later, that was his moment. His cosmic tumbler, because the harder side of him was just saying, “Okay, that’s it, once and for all that’s it. There is no more. It’s time to go back north and call this over.” But, he says, and I believe him, his heart was still broken from this Molly, and though he’d met Janine already, nothing had come of that at all, he didn’t even know she cared for him, hadn’t thought about it really, yet, and I was there, and he needed somebody to love him and he just let his guard down, and well…I’ll be a little crude here…the shit hit the fan from there.
He stayed around with me for a couple more days. And said maybe things were different now. Finally his boss called him from the U.P. pretty angry and he said he’d be there in the morning. And he told me he had to go. And I said I knew that, but maybe, maybe I could come up that summer and he said yes. And then, then, he said the thing that in retrospect makes me think that he was being kind of a shit, and he told me later he just said it so he’d have a safety valve, somebody he could cling to if nothing else worked out. He was honest finally about it. In his defense, I’m not sure he really knew that’s what it was that clearly right at that moment, but that’s what he told me later. He said, “Maybe…maybe…if you come up this summer, they’ll be something more for us to talk about.”
“Like…like…what?”
And then he smiled at me, and if I had it to do over, I could go back there, I’d punch his face for him right then, because that’s when he was being the biggest shit, he said, “Well…like something. Maybe…maybe involving a ring.”
So, he went back north. And a couple weeks later he met Janine. And it clicked right away I guess. And then the letters he’d been writing nearly every day stopped. And then while Janine was back downstate in her home down in the Kalamazoo area getting ready to move to Marquette to take a nursing job…she’d gone to nursing school at Northern Michigan University… Anyway, while she’d gone down state to say her goodbyes, Danny had had a job offer further west in the U.P. at Munising with the Marquette Mining Journal, (I know weird name for a daily newspaper, right, but it’s a mining community). And I called him and he told me about it and that he was moving there next weekend. I felt like there was something else he was trying to tell me, but he didn’t and again he had a chance to do right by me, but he just didn’t. And I was confused by the move to Munising, because, from what he was saying, it seemed to amount to about the same job whether he was in the Sault or there, but, of course, that was way closer to where Janine was going to be, and I, of course, didn’t know anything about her yet.
So anyway, I asked, “When should I come up?”
And there was a long pause on the other end and finally he said,
“”Well…how about next weekend?”
Which was a ridiculous expectation, of course, and he told me later he said it to stall because he figured I’d say I couldn’t be there that soon, but I was in love so I said yes. And I went up there to Munising and, the son of a bitch, I helped him move into his god awful trailer. And we slept together. And in the morning I asked when I was going to meet his Dad and his family. And he got this look in his eyes, like again he was trying to tell me something, but he still didn’t. And so I just let it go unsaid. And I stayed there for a few days, but then I had to go home because I had a job for the summer with a paper down near Mt. Pleasant. He said he’d come to visit me there in a few weeks, but he didn’t. And then he didn’t write. And when he finally did he told me about Janine. So I called him and went all to pieces again. And, stupid Danny, he said he was coming right away and he did. So we got back together back down there in my little apartment. And he said he would leave Janine and then that he was leaving me and by the end of the weekend he was half crazy. And we just left it all unsaid.
Then for weeks and months I didn’t hear from him and I resisted the urge to call. And then one night in September, when I was back at school for my senior year he called all tearful and asked if he could come down there and of course, stupid Millicent, I said yes. He came and we were together again, this time for the last time. And then a phone call came and it was Janine and I answered it.
“I…I want to talk to Danny.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s a friend of his.”
‘Well, friend of his, how did you get this number?”
“Danny, gave it to me. He said that’s where he would be…I’m…sorry.”
And Danny asked who was on the phone, but he already knew, and he took the phone from me and I just stood there crying while he talked to her and told her he was on his way.
And then, when the call was done, he looked at me and I couldn’t talk and I just stood there shaking and he reached to hug me and I pushed him away, and I said, “Just go. And don’t come back. You’ll just kill me if you ever do.”
And I could see he felt really bad, but I didn’t care. And well…shit…I was in quite a hole for quite a long time. Eventually though, I met somebody else. I married him. Paul. Wonderful guy, but not nearly as bright as I am, or as Danny is. And his only real sin to be honest was and is that he wasn’t Danny. And when I was pregnant I got goofy one day and wrote Danny a letter, telling him I was pregnant, but wasn’t there still a chance for us, or wasn’t there at least a way we could meet one more time. And stupid Danny, how could he be this fucking stupid really? He agreed to it! Can you imagine that? He felt so bad that he agreed to it and we met in the park by the Mackinac Bridge the next weekend. I told Paul, I was going on a little sight seeing vacation, needed some time alone, and was going to take some pictures for the paper. And he had work, overtime shift at the mill that weekend, and was a little curious, but said okay. He’d believe anything I said to him because he was about me the way I was about Danny
Anyway, can you believe this? Danny told Janine about it. Told her that he had to have an end to it once and for all, make it right with me. What was he thinking? They were six weeks from being married! Why did he listen to me? And Janine? Wow, talk about understanding, she agreed to it! But in the end, she’s with him. I guess she’s pretty smart. I guess she figured that if something was going to go back the other way between the two of us, better six weeks before marriage than after it was too late.
Anyway, we met there in that park and I felt like he was really condescending. I don’t know it just seemed that way. Said how flattered he was that I still cared for him and that he cared for me but not in the same way, and something about that just made me fly off the handle, maybe the pregnancy, I don’t know, but I just vented on him, ripped him for every mean thing he’d ever done to me, and invented a bunch of other things just out of spite. I let him have it both barrels. I don’t know, maybe I was just trying to make it easier for him. I’d like to think I’m that good. Anyway, that’s the way it really did end in that park by the bridge, with him pulling away and me standing there watching, mad as hell and heart broken again. I made him pull away so he could see me in the rearview mirror, understand what he was leaving forever.
Except it’s never forever. Oh, I never saw him again. I’m not that stupid, but I was stupid enough to tell Paul that I’d gone to see Danny. And I think that may have been the germ that finally killed our marriage, though, sweet Paul, he never said boo about it. Anyway, I kept track of Danny and Janine. And I’m glad it worked out for them. I’m happily married now, not to Paul, Poor Paul. That’s another story, but I’m happy now, except for this little thing with Danny that I have to work out a few times a year with my shrink. It will never fully go away, but it’s a lot better, so there’s that.
Danny looked across to the other bench at Millicent and managed a sad smile.
“So, Mill, that’s how it would have been, huh? That’s how it would have been, after the formal. If…if…I’d held you. Stayed with you that night. Not good? Much worse? Just the same pain for you, over and over. And worse things happened.”
“I’m afraid so. You did right. You finally did right. It was stupid to take me to the formal. You shouldn’t have done that, but that night, though it hurt me all over again, at least that night you did right and when I did my dramatic exit from that awful little bug of yours and slammed the door and stood there looking at you, waiting, and then turned and went, when you didn’t come right away, still hoping against hope, you didn’t get out and chase me, you just went away.”
“And I tried to be kind, Mill, when I answered that letter of yours that you sent two weeks after the formal, after our last fight.”
“Oh, was that what that was? Kindness? Seemed pretty condescending to me. What was the line, ‘Some day you’ll have a letter written to you just like this one, a letter that tells you that you are loved by a wonderful person whom you simply cannot love in the same way.’ Pretty much bullshit, Dan. Sweet, but bullshit.”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I know. But I meant well, Mill. And I’m sorry I never answered that letter you sent when you were pregnant.”
“Why? That was a crazy thing for me to do. Wish I could take it back. And Paul and I stayed together, maybe partly because you never wrote back, and we never met again, and he never found out about it. We’re happy. I have regrets, just like you, but we’re happy. You did the right thing there too. You always meant well, Danny, even when you were a shit.”
“Okay. Yeah. I’m…sorry.”
“I know. I’ve always known that. Even when I hated you.”
“And I’ll always…”
“Don’t, Danny.” Her face was a motherly warning, and a child-like plea.
“Okay…well…goodbye, Mill.”
“Goodbye, Danny.”
Danny looked out at the water of the pond, then back at the empty bench across from him.
“This isn’t over yet. There’s more. A lot more,” he said aloud, half sighing.
The little red haired girl, his granddaughter, Adeline, was sitting there, on the bench that had been empty a moment before, healthy, freckled and smiling at him.
“Why…how are you here, again, sweety?”
“It’s the crossroads; don’t you get it, Grandpa?”
He watched the light wind pushing phantoms across the pond. A phrase came into his head. ‘subject to change’. He looked up and Chet, his son with Jill, was sitting there. Before his eyes the boy grew into a man. Adjusted his glasses, “Subject to change, Dad.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yes, yes, of course, but I…like to hear you. Say it again.”
“That’s nice. It’s subject to change, Pop.”
“All of it?”
“Maybe.” He smiled a manly smile. “I don’t know, all of it, Pop.”
With Millicent, there had been so many moments, so many times when things could have altered. With Millicent, for certain, but with Jill too…and even with…Constance… This was the deal.
“That’s the thing,” Adeline, now grown to a woman, said.
This was the thing. He was going to have to work through all of these. He knew that, but he didn’t know how.
“Every one, Grandpa.” She was so pretty. Just like her mother who now sat beside her.
“Who creates this?” Chet, now a boy again asked from beside him.
“I…I don’t know, son. I don’t think it’s me. Are you…”
All three of them said, “Oh, we’re all right. We come and go, cross over…”
“Cross over?”
“Yes,” little Adeline, now alone again said. “This is the crossroads, Grandpa. Don’t you get it?”
God, he wished Janine would come home. He could call her right now. She probably would come home if he asked, but when she got here he’d feel stupid. And there would be a price to pay. She didn’t deal well with weakness. She didn’t deal well with things he stumbled to explain. She wanted to get on with things. They were a matched set. He wondered why; she wondered how. She was right about staying in the now, right now. If he called her she’d tell him what she was doing, right now. He had to study books to learn about living in the now. He put his head in his hands stared down at the cracked pavement. Could he really do this? Did he really have to? Face up to every relationship that failed, or if not failed, ended? Face up to all the possibilities if they hadn’t ended? Was he headed for the psyche ward again after all this time?
“What’s the mystery?”
“Janine?” he stared at the ground. No, no the voice was wrong. That…was Molly.
“You’re not ready for that yet, Pop. One at a time. We’ll get you there.” This was crazy, he was talking to a son who didn’t exist.
“Oh, I exist,” Chet said.
Danny looked up into his son’s dark eyes.
“Just not where you are right now. This is the Crossroads. I’m here to help. Like you helped me.”
“Did I?”
“A million times. More than you’ll ever know.”
“That’s good. That’s good to know.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you, Pop.”
“Oh, I’m okay.You mean, the lady with the stuck accelerator and me on my bike, that was just… Ha, I get it. I’m alive here, where I am. I’m okay.”
“Yeah, it’s the same thing with me,” his son said, then morphed into his granddaughter, “And you’re not crazy.”
“Said the phantom.”
“You don’t quite get it yet, Grandpa,” Addie, the adult, was next to him now, and Chet, his little son, was smiling at him from the other bench. “But you’re learning.”
If he called Janine, got her home…
“Then it would still be hanging there, half done, not even that.” Chet, now an adult again, said.
“Besides,” his daughter, his daughter from that other place…Caroline, said, smiling at him and looking steadily at him with those blue eyes, his blue eyes, as she sat beside him. “there are some fun parts, too, and you’re going to miss them, if you don’t see. There are good things that didn’t happen where you are.”
“A dark angel, several dark angels yet to wrestle,” Danny said.
“And maybe you can dance too,” said Addie, from the other bench. “And not all the angels are dark.”
And he didn’t know if by wrestling with them he could make them go away forever, but right now they were all tormenting him every one. But not these. Not these kids here.
They all smiled at him. They were here to help.
“There are harder ones to wrestle coming,” Danny said. His throat tightened with the thought of some that lay ahead, but Millicent, oh Mill…that had been a tough one.
“But…” he started.
The kids finished, “There were good moments there too.”
“There are more, many more.”
“Pop, Listen to your wife…” Chet clarified when Danny raised his eyebrow, “…Janine.”
“‘Do the work you need to do now! The rest later.’”
“How can you know…”
“Not so intense, Pop. Addie’s right.” Chet said. “There’s some dancing too. You’re tough enough for the hard parts. I know you. And it’s all subject to change.”
“That’s what scares me. I don’t know if it should change. I don’t know if it’s right to change.”
“If it changes, you may not know,” Addie said. “Take a breathe Grandpa. You may find that it turns out so well, you won’t even care, if it’s changed.”
“You may not care,” Chet reiterated. “And everybody is going to be all right, after.”
“After?”
All three kids said, “Now and then.” Then they laughed.
“I don’t want to lose things. I don’t want to lose people I care about.”
The grown Adeline said, “Risk is part of the deal, Grandpa. You said that to me a million times.”
“Me and my big mouth.”
“Besides, Pop,” Chet said. “We’re at Crossover. Nothing is lost. It just shifts.”
“But it would be lost to me.”
“No, Grandpa,” said the grown Adeline. “You know about it now. You know it’s not lost. And you can come back, but you may not want to. You may not remember to from where you are and that will be all right.”
What he had known, what had happened might have changed, already, as part of the wrestling.
“That’s right, Pop.” Chet said.
He might not even know. He might alter everything in his life with the wrestling. Janine… what if. No. No.
That wouldn’t change would it? no matter what, happened in the other threads, the parallel threads, he’d wind up back here waiting for Janine, wouldn’t he?
The kids just smiled at him. Then they shrugged.
Yes. Yes. He’d gotten by Millicent and he was still here waiting for Janine. Where he belonged… Unless… No. No way. He took a long, deep breathe and looked at his granddaughter, in both guises, his son at every age, even now as an old man, and at his daughter…Caroline…who was holding his hand and smiling at him. Blue eyes. My blue eyes.
“Okay, next.”
Chapter 4
Well, the wedding was a joke. Let me just say that up front. I suppose it was good enough for my stupid little sister, Wendy. Danny should have had better. I would have given him better, though, it wasn’t possible, at least not officially, then. And there is that other thing: Danny’s not gay.
In Newberry, at that time, you couldn’t be too outward about being gay. You could let people kind of know it subconsciously, but folks around town there were so provincial that I’m not sure they even really knew what it meant, or at least decided they didn’t want to know. So I was just Andy the bachelor for a long time, until I met Rubin in Grand Rapids, and the law changed after we’d been together for a million years and we did have a wedding…
But that’s our story not Danny and Wendy’s. What a stupid story their’s was! So small town, just dumb. Two dumb kids, three really. The eternal triangle, Danny had a thing for my stupid little sister, Wendy, I had a thing for Danny, and Wendy had a thing for…well, Wendy.
The thing is, we’d all known each other forever. Harv O’Leary’s barber shop was two storefronts down from the old man’s paper, and Wendy and I both worked there all the time from knee high up, and Danny’s whole goal in life was to be a writer. His mother had been one too, on and off even for the old man’s paper, but she died when Danny was very young, having married beneath her: Harv. Nothing against Danny’s dad. Just the truth.
Anyway…the wedding…no. No let’s start back at the bar that night. Stupid, cutsie, tootsie Wendy Merton, my stupid little sister was out with Danny. Why? Because she was between boyfriends. She’d broken up with Danny’s friend Ron, over the girlfriend she’d found out he had at college, using Danny to run intelligence for her, and stupid Danny, he’d ratted his buddy out, “the bro’s before ho’s” code existed but apparently Danny was too ga ga over my stupid sister to get it. The especially dumb thing was, hypocritical thing really, but then Wendy’s whole life is hypocrisy…what you think I’m being too mean? Maybe, but then again, you haven’t met Wendy. You’re about to…
“Wait. Wait now. What do I do here? Chet? Adeline? Caroline?”
“What’s up, Pop?”
“Not how you remember it, Grandpa?”
“Well…first of all, Andy’s gay?”
“Oh for…father! In every scenario I know about, Andy is definitely gay! How could you not know that? You’ve known him since…”
“Since we were two. And he had a thing for me? That explains some things…”
“Uh, what things, Pop?”
“What…no, oh no, nothing like that. Nothing ever happened, at least not in my thread…It’s not that. I just meant I get how he was a little better now. But what he’s saying about Wendy, that’s not true. She wasn’t that self-involved. And I really did break the code telling her about Ron and…what was her name…doesn’t matter. And what Andy’s about to say about her seeing Jerry, this was before Tess…oh this is so involved. So confusing…
“How do you think we feel, Pop?”
“Once you start messing with one of these threads…”
“Yes, Grandpa, you start to forget which one is yours.”
“Maybe I’d better let Andy…”
“Yes…maybe…”
“So you’re done then, Danny?”
“Andy?”
“Well, not your Andy… Though there is a thread where… Never mind, you probably can’t handle it, at least not yet. What I mean is not the Andy from your thread, but yes, that one’s gay too, though you haven’t kept in touch, and lord knows how you didn’t know. Denial or naiveté, I don’t know which. Are you ready for me to start again?”
“Go ahead.”
So, after years of courting my stupid sister, Danny finally decides he’s going to bring it all into a head and lay it out for her right there on the table at Johnny’s. According to Wendy’s diary…
“Jesus, Andy, you were reading her diary? Then you know…”
“Danny, do you mind? And look, gay men read diaries, that’s what we do.”
“Oh now, Andy that’s a terrible cliche…”
“Caroline, would you mind sticking to your own thread?”
“Whoa, I’m out of my depth here…”
“Yes you are Danny, so would you mind just shutting the fuck up?”
Anyway, Danny looks Wendy in the eyes and says all dramatic and full of youthful testosterone and hubris, “Wendy, I love you…”
“Hold on. Hold on, Andy, I didn’t say that…”
“Well, in Wendy’s diary, in this thread, you did.”
“Oh, oh…I keep getting…”
“Done now?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Andy, I’ll shut up.”
“Thank you.”
Anyway Danny goes on this long speech about how he’s going to take my stupid sister away from all this and how her life will be so much more exciting with him and about how she can grow to love him…what can I say, he was desperate for her, though I can’t imagine why…and that everything will be rosy.
Then, in one of the most adult moments of her life, stupid Wendy looks across the table and realizes that this is one of the nicest, sweetest men she’s ever going to know and that life might not be bad with him for a while, but when “a while” comes into her head she realizes that she’ll probably end up crushing Danny into little bits and she had known and liked him forever, so she reaches out and takes his hand and says, “I don’t think I’m going to miss anything.”
Now what she meant was that the two of them could never be and that there wouldn’t be anything to miss, but she phrased it wrong so dumb Danny thinks she means she’s all in and he leads her outside and they kiss and the next thing you know they’re out at Big Valley, with Wendy getting all swept up in Danny’s romance, doing the back seat humpy humpy with no protection and wah-la! a magic trick occurs and a few months later, after Danny has realized his mistake in misunderstanding her, when he comes back, three days after their Big Valley rendezvous from a camping and drinking trip with Jerry in which he told his buddy that he was beating his time with my stupid sister and the two of them go all okay with that all over a bottle of Yukon Jack deep in the woods, and then Danny pays a surprise visit at the Merton residence and finds recently returned Ron and stupid Wendy in a fond embrace. So, Danny flees back to college, and then a while later, Wendy calls Danny at Emmaus College and tells him they have a problem.
So, was the baby really Danny’s? Indeed, it seems so, since Ron and Wendy’s long delayed embrace never consummated due to Danny’s intervention and the subsequent fight, and Jerry and Wendy had never gotten that far but had done other things…
“Spare us…”
“Shut up, Dannnnnnnnny…”
“Sorry.”
So, the wedding. A hurried job if ever there was one. So sad. I tried to talk Wendy out of it, but by then she was caught up in at least getting it to be kind of like the wedding she wanted. So there stood Jerry very awkwardly not looking at my stupid sister as he stood up there as the best man, and Mom crying, and Dad with a quizzical look on his face because something just doesn’t seem right, and Danny just beaming for whatever reason, and this Millicent, out in a car outside…
“What the? Mill was there?”
“Yes, Danny. She was there at the reception too. I had to usher her drunken ass out to the parking lot, take her back to her motel. She’d driven all the way up from Emmaus, poor girl. She threw herself at me, and I took one for your team, Danny, just to keep her out of your face.”
“Good lord.”
“Yeah, exactly…now can I finish?”
And so, Danny and Wendy go off to live in married housing at Emmaus on a little bit of nothing, but not before both of them realize that they really don’t love each other in the right way, but when their daughter, Angela is born…
“Oh my God, she’s, she’s beautiful…”
“Pop…”
‘Thanks, Chet…”
…the two of them decide they can be in love. Just one problem. The delivery nurse, just happens to be…
“Oh Christ, Janine!”
…who is there as part of her internship from Marquette General, the first baby she ever delivered. And she thinks Danny is the most handsome thing she’s ever seen and even likes Wendy too, but can’t get him out of her head, though, being the great person she is, she tries really hard.
So, Wendy and Danny hold out for a while. Danny gets a job with Madison Magazine, and while he’s down there he meets, this Molly,
“Oh Jesus…”
“Easy, Grandpa…”
…and they have a thing. And he tells Wendy who is already having a thing, and it’s a big mess, but they part friends, and Danny gets with Molly for a while before she spits him out like a watermelon seed, and he comes back to the U.P, with my niece, with his tail between his legs, and takes an associate professorship at NMU in journalism, and re-encounters…
Janine…
And stupid Wendy has already run off with stupider, Ron, and left her child and they move to Hawaii where he’s got a job in construction and live stupidly ever after.
The End
Danny looked across at the other bench, where his daughter, dark haired, dark eyed, beautiful Angela, sat.
“Your uncle isn’t being fair. Your mother isn’t really like that at all.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Now don’t get sour, hon. We all do what we can.”
“No, daddy. She didn’t. And she’s not my mom. Mom is Mom.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Anyway you couldn’t have had a better mother.”
“Or you a better wife.”
“I think you’re right.”
Angela, 17, thought it over for a minute. “Does it always work out with you and…Janine? Mom?”
“No. No. I guess it doesn’t. But when it doesn’t I seem to wind up very sad, or dead before my time, or both. We always, always wind up in love, though. At least so far as I know”
“You haven’t you seen them all?”
“No, honey, they tell me nobody has. And these are just my threads. From what I hear, there’s endless others. Literally.”
“I wonder about mine.”
“I do too.”
“Do you think I’ll be all right?”
“All will be well…”
“Really?”
‘Yes. Absolutely. That’s the promise, though I have to keep reminding myself of it.”
“Oh…Daddy.”
“What?”
“You’re always so deep in. You never just live.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are you always like that?”
“Afraid so.”
“Daddy…how many children do you have?”
“Right now, at this particular juncture, across the threads, at least three, a grandchild and two more on the way including my…what…home thread.”
“I’m not from the home thread, am I.”
“Depends on how you look at it sweety, but it doesn’t matter really.”
“Why?”
“Because I loved you the minute I saw you.”
“Oh, guess, I’m going. See you back at home, or somebody just like you…oh that makes me sad.”
“No, no don’t be. When I get each place, it’s always me. There’s no difference. I love you everywhere, even when I don’t know you.”
“Promise?”
“Let me ask you this. Do you feel any differently about the me in your thread?”
“Oh, wow…no, because it’s always…you.”
“Yup.”
“Love you, Dad. See you.”
“Yes, you will honey.”
And she was gone. For how long, he wondered. The wind was whirling again. It seemed to be in a hurry. He wondered what that meant.
Chapter 5
Okay. So this one I’ll tell myself. I wrote a piece about this that ended up in Detroit Magazine. Huh. A defunct piece in a defunct magazine, about a defunct memory, of a relationship that never was.
Anyway, this one is easy. I’m in the basement of a bar on Washington in Marquette, with my friend Ted, a driver for the Marquette Mining Journal. It’s after Molly, (God, not looking forward to that) before the Millicent recurrence, three months before meeting Janine, the love of my life, of all of my lives really, as has become apparent and doesn’t really surprise me. Anyway, this was five months before I finally realized Janine and I were becoming….Janine and me. I was so dumb!
Anyway, here we are, sitting at the table. Ted and me, and here she comes in with a group of girls. I’m 23. She’s maybe 20, 21 at most. She sits down, dark, small, nicely rounded, sleek you might say, big dark eyes. Sorry, I have to describe her like this, I have to be a little creepy, because I don’t even know her name. And right away she looks over at me and I’m struck, struck by the bolt. And in my thread, just locked in place, even when Ted says,
“You should buy her a drink.”
There’s a little half wall with carved spindles along it and their table is on the other side of this little partition, and it’s enticing because I can see her from some angles through this and not from others as she moves and talks and laughs and looks over at me. There’s a guitar player somewhere in the other room playing something acoustic, James Taylor or something, and finally I look over at Ted and I say,
“Yeah.”
I stare back over, catch her staring at me. If I don’t buy it for her now, I won’t know. The waitress is coming by. I take a big breath and this time…
“Hold it.”
“Huh?”
“Hold it. How come you think you get to be in charge of this all the time?”
It’s the girl and she’s sitting at the crossroads on the other bench and I…
“Stop it. Let me tell you how this goes. Obviously you’re new. My name is Allyssa Keating, in most of the scenarios yours and mine, and Ted’s and Margaret my friend here, who by the way you marry in a number of these scenarios, but in most of them I date the guitar player for a while and then he dumps me and in many others I eat my heart out about him for most of my life. This is not my favorite avenue to explore, because there are other circumstances that have used up my heart that happen in six or seven other locales and one in particular in Italy. So I’d just as soon not be used as a character in your telling of the story. You’re interfering for God’s sakes! Haven’t you ever read Our Town? You can’t ‘realize life’ while you’re living it…”
“Oh…I…”
“You, nothing, Danny. That’s your name right? Okay, there are some threads where we wind up together and there are some children, but let’s stop right now before that happens, because in almost every one of those Janine, the one character I ever found really interesting in most of the scenarios I’ve played out with you, because her head isn’t full of old bones and clutter like yours, eventually comes into the picture and in one she even delivers our first child, but those are very isolated cases…um…Danny, so I think you’re safe to just move on here… Oh, and two women from Munising want to have a word here too before you start exploring them. The bank teller and the waitress who knew your name? They both thought you were cute, but you frustrated the hell out of them by not talking to them out of your shyness or conceit or whatever it was, and they didn’t even remember you, frankly, until you started knocking on the door of these old scenarios, nothing major comes of either of those encounters except in very very isolated cases, bayous of the main stream and Janine is there again in all those cases so if you can just stop your little heart form quivering for a while and leave them be, they would appreciate it. Oh, that goes for Joan from Newberry too. That night in the bar when you tried to pick her up and she said no? And then the next night when you walked past her like she wasn’t even there…well she’s lived out that scenario ad infinitum and she’d just as soon not live it through from your angle if you don’t mind. Pretty painful for her.”
“Jesus…okay. Tell her I’m so sorry…really…”
“Oh, and a note from Sara from next door at the river, way too painful there too, she’s played that one through herself from her side way too much, Rhonnie from your junior year at Emmaus, she says, not to bother because it never meant that much to her, she’s kind of a bitch, Danny, really, can’t believe you couldn’t see that, and Megan says thanks but no thanks, always liked you, only as a friend, there are only isolated scenarios, deeply flawed ones, where it’s anything else. So just lay off them all, all right?”
“I…wow…”
“Sorry, I don’t mean to be so…um…assertive, Danny, but do you have any idea, any idea at all, how many times you’ve been here trying to play this out with me?”
“I thought…”
‘Oh boy, you thought this was the first time didn’t you! And you always think I’m so mysterious. I’m only mysterious because you were too afraid to find out who I was. I’m a girl, Danny, a smart one, one you have a little in common with, not much. You could have ended the mystery in maybe fifteen minutes, at most one date and you would have seen but…oh…I don’t mean to beat up on you. Margaret, seriously, he thought this was the first time! Do you have any idea how many times you end up giving Marge a huge pain in the neck? You’re a rookie, Danny. Quit dabbling and learn the rules!”
“There are rules?”
“Hopeless…hopeless… Goodbye, Danny. Margaret and the girls from Munising, Rhonnie and Megan, and Joan and Sara from Newberry especially those two all say goodbye too. Oh, and that tall pretty girl who said you had a cute face in the bar in Newberry, the one from out of town that you had seen with a friend of a girlfriend of your pal Hal’s in Marquette before that? Remember her? She says she just wanted to get laid, and the threads with you are a real bother because you’re so intense. She says, goodbye, and don’t bother.Really, honestly, she’s not worth it, Danny. So, I’ll see you later, well really I hope not, but infinity is involved here so…just… Try not to call again soon. Have a good one.”
“Good…bye…sorry…”
Danny stood holding his head for a moment. “Chet? Chet? You there?”
“Yeah, pop?” He was suddenly there, age 40.
“There are rules?”
“Sure, but everybody has to learn them gradually.” Chet, now about 60, adjusted his glasses.
“Well…”
“Why didn’t I tell you? Because you have to be a dilettante a time or two. In your case, it’s a whole lot of times, Pop…”
“Oh…”
“But that’s okay. I can see why Allyssa, was a little upset with you, though. You’ve been at her for, well it’s hard to measure at the Crossroads, but let’s just say a whole lot of times.”
“Oh, I feel a fool.’
“No it’s okay. You’ve got a full heart, Pop, and an overly developed sense of curiosity. It’s going to take you a while before you can stop.”
“At some point I stop?”
“Oh yes, we all do, eventually. We all stop crossing over. Some of us never start.”
“I…”
“Janine, the one from your thread at least, never does. In most, nearly all of her other threads, though they’re infinite so it’s only a manner of speaking to say ‘most’ or ‘all’ or anything like that, she doesn’t come here at all…”
“She doesn’t wonder?”
“Oh, sure, yeah, she wonders, but she keeps the wonders in control. She doesn’t come here. She just focuses on the day she’s in and works it. She has a lot more peace of mind than you do, Pop, but that’s not a slam on you. It’s just the way things are.”
“This is awfully complex…”
“Ha…yeah…that’s why Einstein and the others did it with figures on a blackboard or a computer screen or wherever. It’s less personal there. It doesn’t hurt. Their minds are different from yours, you have to work it through the heart, but their lives are not that much less full of pain, except in a few cases. Everybody has pain.”
“Do you know what’s coming for me, son, in some of these other threads?”
“A few. I’ll admit I’ve peeked, just because you’re my Dad, but it’s like looking in somebody’s diary… None of my business.”
“What about…Molly…”
“Knew you were going to ask that… Well that’s a hard one, Dad.”
“Oh…yeah…I figured…”
“Yeah, because you end up with her a lot, and it’s almost always your idea, and it always ends up pretty bad…and it’s your fault because…well…you really can’t control yourself with her. And Pop?”
“Yes, Chet?”
“She isn’t who you think she is. She isn’t as good or as bad as you think she is. She’s just a person trying to get through things the same as you. She’s a today person too. She holds some pain in there, that you probably remember, but you never quite got at completely, because, Pop, for all the memories you have of her, you really weren’t with her that long. You really didn’t know each other that well. The truth is you just met each other at the wrong time for her and no matter how much you want it to work out, it usually doesn’t and when it does it’s forced and…oh, I’ve said too much.”
“Oh…I was hoping you’d say more…”
“I know, that’s the problem, what Allyssa said is right, you can’t go through this realizing life. That’s what’s wrong with sitting at the Crossroads too long. You can’t really participate if you know what’s going on, what’s going to happen, that there are other threads…”
“Then how come you keep coming back…”
“Ha, you called me, Pop. And it’s not the same one of me each time, if you haven’t noticed, not even the same one this age, but each time you come here you have to have a forgetting time after, and sometimes that lasts just a few moments until something intervenes, and other times, well its seems interminable, but it’s never more than you can deal with.
“So, so what do I do…?”
“No way for me to know. You can sit right here and plow through the rest, but I’d try to avoid that if I were you, because the stuff with Molly is going to take a while. You might want to conserve some energy for a while, just live…”
“Do I have to come back at all? Can Janine just come home and we can go on with it?”
“Oh sure. Sure. But it will keep nagging at you. I’m not sure you can stand that without coming back. Other people do, though. Most other people really. It’s a little sad, but a lot of them never get here, Pop. They’re not even that awake. And others, like your good Janine, well they’re just too evolved to bother with it. In most of her threads, except for the exceptional ones, and everybody has those, this is the way she is. In the now. Living, not worrying, at least not so that it bothers anybody else.”
“I guess I’m kind of hopeless…”
“Not at all, Pop. People need to be bothered. You’re a catalyst for a lot of good things. You’re a little self involved in almost every version, creative people are like that, but that’s no sin. It’s just life…”
“Thanks, son. Hard to take in. So many people, infinite variety, infinite wheels within wheels, kind of makes my stomach hurt.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Maybe, you’re right, maybe I better shut down, just live a while. The way you describe it, I’m going to make my way back here anyway.”
“You are…”
“Okay. Okay, then I’ll try to forget…”
“That’s the worst way. If you try it never happens…”
“Well…shit…”
“But, it’ll work out.”
“Yeah?”
“All will be well…” Chet smiled an old man smile at his father. The smile became a boy’s, and then little Addie’s, then Caroline’s, then…Angela’s.
“Ha…okay.”
Chapter 6
Something was different. He felt better. Not perfect. When does anybody feel perfect? He felt better though. Part of a weight was lifted. He hardly remembered what he’d been working through. He had suddenly become almost blissfully unaware of some turmoil in his head and heart. Something about the past. Something past.
“Well, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, stupid!”
Danny picked up his bike helmet, strapped it on, got back on his bike and headed off down the path towards Ishpeming and Negaunee. Ahead, between the National Mine ponds, the pavement was flooded for a few dozen feet from the spring melt, and he raised up his aging legs and tried to hold momentum through the shallow water. He made it and was feeling down right young and even a trifle optimistic when he remembered something; wasn’t there a family of geese here somewhere?
Sure enough, suddenly, not three feet away, to his left, there was honking and hissing and quite suddenly the whole goose family came into view, especially Father Goose who suddenly took wing and headed right for Danny’s face.
“Arreegha…” Danny managed to say and swatted at F.G. with his left hand, whereupon F.G. took a whack at his gloved hand. Danny teetered away down the path pushing back wings and bill and found himself free of the goose family and still headed in the right direction, sans crash. A few yards further down the trail, almost to the next highway, Danny pulled up and laughed.
“Jesus…” he said. “Jesus!”
He examined his hand and even through the glove, Father Goose had left a mark, but had drawn no blood. Still laughing, Danny took out his cell phone and texted Janine in Chicago.
Then he got back on the bike and headed east, amused, distracted, and blissfully forgetful.
Somewhere in the middle of Ishpeming his phone rang. It was Janine. He laughed. A huge relief flooded over him. He only wondered for a fleeting moment why. He told her the story of the attack of Father Goose.
“Are you okay?”
“Yup…but you should have seen that goose…”
She laughed. “Only you can manage these things. I’m glad you’re okay. No more blizzards, okay?”
‘No more blizzards’ was a catch phrase between Danny and Janine. Five years earlier Danny and his old friend Woody Hill from Munising had headed off winter camping in the Pictured Rocks despite the fact that a blizzard was forecast. The two of them had skied six miles in, set camp, and then bivouacked for the night during a winter storm featuring a seventy mile an hour wind off Lake Superior. All had gone reasonably well until Danny had stupidly not taken off his sweaty clothes and replaced them with dry, but simply put dry over the top. He’d awakened at 3 a.m. shivering violently! He’d called out to Woody after a half hour of silent abject quaking and terror, “Um, Woody, I think I’ve got a problem here.”
Woody had loaned him an extra sleeping bag and Danny had quickly warmed. Problem over, until he got home. Janine had also awakened at 3 a.m. with tremors of her own, and with Danny out of cell range she didn’t know until he called at 6 p.m. the next day, after many other thoughtless adventures in the snow, that Danny was okay. When he’d finally arrived home Janine had slapped down a huge steak topped with two friend eggs, and an enormous load of french fries and a large glass of milk, and said, holding back tears, “No more blizzards!” before stomping out of the room.
“I promise, hon. No more blizzards. That goose came looking for me!”
“Silly goose.”
“To which silly goose are you referring?”
“Use your imagination.”
“I love you, J!”
“You better. See ya later, goofball.”
“Enjoy the conference.”
“Oh yeah…thrills. Bye.”
Danny headed off. He was soon down the hill into the park in Negaunee, and round the loop there, and headed back home. He decided to take a more civilized route around the National Mine Ponds and away from the fearsome Father Goose on the way back. Along the way he encountered lots of people he knew. In the U.P., if you’ve made the slightest dent in the local culture, there is no end of hand waving and horn honking. Danny was a particular case in point. Everybody loved Danny. To his credit, that always pleasantly surprised him.
He lost track of that sometimes and started thinking other ways. At the moment he wasn’t sure what other ways those were, but they were dark. There was that side to him. Janine knew about it, but not much of anybody else. Just as well.
He stopped for a breath and some water near the Ely Township Hall, six miles from home, and texted Woody Hill about his goose adventure.
“Beauty.” Woody texted back. “But doesn’t hold candle to blizzard.”
Danny laughed for a solid thirty seconds.
His life was good.
“Dad’s back on track.” Angela said.
“I knew he would be. Told you not to worry.” Chet smiled at her.
“So let me get this straight. He doesn’t remember us?”
“Nothing to remember. We don’t exist in that thread.”
“Wow.”
“And there are other times when we don’t know he exists.”
“How can that…oh yeah, we’re not exactly us then, right?”
“Or we’re us and our Moms didn’t tell us about him.”
“Wow.”
“You know, most of the time we don’t know who we are?”
“What, I don’t know myself?”
“No, I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Infinitely really. We’re from separate threads almost always, rarely cross paths, no matter who we are.”
“Is there a map somewhere?”
“It wouldn’t fit in the world.”
“You’ve got some of his sense of humor.”
“That isn’t possible genetically.”
“You did anyway.”
“I know. Go figure.”
“No. My head hurts. Think I’ll head back to my thread.”
“Not until you stop thinking about it.”
“About what?”
Chapter 7
What are attics for? You put things in boxes, then thirty years later you throw them away. What’s the the point of that? If you need them, you should keep them close. If you don’t need them, why keep them? The rainy day, the magic day when this particular little toy car or, letter, or other keep sake will be needed, will never come, and you half know that when you put them away. So, you keep them, why? Superstition? Magical thinking. That’s no way to live.
What was this? “From Tess…”
“Oh Jesus…”
Danny held the candies that had spilled out of the envelope in his hand. Valentine’s candies, little hearts. He’d forgotten. Tess had, had a thing for him. He’d been too thick to get it, and by the time he had, she was already dating Jerry. That was good. He was sure. Positive, really. He didn’t remember ever thinking about it much. She’d sent him the candies the weekend after he’d gone up from Emmaus to visit Jerry. It had had a quizzical message…oh…here it was, “I love sweet things and sweet words…” her attempt at poetry. She knew he was a writer. He’d just been horsing around, said some things he didn’t mean…
“So long ago…”
He tucked it gently inside the garbage bag.
“Why did I keep that?”
And now, a cassette tape? Oh…okay. Mary. Still a friend. They made this tape together at the college radio station. A comic dialogue, a patient and a psychiatrist. It was funny. Nothing to play it on now. He’d slept with her roommate, never knowing what she felt…felt so crappy about it later. Didn’t even like her roommate that much. He was a shit sometimes. Mary, he and Mary were friends now. Long gone. Lots of water under the dam. Nothing to think about there. Still friends. Christmas cards every year. An email and texts here and there.
He tossed that into the bag.
Oh, school picture. Colleen, long brown hair. She was a volleyball player. There was a ball involved somehow, a little rubber ball, they were bouncing it back and forth to each other outside the radio station, laughing, being stupid. They were freshman at Emmaus. Something might have happened. Something might have happened right then, but it didn’t. She gave him the picture once, in class a week later. Still too shy. And nothing. Nothing. No point in dwelling. That goes away too. No point.
“My god, broken plastic army men. Why? Why would you keep these?”
Gone.
Oh! So stupid. Darlene and the plastic bat. Here the damned thing was. He was in ninth grade. He had a crush on her, but his friends would laugh. They’d been together all day the two of them and he was talking to friends holding this stupid bat for some reason, and Darlene had come up all smiles and his friends had exchanged looks, so he hit her on the bare leg with the bat. Made her run away, to cry somewhere else. An awful thing really. Little boys are assholes.
He put the bat in the bag.
Seriously? A French text? Had he he planned to take it up again? Oui? Non? Oh…Karen signed this on the inside cover. She wrote, “Arthur C. Clarke is a doofus.” Just to get under his skin. She was good at that. She knew how much he loved Clarke then. How long did they banter at each other, and their seventh grade English teacher, Mr. Sims, had said that some day they’d grow up to be married, and the class had gone crazy and Karen had mouthed to him, “We will.”
And he hadn’t known what to do with that, as usual. And now they were old friends who talked a few times a year, compared notes on friends. Well, that was all right. That was good.
“You can’t marry everyone you ever have sparks with.”
He put the book in with the other trash. Time for this one to go too.
Oh for…whose long blonde hair was this tied up with a ribbon? Oh…Laura. Yeah, that’s right she’d handed it to him when he graduated, out of the blue. He’d had no idea, and she was too shy to say anything to him. A whole bunch of them had been out at his camp, and tall blonde, quiet, beautiful Laura had been sitting there on the beach watching he and Jerry and some of the other idiots doing crazy leaps off the dock and into the Tahquamenon. And then, wordlessly, she’d walked up to him at graduation and handed him a lock of her hair. She must have read it in a book somewhere. Sweet really and again he’d done nothing. Well, what could he do with it? Give it back? No. Time for it to go, too fine a thing for someone to wonder about years from now. A mystery somebody might read too much into. He still had the memory.
Now, what’s this? A ticket stub. Oh…yes…lord. “Eyewitness”. Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer, James Woods. 1981. Good movie. First date with…Molly. Yup. He remembered this way too well. And the scenario so ironic in retrospect…sensitive handsome blond loner, pines away for a tall dark beautiful woman on his TV screen. Finally cracks through and gets with her. Molly.
Except it hadn’t been quite that way. Oh, he was a bit of a loner then, still was in many ways, but Janine had mostly cured that…mostly. For an interminable moment he was filled with an ancient longing. So stupid, but God, still there. That torch might never go out completely. There was still pain. He could place himself right there in that restaurant on the river where she’d worked. She was 18 and the prettiest girl in town. He was 22 and the cub reporter working his brains out all the time, traveling around putting together the summer supplement which none of the older staffers wanted to handle. And every morning, early, before he headed out to take the pictures, do the stories for the supplement, he’d have breakfast there. He’d gone in once just to have coffee, get going, and there she was. Tall, leggy, absolutely gorgeous. Funny too, making all the old men laugh. Even the cook and the older waitresses liked her. She was hard not to like, bubbly, friendly and brilliant. Christ! Better not think about it, but he couldn’t stop. Throw the damned ticket away. It wouldn’t matter. It had started now. So he sat firm and tried to ride out the storm.
One morning, one morning she’d come back to the table to bring him his check and after just a moment of hesitation she said with that smile that he’d remember on his death bed, “Do you like movies?”
He remembered thinking, oh my god is this really happening? Is this goddess actually asking me out? She was. And they went to the movie and she sat close to him and they discussed it after and went to a place on a hill from which she liked to look out at the river and she stood in front of him and he put his arms around her and she was so, willing, so eager for it, and he kissed her and then so much more happened.
All that summer they’d drained each other dry with lust and love. He liked to think it was mutual, and maybe for a while it was. He remembered sitting there in his apartment hot and sticky with sweat, naked with Molly on his pitiful bed after a long afternoon of lovemaking on his day off. They’d discussed everything and she’d admitted to having doubts, and he admitted to having doubts, but it wasn’t like so many other loves he’d had where somebody had to be in control and somebody had to get hurt. They were just loving at each other, with each other, and that summer, well, it had been grand, truly grand.
And the last days, before she went away, all excited, too excited to go away. It should have tipped him off and it did a little and he tried to cushion himself for a possible fall. She was going away to Madison to journalism school to be an on air reporter. Just like in the movie, she said to him once, and he didn’t like the role that she had cast him in: the onlooker. Though there was truth in it. Too much truth. He wondered then, and still wondered now, whether she was being cruel or just oblivious.
He had gotten a new job, but just down the road, in Munising. But it was a better job, more money. He was in charge of his own bureau and he’d be leaving in a week, but she left first. And when she pulled away with him standing there, next to her mom and dad, something more tugged at him. And he wondered why he was standing there with her parents, because he knew right then, he knew certainly, but he tamped it down, he had to have hope to survive, he knew with absolute certainty deep down, that his part in her life was over.
And…dammit…he was almost coming to that, coming to understand and accept that and the pain that went with it, later that day, when she called him. And maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, if she hadn’t called him and given him false hope, but she did call from her grandmother’s in Iron Mountain, where she was stopping over night before heading the rest of the way. She’d snuck off into a closet because grandma didn’t want her calling anybody, wasting her phone. And Molly was upset, afraid. He could hear it in her voice.
“This…this is a big mistake! I’m so scared! I miss you so much already! I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so dumb!”
And then he’d been so cool, he’d done the right thing for her really, he’d said, “No, no Molly, that’s dumb, what you’re thinking now. This isn’t a mistake. it’s exactly what you need to do. You’ll be great. I’ll come to see you soon. And we’ll have breaks. Maybe I’ll even find a job down there, or you can finish school back up here. We’ll figure something out. Besides, besides, more than anything else, more than anything else this is what you need! This isn’t about me!”
“No, no…I’m…”
“Now just take a breath. You know I’m right.”
And she did and she did. Damnit! She did. And it was never the same again.
Never would be.
She got on with her life, and he heard from her for a while, and then little, less, nothing. And he called her and said he was coming down and she said something weird about needing to keep her two worlds apart and how she’d get mixed up if he came. And he swallowed hard and tried to understand. But there was nothing to understand: it was over. It had been over for a while and he’d helped it get that way with all his mature understanding that the boy in his heart didn’t feel at all.
Shit.
Then he’d written a letter and told her if she didn’t let him come down for a visit it was over. And then she’d called, and he half expected her to break it off right then, but she’d surprised him.
“You were so forceful in that letter. I like that. It made me realize that I need you. I need your strength. I can’t wait to see you.”
So he’d gone to Madison, and it was great when he first arrived, for twenty four hours it was just like those days by the river, but then, for some reason, she wouldn’t stay in the bed with him over night. She wanted to go into the next room to sleep. And he’d said okay to it, though he thought it was weird and then in the middle of the night, half awake it had hit him as really bad, really just an abomination, she had to sleep with him all night she had to or…or…
Then half awake he’d gotten up and gone into the other room and absolutely roared at her like some kind of a stuck bear. It was inexplicable really. What did it matter? What did it…
And he’d seen the look on her face. He’d just given her a reason, and she was going to take it. Oh, she didn’t say anything for the rest of the weekend. Molly was never one for unpleasantries, she’d just gone on and he could feel the hollowness of her kiss at the restaurant parking lot, just before he headed back north.
And when he got home he wrote her a letter. And then another and another. He didn’t call. He didn’t call because he knew he would explode again if he heard her voice. And then he stopped writing and he heard nothing from her. And finally, all day on his birthday, he figured he’d hear form her, and at nine o’clock that night he couldn’t stand it anymore and he’d called her. And something was going on in her dorm room. Lots of voices. And when she heard his voice on the other end of the line she said, “Oh, I haven’t thought about you in a long time…” and it was honest. It was honest an unguarded moment…and from there it was over. And he flew into a rage about her forgetting his birthday and she was so calm, so calm. He couldn’t aggravate her. And then he was weepy and sorry and that was worse. And he finally just said goodbye. And he went to the bar and drank until he was stupid and then staggered back to his miserable trailer in Munising where he was living by then, and smashed every picture of her, threw them all away, and fell into a hole that he didn’t come out of for months. He tried to fill the hole in his heart with with lots of one night stands, and then with poor Millicent again, so awful of him, and finally Janine rescued him. But some small piece of him was still down there in that hole all these years later. And here was the evidence of it: he still had the damned movie ticket. For some reason that had escaped, that night, and all his subsequent disgarding of anything remotely connected with Molly. None of that mattered, he could still see her face, still hear her voice, clear as a bell.
His brain started to spin. Why the hell did I come up here? Why is this so important? After all this time, how can it still hurt so much? Come on! 35 goddamned years ought to be enough to make it go away. Could it have been different? At what points might it have changed? If he’d said something else to her over the phone when she called on the night she left? If he hadn’t blown up on the weekend he’d visited. What if, he’d just stopped in at the restaurant the next summer? He’d heard through the grapevine that she’d been there, but he hadn’t cared because he’d been with Janinine then. Or what if he’d broken it off with her Molly before she left? Taken the offensive, days before she left? Been a prick about it?
There was no way to know…no way…
“Well, he’s in it now.” the young Chet said.
“Yup,” Angela answered.
“My god, she is a beautiful woman.”
“You’re as bad as he is.”
“Can’t be genetic, must be environmental.”
“How many times has he been through this before?”
“Countless, as many times as there are threads, more or less.”
“You gonna watch this time?”
“Yeah…I think maybe…”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Empathy I guess. It is cringe-worthy though. It’s so completely hopeless, and Dad is always so hopeful anyway. He just can’t see.”
“Men.”
“I wonder, is it that simple?”
“I think so.”
“You’re young.”
“What are you talking about? Right now you’re younger than me!”
Chet was suddenly sixty. “Happy?”
“No, you can be younger. I like that.”
He switched back. “Thanks, it’s easier to watch if I’m not older. It hurts more when I’m older. There are some girls like Molly in some of my threads too.”
“What do you mean ‘girls like Molly’?”
“Oh, I don’t mean she’s a bad person. You should see her at 50 or so. All that time as a journalist has kind of beaten her up. She’s come to some realizations. In one or two scenarios she even calls Danny and apologizes.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know…life. And of course in one, one that’s so improbable, they run into each other at a rest stop after he has a fight with Janine and she’s on her way to her high school reunion.”
“Unlikely.”
“Oh, highly, but all of them have to happen.”
“‘All of them’… I wonder about my threads…”
“Oh, you’ve got time. You’re just popping in and out here now. Learning the ropes.”
“Have you seen any of them.”
“Um…”
“You have! Tell me! Tell me!”
“No, Ang, I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Rules.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
“Oh now you’re just being superior.”
“No. I’m not. But all will be well…”
“That’s so maddening.”
“It also happens to be true.”
“Dad told you?”
“Yup.”
“Is it well for Dad, for Danny O’Leary, though? Is this fair for him to carry all this pain for so long?”
“You can’t really think Dad’s alone in that!”
“No, no I guess not. But, then, how is all well?”
“A lot of ways. Tons of ways really.”
“Name one.”
“Pop’s got Janine, most of the time. And even in my threads, he kind of has her.”
“Letters, that’s not much.”
“Oh, so you’ve been peeking too!”
“A little.”
“Well, letters are better than some other threads. And a lot better than what a lot of people get. Besides, it all comes back together eventually. All the threads, each set individually and everybody’s together.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“How do you know?”
“Pop told me.”
“Oh, so sometimes he shows you the ropes?”
“Sometimes you do too.”
“Wow. That’s pretty complex.”
“The ultimate. And the ultimate in simplicity when it all comes back together.”
“But so hard sometimes when it’s all unraveled and laid out one at a time.”
“Has to be, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“You gonna stay and watch this horror fest?”
“You?”
“I’m not unless you are, but if you are I’m staying. I don’t want you bawling all alone. Pop will hear it through everything for sure and rush to your aid, then not get what he needs to get done.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Okay, well something tells me I’ve got to watch. Will you stay?”
“Sure, Ang. I’ll always be there for you.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
They sat close together on the bench by the ponds in National Mine. After a moment Angela reached for Chet’s hand, and he took it.
Chapters 8
Her voice was desperate on the phone. When I look back on it. That’s it. It’s simple really. I was 22. I was in love. The girl I loved was desperate. I had to stop her pain. I had all kinds of doubts. In fact a voice was shrieking at me from inside, an older voice, “Whatever she says now you can’t listen! Even if this means you end up apart. Even if she goes there, gets another life and goes off with somebody else. For her good, if you really love her, just tell her it’s going to be all right. That She’s okay. That’s she’s doing the right thing. Tell her whatever else you want, but…”
“Let’s get married.” That’s what I said.
There was hesitation on the other end. All I needed to say was, “Just kidding. See? Now you’re not ready for that, are you? You need to live your own life.”
But when she said, “Really?” All full of doubt and love, and breathing a sigh of relief that probably meant, “Really? I don’t have to be strong? I don’t have to stand on my own…you’ll do it all for me?” In fact, I know it’s what she meant because Molly told me so, when we were going through marriage counseling. If I’d only been stronger I would have saved us a lot of trouble. Maybe even spared us both all the troubles with the twins, who we screwed up so badly by fighting over our careers and the fact that she didn’t love me, all that, and oh God, she said this: that I was like an anchor around her neck constantly trying to pull her back the Upper Peninsula. I should have been stronger, but I wasn’t and that’s that.
And so we’ve got the mess.
Carl and Casey both in and out of psyche wards, never really getting started at anything. Carl off who knows where now, doing who knows what or who knows whom, and Casey right in our faces every day going from my lonely bachelor apartment, in Marquette, with his eyes asking over and over again, what do I do now? And Molly with that asshole Nick, her boss, still reporting. Still doing her life, and calling me and crying about the twins and why don’t I do something about it? Accusations flying back and forth…shit, shit, shit.
All because I didn’t know how to be strong when I was 22. And the real shit is, the big pile of steaming shit is, I still love Molly. Always will. She stopped loving me, god knows when, probably shortly after we got married, and her parents flipped out and we moved together to Madison and she went to college and I took that god awful PR job. Oh, shit I was so miserable!
And she just kept getting happier and happier and coming home and telling me about all the things she was learning, and I got angrier and angrier until I would just blow on her and she would sit there and look at me all cold. And I knew this couldn’t go on. And then she was pregnant.
We were both just a mess. So she dropped school. We raised them. I went back to the U.P. Got on with the Mining Journal. Ended up at NMU, and Molly got angrier and angrier. Finally got a stringer job with TV 6. She was still only 30. They loved her! So much talent! She just shone! And then she had an offer in Detroit, and I said okay, I’ll stay here with the kids. You try it of six months. And she did. She missed the kids, but with every call, I could tell she really didn’t miss me.
“So how are the little bingos?”
“Oh, good.”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you mean what does it mean? They’re good. Quit reading…”
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“There’s nothing in my voice.”
“Okay, okay so they’re good.”
“Yes, and you?”
“Busy, but it’s good, Danny. It’s really good. This is…”
“Where you belong, right?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Come on, Moll, weren’t you?”
“Y-yes…”
“So, we’ll come there.”
“You think?”
“Don’t you?”
“Well…”
“Or you come back here? How would you feel about that? Bad right?”
“Yes…” there was ice in her voice. “Yes, Danny. I would feel absolutely shitty like that. That’s how I’d feel. I’m a horrible mother, right?”
“Come on. That’s not fair and that’s not what I think…”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. No not at all. If anything you’re a great mother…”
“Just not much of a wife, right.”
“Boy, guilt parade.”
“That is what you think, though.”
“Okay…Molly, can we just have a civil phone call?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happens to me. I’m at work and I’m happy and then…oh god…that’s not what I meant.”
“Yes it is.”
“Talk about guilt.”
“Yeah, yeah you’re right. Sorry. Sorry.”
“You know Nick says he could probably get you a job here.”
‘I’ll get my own job if I come. I’ve got to at least finish out the semester.”
“You should use your connections.”
“Nick is your connection.”
“Oh Danny that’s just silly. Nick’s seen your stuff…and…”
“When was this?”
“When was what?”
“When was this that he saw my stuff? Or was it your stuff he was seeing?”
“Oh Danny…just fuck you, okay!”
“What, too close to the truth?”
“…”
“Tell me, tell me Molly, please, my darling, tell me that’s not too close to the truth.”
“I’ve…thought about it…”
“Jesus.”
“I…”
“You’ve acted on it too right?”
“Danny, Danny I can’t do this…”
Ah…god…and so forth and so on. My stomach churns just thinking of it. The beginning of the end and then the end and then endless angry phone calls and then years and years where it got a little nicer, what it might have been, from that phone call from her grandma’s house on into forever if I’d just been smart. Even if we’d never seen each other again after that. That might have been better. Look, I love my sons. I do. But to say I don’t regret that they had to deal with what they’ve dealt with, that would be a lie.
As far as I know Molly’s happy now. We don’t talk much, maybe once a month and it’s just logistics and idea exchanges concerning Casey who’s over 30 now and still floats back and forth from Marquette to Detroit. Nick, her husband, is still a gaping asshole and I’ll never get over the fact that she could be attracted to him, but that’s her deal. Not mine. Not mine.
Am I lonely? Hell yes. Very definitely. I’ve been out on a million dates since. Nothing. And now I come home, when Casey is here and we’re a couple of sad sacks. It’s just shitty really, most if not all of it.
But, and this is the one light and I’m trying not to put too much on it because I’m afraid I’ll just tamp it right out, I’ve met someone. Her name’s…
“Janine!”
“Exactly, and she’s a nurse. And the great thing in this thread, and this seems to happen a lot with Pop and Janine, she delivered the twins! She was married then and her husband died later, long story. No kids, but she always remembered Danny, how caring he was, how scared for his wife. They had mutual friends. One of his professor girlfriends introduced them. Go figure, they get married and Danny manages to salvage some happiness. They never hear from Carl again, but he actually does okay in the oil business in Alaska. Molly tracks him down once and calls him and he won’t speak to her. Breaks her heart. Casey actually comes out of the tail spin at 31, goes to school, becomes a school counselor, meets a nice girl and…”
“Okay, okay. Too much. Well, that wasn’t a complete horror show.”
“Well, I guess few of them really are. There’s always some happiness.”
“Always?”
“Yeah, for practical purposes I think I can say so. The ones where it’s really bad, I mean criminally bad…”
“There’s criminally bad?”
“Infinite? Remember? There has to be that too.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s a small, small segment, but yeah. Look, Molly and Danny are good people. They really are, but they didn’t really belong together.”
“Even though he loved her?”
“And she loved him too, in her way. Not the same way. Almost always not as much. She’s not a monster.”
“How many more?”
“Infinite…”
“How many more is he working right now.”
“Two more.’
“How are they?”
“Well…not good…”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s just binge watch and get it over.”
“Sure?”
“Yup.”
Chapter 9
The first time I met Danny, I thought he was a sweet guy. I think that again now, but after that weekend they spent together when he broke it off with her, well I cleaned up a puddle of tears from Molly and then saw her get strong, but then she heard about him with this other girl, and by the next fall…well you’ll see. I’m Roxanne. I was Molly’s roomate a million years ago. Econ major, coupled up with the on air talent, Molly, that first year at U of W Madison.
First few weeks we were there she talked quite a bit about Danny. Then not at all. Then she got a letter from him in which he sounded like a major ass crater, in which he said either he came for a visit or they were done. Well, it wasn’t so much that, because that made a little bit of sense, Molly had this weird idea about keeping the parts of her life separate, I think she just wanted to break up with him really. But anyway, he came down. I met him briefly and he was all tall and blond and rural friendly you know? I vacated the room for the weekend, and when I got back on Sunday night she was in tears.
“Okay, what’s the deal?”
“He broke up with me.”
“He came all the way down here to break up with you? Couldn’t he have just done that over the phone?”
“Well, he wouldn’t have gotten sex then.”
“Wait…what?”
“Yeah, we had sex all Friday night, all Saturday morning. Went out for coffee, came back, had sex all night, then this morning he broke up with me.”
“What…what did he say?”
“He said it wasn’t working any more.”
“He…”
“Yeah, I said to him, ‘Well, you sure tried every way to see if it would didn’t you!’”
“Really?”
“No, I just cried.”
“What an asshole!”
“Yes…yes. He just is isn’t he?”
And right there I could see her getting stronger. But for several months on and off, she would talk to me about how much it still puzzled her, because she’d known him all summer and he hadn’t shown any sign whatsoever of being that kind of guy to use somebody like that. It bothered her, a lot. Had he been pretending the whole time?
She dated a bunch of guys, but it didn’t help. She still wondered about it.
That day, I said to her, “No matter why he did it, it doesn’t matter. He’s an asshole. Move on, Molly. You don’t need him. Let him go back to the back woods and break somebody else’s heart.”
“Yeah. Yeah. You’re right.”
So she tried some more, but it didn’t help. Finally, a couple months later I caught her calling him.
“How long you been doing this, Molly.”
“About a month.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Mostly he hangs up.”
“Molly!”
“I know, but the last time we talked we talked for a long time. I asked why he’d treated me like that when he came down and why he was hanging up on me. He said it was because he was still in love with me.”
“Oh that’s…”
“No, listen. He said he was still in love with me and being with me down here just made him realize it even more…”
“That doesn’t make any sense…”
“Wait…he said he’d been heartbroken too many times before and he couldn’t stand it again and he was sure I’d find somebody else and leave him, so he was trying to head me off. He…he…wasn’t using me. He just was compelled and then he realized it was too much and he was afraid…”
“Still…”
“Oh, I know. It kind of sounds like bullshit. But you have to admit it makes a kind of sense.”
“Twisted sense maybe, but Molly you can’t let that be the way for you.”
“I…I think…I’m going back to the U.P. Go to school there.”
“Molly, no!”
Well, of course, she did. It was a disaster. I called Danny before she left to tell him off.
“You know, you’re ruining her life.”
“Yeah. I know. I can’t talk her out of it.”
“What?” He completely disarmed me.
“I know that. I know this is a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve tried to talk her out of it at least six times.”
“Well, just tell her not to come. That you don’t love her.”
“That isn’t true.”
“What about her? What about her future?”
“We’ll…be good here. Maybe.”
Suddenly I felt like I was talking to a friend.
“Oh, Danny…I can see now why she loves you, but you know this isn’t right!”
Then, I swear. He started crying. Begged me to talk her out of coming because he couldn’t, loved her too much. Truth? I started to wonder if maybe she wouldn’t be better off with him. He wasn’t a user at all. He just loved her.
I did try to talk her out of it, but I knew it was useless.
And well…
It worked for a while. It really did. It worked for a long, long while. They raised three great kids Casey and Carl, and Denise who is, guess what? On air talent in the Detroit area these days, but Molly always, always, on our phone calls and our visits would talk about how much she missed a faster life. A world where she didn’t know everybody. And then…well…cancer.
She died, five years ago January.
Danny asked me once if I thought she’d been happy.
What could I say?
I told him of course she had.
He was heartbroken for a long, long time. And this last September, at some kind of a political rally, for planned parenthood, he met this woman, Janine. She works there. Not a rally goer like Danny, not really political, but she was there, and she recognized him. She couldn’t figure it out at first, but it came to her later she said. She’d delivered Denise, Danny and Molly’s youngest. The one she had so much trouble with? The world is small, especially in the U.P.
She’s divorced, six kids god help her, all grown. She says they’ve met Danny and love him.
And Danny? Danny’s in love! Truth? I think Janine was what he was always headed for. He loved Molly. He truly did, always will, but I wonder what might have happened if Molly hadn’t come north. Would she have been better off. Danny is sweet, but really?
I think he’s going to be happy. And Molly? Well, when she was dying she told me she had regrets, big ones, but this had been her life and she was sorry it was ending, because she’d had love and a good husband. But in her eyes I could read it. It was there even then. A longing, a thirst for things that hadn’t happened. Not insurmountable, but there. Firmly there. It made me sad, for both of them.
“Stop crying, Ang.”
“Why, you afraid you’re going to start?”
“Yes, and I’ve seen it before.”
“He really did a number on Molly and Molly really did a number on him.”
“Well, yes, she does that every time, no exceptions, every time they meet, but this one is especially bad for her. See, they weren’t right. Any more than your Mom was right for Danny or my mom.”
“It’s weird. He’s best off when we don’t exist.”
“Yeah. That’s why I visit him here. He’s better here with Janine. I like him even more. He’s not in so much pain. He has more to give.”
“He’s a lovely man, our Pop.”
“Lonely too. He nearly always loses someone early, his mom or his dad or a young wife. It sets the stage for everything else.”
“How come?”
“Well, the trauma, I guess…”
“No why does somebody always die?”
‘ “I don’t know. I hear there are certain patterns woven in for everybody. They don’t vary…”
“Huh. I wonder what mine are?”
“I have some guesses, but don’t bother asking.”
“So, one more?”
“Yeah, this time.”
Chapter 10
Danny. He’s such a goof. I’m so glad we’re together. I’m so glad we have our boys and their families and our life, and everything we’ve built together. That’s what it’s about you know: what you build together. Danny spends so much time wondering about what ifs. You can’t do that to yourself. And the girl before me, all those years ago. This Molly, the one who’s on TV in Madison? Beautiful woman. Quite a life too. High powered. Intense, the kind of life Danny could have lived if he wasn’t who he is. But you know, that’s who he is. A big fish in a small pond. He’s not out of place. This is who he was meant to be. Part of being a big fish, though is you always wonder if you could have swum with the other big fish. Of course he could have. He could have. I don’t bother telling him that. I don’t bother telling him much. He always has to learn for himself, over and over and over until well, I just have to look away. He’s a goof.
So, funny story: I’m the other woman. That’s how this started, this great life. At first, I was just imaginary. Let me explain.
Molly, 18, had gone off to Madison and heart broken Danny, 22, was left behind. He went down to see her once, it went badly. He got smart and didn’t call her, didn’t write. Just tried not to think of her, which of course made it worse. This is partly what he told me, by the way, and partly surmise having lived with him for 35 years. So anyway, he gets a couple of drinks in him the night of his birthday, and gets all sad like he gets and calls her, with a scheme in his stupid head. He’ll tell her he’s seeing someone else. See what happens.
She answers and kind of inadvertently says she hasn’t thought of him in a long while, and he says, probably with his voice breaking a little I’m betting if I know him, “Oh, just thought I should be straight with you. I’m seeing somebody else, in case you’d been thinking of us any other way. So, don’t worry about me, I’ll be great.” And then he gets off the phone as quick as he can and then devolves into a pool of tears. Oh, Danny.
So he gets on with his life, dates some people, sleeps with a couple others, including poor Millicent, that’s another story, wow! Anyway, Danny and I meet at Easter, he’s so beaten up from falling in love he barely looks my way, but I look his, though, truth, I did go home with one of his friends that night. Just the truth. I can’t lie about it. We were all kids. Crazy kids.
Anyway, I keep thinking about him and I’m back up with my roommate Cris getting ready to move to the U.P., because I’m locked in with a nursing job in Marquette. We stop in at Newberry for a weekend and I stay with Cris and Jerry’s folks. And we go out one night and I look around and don’t see Danny. So I ask Jerry where he is. He says, “He’s out at camp, why?”
“Well, I’d like to see him.”
“No!”
“How come?”
“Oh, god, J, he’s a mess!”
“Really? He seemed nice.”
“Oh he’s nice enough, but he’s a mess.”
“He’s cute.”
“Oh sure there’s that…” Jerry laughed.
“Aren’t you his best friend?”
“Yeah, but I’m trying to be a friend to you too. Danny goes up and down like a thermometer. Only a few of us know about it. I know he comes across as happy go lucky. And funny. funny as hell. But, really, you probably shouldn’t mess with him.”
“Well, how about if we just let me worry about me?”
“Okay, I’ll call him. You’re sure?”
I laughed. “Yup.”
The rest is our history. We pal-ed around for a couple of weeks. I went on a couple of his stories with him for the newspaper’s summer supplement. There’s one of me in a bikini. He shot it when I wasn’t looking. I got a fan letter. Honest, Danny showed it to me. Stupid. And then I headed back down state.
Well, while I was gone Danny, stupid Danny, cooked up this scheme. Later on, after years had gone by, he said he did it, “just to see”. Stupid ass.
Anyway, when I got back, I of course stopped in for a night with Danny. He was coming west the next weekend, and two weeks after that he had a job starting at the Mining Journal office in Munising.
Now, he had been avoiding the restaurant where Molly worked like the plague, but now that he actually had a steady girl, well…
We went in there and I had no idea what was going on. And Molly came over. She waited on us and kept glancing at me and then at Danny. And she got a little flirty, which of course was stupid Danny’s plan. When we left the restaurant I was pretty jealous, but remember, Danny and I had only known each other for a little while…
“You know that waitress?” I said to him that night.
“Well…yeah.”
“You went out didn’t you?”
“Oh…um…yeah.”
“Danny,” I made him look right at me. “Why would you take me there?”
“Oh…I…um…”
“You dated her for a long time, didn’t you? Wait a minute. That’s Molly isn’t it?”
He turned white. He didn’t think I knew about her. Well, of course, his best friend Jerry and his sister, my friend, Cris, too had told me the whole story. How he was all strung out about her.
“Y-yes…” he finally said.
“And why would you take me to a restaurant where your old girlfriend works?”
“I…I…”
Well, I got in my car and drove to Marquette two days ahead of schedule. And he called me that night and apologized. Said it wouldn’t happen again. But, Molly called him that night, and they saw each other, a lot of each other, for the time he remained there. The big shit! And when I went over to see him in Munising, he cried and confessed it all and told me it was over. But then six weeks later, I caught him on the phone with her and finally I said, “Danny O’Leary, make a choice! It’s right now and it’s once and for all if you want to be with me. Call her back and tell her it’s done.”
Then I walked out to my car and drove off.
And when I got to Marquette, the weirdest thing happened. Molly called me. I figured, oh boy, this is going to be great, but that wasn’t it at all. She apologized. She said she was completely sorry. She said she and Danny were through, for once and for all, and that Danny didn’t know she was calling and that he’d called and broken up with her. Told her he’d been an ass and was just trying to get back at her and that he didn’t love her anymore. She hoped some day we could be friends.
Well, that never truly happened, but we do exchange Christmas cards and she and Danny sometimes talk shop by email, but he always tells me when it happens. As far as i know, and I’m pretty sure I’m right, there was never anything else. I’ve never asked Danny, but I’m pretty sure I’d know. Molly is married has kids of her own. Ah, we’re all old people now, water under the bridge, but I’ve always admired her for that call. It took what my father used to call sand to do that. In another life. Maybe we would have been friends.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad, thanks to Mom.” Angela said. “Not my bio mom, Janine, I mean.”
Chet, now 45, answered, “No, it’s one of the better ones. And your “not bio mom”, Janine, is something. I see why Pop wrote all those letters in my thread. She really is something. But give Molly some credit too. See, Molly’s not a bad person. She just broke Dad’s heart.”
“Chet, people do a lot of damage to each other, don’t they? Even good ones. You have to be careful.”
“You do, but it’s just life. Nobody is careful when they’re young. You don’t know enough to be. And some folks are just more susceptible than others, like Dad. And Millicent.”
“Wow, lot to take in.”
“It is. I guess, like Dad always told both of us. It’s best just to be kind.”
“Yeah, I always liked that too.”
“So, enough for now?”
“Yup. For now. Off to my own adventures. My threads.”
“Back to my deadlines. And my threads.”
“See you at the crossroads.”
“Infinitely.”
“Stop that.”
“I never will.” They faded laughing, and the wind kicked up on the ponds.
Chapter 11
Janine was busy. Danny ran out to the garage and started to bring everything in from her trip to Chicago. There was a lot. Danny tried, for the millionth time to tell her everything that had happened while she was gone. For the millionth time she shot him looks of exasperation. But there was something else too. She was hiding something. Something that made her delighted. There was no mistaking it.
How, after all this time could he not know I have to finish everything before I talk? She thought. Oh, wait until he hears! But he keeps trying to talk to me before everything’s put away. How could he always forget how I am about this? Does he forget? Danny.
At last, after she’d been home for a half hour, she sat down on the couch next to his arm chair. She listened to his rapid fire of all the things from the last two weeks. All the animals along his bike ride. What Woody had said on the phone. And now it was time for her one bulletin for him.
“You’ll never guess who I ran into in Chicago.”
“Who?”
“Molly.”
“Molly?”
“Your Molly. The TV girl. Molly Christianson, the former Molly Juddicci?” Janine’s eyes flashed. She beamed. “Almost Molly O’Leary once, right?
Danny felt a weird surge in his stomach.
“Molly…Really?”
“Turns out she’s a friend of one of my old pals from nursing school! She met her through a story Molly was doing when Elise worked in Madison. Elise, I’ve told you about her, but you probably don’t remember. I called her, just on the off chance I’d catch her at home, maybe stop over, catch up. She said she was out with a friend who’d come in from Wisconsin and they were only about a block away from where I was down town. So I met her and the friend was…Molly…”
“How did you figure it all out?” For just a second, he flashed on wind causing phantoms on the water at the ponds in National Mine.
“Well, I would have recognized her from TV, you know, that time we saw her on CNN. God, she’s pretty, but, they had a while before I got there and Molly, being a reporter asked Elise who this friend was and when Molly heard the last name and then that I was from the U.P., and that the husband was a journalist and professor in Marquette with the last name O’Leary, well she put two and two together. She’s pretty straight forward, you know, Molly. The job probably makes her that way, I suppose. Anyway, she came right out with it when I got there. Who she was. How she knew you. Not like, ‘I’ve got something on you’ not to make me feel bad at all, just facts.”
“Molly. Wow.” He looked around the room, then said absently in half a whisper, “Well…What did you tell her about me?”
Janine came back quickly, with a smirk, “Does it matter?”
“Oh…no…no…I…”
She laughed a full laugh. The one he loved. The one he’d always loved. She turned to him, wiping away a tear. “You’re so easy! Just teasing, you goofball! What would I tell her? I told her you were well, all that, about the kids. And then… she told me something I didn’t know…” Janine suddenly had a twinkle in her eye.
No, really, had she? “O…the rest stop…”
Suddenly a song lyric came roaring back, and with it, all of it. Molly. The way it had been. All beautiful and perfect along the river, and then all cold and heartless on the phone that winter night, Dec. 16, 1981. And then, all kind and wise, years later, just two years ago, at the rest stop. And suddenly, quite suddenly, he was there in every real sense. He was there again.
“She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes…”
He had to be dreaming. And, Bob Seger’s ode to the origins of youthful passion playing on the radio only reinforced his belief that this couldn’t be real. He looked again up through the windshield of his truck up at the full June Moon shining over the Seney plains where he’d stopped along M-28 at the rest area. That couldn’t really have been her. Not in any world he could fathom.
His yellow labrador, Jem, grumbled and resettled himself in his sleep in the space of the crew cab behind the front seat.
Dr. Daniel O’Leary, journalism guru, retired from Northern Michigan University in Marquette, ‘Danny’ to nearly everyone who knew him, including former students, had fled his west Ishpeming home, four hours before, when he and Janine, his wife of 33 years had had a fight. What had it even been about? Her seeming lack of affection for him? His lack, still, after all these years of concern for the every day goings on in the world, including, putting away the dishes and seeing to the lawn? What do people fight about? It didn’t matter. They’d both been sleepy, and in that vulnerable state he’d half packed a bag, thrown it in the truck and told Janine he was going to camp: an old cottage on the Tahquamenon River north of Newberry, where he’d grown up.
Along the way, in his anger at he didn’t know quite what, he’d been thinking of alternatives. Just to spite Janine, he had been taking inventory of the women he had loved and had settled in on the one that always came back strongest, the second great love of his life, next to Janine: Molly Juducci, the bridge from his wild 22-year-old young reporter self to the man he had become, the man Janine had so helped him become. Molly had been so solicitous, so passionate, so dark and beautiful. All the things that Janine had been once upon a time too, and except for Molly’s dark hair and complexion, perhaps even more so, but which now lay far in their past, before the kids came and went, before years of jobs, before thousands of days of wrestling with every little maddening, soul smothering thing that came along, before…life.
“Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose
Strange how the night moves
With autumn closing in.”
That couldn’t have been Molly just now. Still, he could remember like it was this very moment lying spent, and sweaty with her, a June moon just like this one washing in through the curtainless window of his rambling and nearly empty five room apartment over a storefront along the river. How many nights like that had there been? How many days had there been? May to late August, 1981, before she’d left for Madison and journalism school, leaving him with his empty rambling apartment and a broken heart.
Such a trite phrase, but not inaccurate. For six months after that, he was broken, visiting her once in Madison, not hearing from her for a month, then calling her on the night she forgot his birthday, ranting at her over the phone about all the horrible things she’d supposedly done to him as she listened calmly, spoke back to him cheerfully. He’d calmed himself at the end of that call enough to try to salvage some faint belief that they could still pick up the pieces and start again, maybe the following summer, but he knew full well that it was over. What he hadn’t understood was why.
Then, that April, he’d met Janine and one thing had led to another, and he rarely thought of Molly again, except late at night or in fond daylight fantasies of the moments of their mutual young ecstasy. And then, a year or two before he’d suddenly seen her on a national newscast for CNN reporting from Madison, about the teacher protests at the capitol concerning Governor Scott Walker’s union busting tactics.
“I’ll be damned,” he’d said, watching the news in his living room.
“What?” Janine had called from the kitchen.
“This, this is Molly Judicci…” he’d said as Janine came in.
“Who?”
“My…my old girlfriend. The one before you. Broke my heart…I’ve told you.”
Janine had glanced at the screen for a moment. “Oh…yes…well, she’s aged well. She’s still very pretty.”
“Not as pretty as you.” Nice save, Danny. “Lots of makeup…tv reporters wear lots of makeup.”
“Sure,” Janine said, without the faintest hint of jealousy. “But that’s a pretty woman. She must have been a stunner when you knew her. What was she, 18 or so, then, just out of high school?”
“Um…yup. I was 22. Doing my internship at the paper over there…”
Janine, got back up and headed back for the kitchen, “Yup, she must have been a stunner. Lucky you…”
“Not as lucky as I am n-…”
“Oh stop it.”
That couldn’t have been Molly just now, especially since, just before he’d pulled off at the rest stop he’d been entertaining that old fantasy yet again. What if? What if? What if somehow he’d found a way to win her back? But that night long ago, the night of the phone call on his birthday, when he’d ranted at her, he’d resisted the urge to call her back, then, or ever again. He’d resisted by forcing himself to feel his full rage at her breaking his heart. He’d destroyed every image of her he had in his apartment, and there were a lot of them, smashing gifts against the wall, finally walking down to the river and hurling the heart stone she’d given him into the waters before walking to the nearest bar and pouring himself into a whiskey glass.
If only…O if only…
And suddenly, here she was coming out from the rest rooms past the Michigan map on the bulletin board and down the sidewalk towards her car, a little, dark Toyota.
“Son of a bitch…that is her…”
He had to act. He had to act right now. Chances were he’d never see her again in this lifetime.
Before he knew what he was doing, he was out of his truck…
“Molly?”
She started, like she’d been shot by a rifle and then proceeded on to her car trying to pretend like he hadn’t spoken. Of course, of course, she’s a news personality, lots of people recognized her.
“Molly, wait…it’s…it’s Danny…”
She turned for a second, “Danny…?” Still dark, still lithe, still lovely. “Danny…who?”
Ouch. Suddenly, the cold cheeriness in her voice over the phone on that long ago night came back to him.
“Danny O’Leary.”
“Oh…for…Danny?”
She closed her car door and walked to him. Suddenly they were hugging. She held on a moment longer than he did. “Well…” she said looking at him. “Danny.”
“You look…” Then, he noticed the wrinkles in the moonlight that the makeup had in fact hidden. He saw the age around the eyes in the light from the safety lights of the rest stop. Yes, time. “…exactly the same.”
“Oh…you liar. You, you really do, though Danny. You must have gotten out of the business. You look much too healthy to have been standing out in the rain and snow next to car accidents with your notepad all these years.”
“Well, thanks. Actually, a couple years after we…broke up…I went back to school. I’m retired from teaching at Northern now.”
“Yes, yes, I guess I heard that somewhere along the way, from somebody.” She was feigning that, he could tell. She hadn’t thought about him much at all. It bothered him a little, but he was surprised at how little. “You’re married?”
“Yes…happily. Thirty three years. Three kids, all grown. You?”
“Oh, yes, a couple times. Happily now. One child from the first, two more from this one with my Owen. He’s in real estate in the Madison area, my daughter Kirsten is still in high school.
“What in the world brings you to the Seney Plains in the middle of the night?”
“Ha, got a late start. Going back for my high school reunion. Thirty five years. Want to be my date?”
For just a moment his stomach bottomed out and he was silent…
She laughed lightly, “Oh Danny, I’m kidding. You’re still you. You have that same look you had on your face all those years ago when I was waiting on your table at the Riverside and I asked you if you liked movies. You were so shy then. Still the same boy… Still the same…”
“Yeah… I guess.”
“So you must be headed to your camp. We went there once, so I could meet your dad, so sweet. He must be…”
“Yes, gone.”
She sighed. “And so it goes. But why are you out here so late? I’d think you’d be itching to get to sleep get on the river early tomorrow.”
“Hadn’t planned to come…I…had a fight with Janine, ran away from home.”
“Janine…” Molly said, ignoring or unaware of the undercurrent. “That’s a pretty name. When did you meet her?”
“Right after…you…that April. You…you were the bridge to her, Molly. She’s the love of my life. I’ve always been thankful to you for, well just being there to get me that far. You were so…kind.”
“Oh… thank you…and Daniel…” He remembered her saying his name like that in a husky voice all those years ago… “You were very special to me, too.”
He hesitated for a moment. No, he had to ask, this chance wasn’t coming again, “Molly, do you think if…”
“Oh, Danny, let’s not go there. You know this…what I’m going to say. You must have thought of it. I could never have lived here. Think back, you know that! And you would have been miserable anywhere else. I knew that even then, and I was only 18. Think about that, 18. And you just 22. We were kids. It wasn’t going to work. We had to live a little first.”
“So, so, the distance…that was the only…”
“Oh, Danny, no. It just wasn’t going to work the way forever it worked right then. Think. You’re a very smart man. You always were. I had things I wanted to do, and I was just starting. You already had your job. You’d already made the decision to come back. If you’d followed me you would have been in my wake. If I’d come back here I would have resented you. Besides, you were always way more contemplative than I could ever be. You liked to paddle canoes. I like the crowd, the juice, the excitement of the deadline. You used to complain about the pressures of a life in journalism even in the U.P.! I’m not surprised you went back to the classroom. You were always a teacher. Tried to teach me. Ha! I hated that about you. Anyway, think,I wanted to make it happen right now. And I did.” She hesitated for only a moment, then said, “For better or worse. That’s the way of it, Danny. It was never going to work out. You are so much better off paddling your canoe, living in this peaceful way, never having to contend with all that. But…it was a lovely time. And now it’s a lovely dream.”
“Wow. I’m flattered. You really have thought of it.”
“ Oh…Danny…Yes. Of course. What did you think?”
“I don’t know. To me you’ll always be that inscrutable dark beauty from my youth.”
“Oh, so sweet! Not really accurate,” She said pulling a lock of hair away from her face, “…but so sweet, Daniel. I was just a scared little girl. But there’s no reason you can’t keep that fantasy, if you want. I’d like you to keep that, Danny. Consider it a gift. And I’ll keep that sweet boy, who…” she laughed. “Rocked my world! And now I’ve seen the ruddy, handsome, good man he became. Your gift to me.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“Goodbye, Danny.”
He ached with longing for just one intolerable moment.
“Good…goodbye.”
She smiled, then got into her Toyota. He waved standing by his truck as she started to pull away and felt a pain of recognition. She was leaving again. This time forever. He watched the taillights of her car, heading east along M-28 and looked up at the moon. He sighed. Then he laughed wistfully and got back into the truck and closed the door.
When he looked east down the highway, again, the taillights were gone.
Had it all been a dream?
Suddenly, Jem was grumbling at him from behind the seat.
“Okay, sorry to disappoint, chum, but no camp this time. We’re going home.”
“Yup,” Janine said two years later, sitting on the couch, smirking at Danny. “She said she ran into you at a rest stop in Seney two years ago when she was on her way to her high school reunion.”
“I half thought I’d dreamt that.”
“She said it was like a dream too. I can see why you didn’t tell me.”
“Really?”
“Of course. It’s a little treasure. Nothing happened. No harm. A keepsake. It was that time we were fighting about…oh whatever we fight about, and you were so cute. Packed half a bag and ran off to the river.”
“You remember?”
“Oh Danny, you dope. Just because I don’t say everything, doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. Oh honey, you look like you’re going to faint. Come on! Ha, she was embarrassed too, that you hadn’t told me. Got a little defensive for a minute. But I laughed. And then she laughed. I told her not to worry, that it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“It won’t?”
“Oh Danny…” she put out her hand, stroked his cheek. “ Of course not.You’re such a…you’re so you.”
Danny looked at Janine for a long moment. Then shook his head. “And you’re…so you, Janine. Thank God. I love you so much.”
“Ha, don’t you forget it!”
Sourcer
Sourcer
by B.G. Bradley
“Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be.” ——William Shakespeare
Part I: Vocalla sur Voca
Chapter 1
“The song is still being sung.”—-Words of The Great Seer, from the prelude to The Tale by the First Scribe of the Crag as interpreted and translated from the Murian by R.H. Worth 7777th Scribe of the Crag
Emmet Sourcer put down the phone. He’d been sitting on his blazin’ behind in this stark reality newspaper office all morning. As usual, nothing of interest was happening. He’d been working over a couple of feature stories on a lady from the old folks home who wrote limericks and a local hunter who’d taken a 500 pound bear with his long bow, until the phone rang a few moments ago. It was his cousin and old high school buddy Mert Bailey. Mert was the local air corps scout. His route was out over the big lake. “Watching for infiltrating moose and wolves along the shoreline,” he’d say and then always laugh in that half grin cocky pilot’s way of his. Emmet had always envied his cousin’s attitude. It was easier for Mert to have such an outlook, because he was six two, blond, and carved out of granite. When he had been a running back in high school, would-be tacklers had scattered like broken glass dolls as he cut up into the pack. Emmet seemed to remember using that very phrase in an article or two when he’d written up Mert’s exploits for the school newspaper. Mert was even better at baseball, set the conference home run record, and won all 12 of his senior year pitching starts by shutouts.
They had both dreamed big. Mert was going to go to the big leagues, but the minors had quickly shown him that he couldn’t hit or throw the curve well enough to stick. So he’d headed for the air corps and been promptly sent right back home. Who else in the corps knew the lakeshore better than he did? Hadn’t he flown with his father in the junior corps, before the old man disappeared on a solo flight out over that stretch of water six years ago?
Emmet, all five foot eight 130 bespectacled pounds of him, had had his own brush with the bigs, writing a story about the Stony Crag forest fire that had landed on the national wires, but since then nothing. Nada. No big papers were calling. So they were both right here, back home in Stony Crag, doing what they could, not what they wanted.
The disappearance of Mert’s father had long tweaked Emmet’s reporter’s instincts. Why had Mert’s old man simply disappeared after patrolling the region, first in a bi-plane, and later in a single engine firemage for 25 years? Even when the family was still deep in grief, the circumstances of that incident had nagged at him. There’d been no wreckage found. There weren’t even any reliable theories about what might have happened. And nobody had ever reported seeing a fireball, or a plane crashing into the water. It was strange.
Emmet rubbed what there was of stubble on his chin and looked around his one room office. It was located above the O’Hanlon’s Launderette. Sometimes folks would stop up to talk while they were doing a load. He’d gotten a couple of stories out of such visits, in fact. Not great stories, but little its of interest, such as they were in such a small town. Mostly outdoor stuff. Once a deer had leapt through the front window of the launderette. That had made the guys at the main office in St. Martin’s laugh at him when he’d come up for a staff meeting. “Boy, Sourcer, you really get the big stories don’t you!”
Mert had sounded different on the phone. There was something in his voice Emmet had never heard before. Was it fear? Amazement? Confusion? And what Mert had said was so non-specific and packed with military paranoia, that the only reason Mert could have called at all, was because this was very, very big, and he needed to share this whatever-it-was with his best friend. Normally, Emmet did the calling, coaxing out stories about Mert’s minor military adventures, or more often non-adventures, patrolling the vast shorelines of the North.
Despite his best probing reporter’s questions of the Baileys, both father and son, Emmet had never found out why this air corps patrol had been maintained and sustained for the last 35 years. And nobody else had either. What was it the military was worried about out over that expanse of water, and in the winter, ice? Could it be that what Mert had uncharacteristically called him about today was, at last, the answer to that question?
“Emmet…I’ll meet you in 20 out at the trapper’s cabin. No camera. No notepad. Off the record, all of it. I need my friend, not a reporter.”
That was the whole call. Emmet looked up at his framed copy of his wire story on the forest fire, which hung over his cluttered metal desk. He looked over at his typewriter, and fought off the urge to pocket his notepad.
“What the blazes is up, Mert?” he said to himself in a half whisper, then headed out the door without locking it, and down the long stairs to his little, square red runabout. He eyed it over and saw there were still no scratches. He’d bought it with the bonus from the fire story. Then he sighed, realizing that by the time he got back from the cabin, over that rough road, there would be scratches aplenty.
“This better be good, Mert!”
On the outskirts of what there was to the village of Stony Crag: three east west business streets and some residential areas fading into scattered houses near the crag, was the minor switchback/two-track that led up to the summit where stood the trapper’s cabin. Big Bill Castini, a local business man with a shady reputation, had once referred to the town as, “loaded with potential! Lots of room for development!” Loaded with potential for what, and lots of room for what Emmet could never really sort out. Was Castini just a crooked dreamer, or did he really have a plan? There’d always been whispers about the town. There was an old story about a secret mine beneath the crag. A Mine for what was also a mystery. There was, in addition, a wild tale about the trapper’s cabin not being the home of a trapper at all, but of a watchman who used that high post to keep track of the goings on over the lake as far back as 300 years ago. Did Castini know the truth or falsehood of all these stories, or was he just hoping to capitalize on them? Emmet seen Castini’s blueprint of a hotel and resort complex to be known as The Secret Mine. The one thing Emmet was sure of was that Castini was a major blazin’ bear’s behind.
At the entrance to the switchback, Emmet waved at Odaya Kontala the gorgeous, young, running enthusiast, now on vacation from her second year of college. Odaya was on an exchange scholarship from Indosia. She was a track star at South Shore University in St. Martin and had gone to high school at Stony Crag with Emmet and Mert. She was going to be a doctor, of what she was never specific; though from the books Emmet had seen her carrying, it wasn’t medicine. Whatever it was she was learning, her plan was to take her new skills back to her homeland. She’d come here when she was a sophomore in high school, all esoteric brains, mysterious dark eyes, luminous dark skin, and unfathomable smiles. Until they met her, he and Mert, in their senior years, were the biggest things in town.They’d both fallen for her; she’d fallen for neither of them, or both. It depended on the day. He and Mert had made a pact not to fight over her. She had made no pact with either of them, and wasn’t likely to, it seemed.
He could still remember the first time they’d seen her when she’d walked into Mr. Ralph Henry Worth’s English classroom on a cool afternoon in September of that year. At that precise moment, Mr. Worth was roughly critiquing another of Emmet’s news stories, and Mert was waiting in line for the return of a truly rancid essay of his, which Mr. Worth was holding for ransom. He wouldn’t let Mert go to football practice until it was finished to the old man’s satisfaction. It was strange, Emmet remembered, when Odaya had walked in; it was as though she and Mr. Worth had known each other for years.
Anyway, pact or no pact, she had no doubt just run down from the switchback and the cabin. Had Mert just met her there? No way to know, because she certainly wouldn’t say even if Emmet asked. It didn’t make much sense that she had had a rendezvous with Mert, though. Why would Mert have invited him to come, if so? To brag about some romantic encounter with Odaya? No, that would not be like Mert at all. Emmet decided his imagination and his jealousy was running away with him. God, she was something! He pulled over and rolled down the window.
“Good run?”
“The best, Sourcer,” she beamed, and winked at him. She loved calling him by his last name. it was her standard and delightfully familiar tease towards him; his heart fluttered.
“Were you up at the trappers?”
“Just to be there and back. Great day, eh?” He smile intensified. Finally she said, smirking, “Go find some news, you bum! See you soon,” she had never stopped jogging in place. “Gotta run.” She was gone like a missile headed back to town.
“Wow…”
He rolled the window back up and headed up the switchback.
Emmet had never liked driving up this road. He had nightmares in which the road kept getting steeper and steeper and eventually his runabout tilted over backwards and then just fell into space. He’d never been crazy about heights to begin with, but he’d never say that out loud to Mert who had taken him on some deliberately hairy flights, against corps regulations, just to scare the shit out of him. He swallowed hard and proceeded up the tight corners of the switchback to the trapper’s cabin.
****
“Let me get this straight,” Emmet said, twisting the toe of his sport shoe into the grit on the floor of the trapper’s cabin. “You’ve seen something.”
“Yup,” Mert said, glancing out at the lake through the empty window frame.
“Something truly amazing and newsworthy.”
“God, yes!”
“But you’re afraid to make a report about it because you think you’ll be laughed out of the corps. Or discharged for drinking on the job.”
“Yup.”
“You snuck up here overland from the airfield”
“Yup.”
“Because you didn’t want to be seen.”
“Yup.”
“You even hid from Odaya, the love of your life…”
“Well, I don’t know about…”
Emmet put up his hand to halt a disclaimer they both knew was false. “…because you thought it might put her in danger to see you here.”
Mert’s massive cheek muscles worked for a moment. “Yup.”
“But you were okay with me driving up.”
“They’ll just think you’re taking scenic summer pics. Long as they don’t see me, we’re golden.”
“Okay, so, what did you see?”
“Just come with me to the airfield in the morning.”
“Okay, so am I doing another feature story?”
“Nope,” Mert said sobering. “We’ve used up our quota there. And the brass didn’t like it much the other times we did it. In fact, the captain said, after the last time, “No more, Bailey.”
“So, how am I getting up to the base tomorrow? In the trunk?” Emmet said smiling.
Mert sobered. “Can’t think of another way. Then we gotta sneak you into the mage in the life raft case. Can’t let anybody know I’m taking a reporter up.”
“We’ve done it before!”
“That’s because you were doing a story on the wolves on Muscat Island, and then on the fire, and both were sanctioned.”
“Well, from the sounds of it, this is much bigger than either of those.”
“It is, if I haven’t gone off my nut.” Mert sighed, shook his head and looked off over the horizon.
“Wow, this has really got you spooked! I’ve never seen you like this!”
Mert nodded, a look of uncharacteristic seriousness and sincerity in his eyes. “Emmet, I’m pretty sure, this might end up being something that changes everything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mert shook his head. “I wish I knew for certain. Anyway, this trip ain’t gonna be a joy ride and it…”
“…can’t be sanctioned.”
Mert sighed, “Brother, this can’t even be believed by me and I saw it. I need you, Emmet. I trust you more than anybody else in the world. If you say you see it too, then I can report it to the brass.”
“Are you sure we’re gonna see this, whatever it is?”
Mert looked again out the empty window of the stone cabin and felt the cool breeze off the big lake, “No,” he said, then, looking back, added, “but if we do, you’ll never forget it.”
“Won’t that get you in hot water when I do the story on it?”
Mert bit his lip for a moment. “Emmet…um…you can’t do a story unless…”
“It’s sanctioned? Jesus, Mert, if it’s as alarming as you say; they’re going to keep it secret aren’t they?”
“Probably.”
“Then, what’s in it for me?”
Mert looked hurt for a moment. “Em…we’re…”
“Buds. Yeah, okay. You’re right. Sorry, can’t help the reporter’s instincts, and it’s been a long time since the fire, my last big story. Everybody at the main office has blazin’ near forgotten I’m even here, and I’m tired of living in the Crag.”
“Emmet, I’m telling you, this is way bigger than that! Way bigger than anything! Whatever the two of us have done or haven’t done up to now is strictly very small potatoes compared to this.”
“Mert…can’t you tell me something?”
“You’d think I was nuts…”
“Just a hint?”
“There’s no hint I could give. This is so big, even a little piece of it would be enormous. And if I didn’t see it… And maybe I didn’t…I have been flying a lot alone for a long time out over that water…Long and short of it, Emmet, I don’t trust anybody else, but you to know what I know. Get me?”
Emmet couldn’t help but be flattered. “Get you. In the trunk, huh?”
“Sure, you’re a shrimp. You’ll fit fine.” The crooked grin worked its way across the lantern jaw.
“And you’re a dumb jock who’s taken one too many forearms in the snotlocker, one too many baseballs in the forehead.”
Mert’s face straightened and he looked out over the lake again. “Maybe. I guess we’ll find out.”
Chapter 2
There was nothing comfortable about the plane. Not even now that Emmet was no longer encased in the liferaft bag and had a window seat of sorts crouching over Mert’s shoulder. The duo prop firemage had no heat other than for the windshield, no second seat and nothing else but cold metal to sit on. There was a hatch directly beneath their feet, locked solid but not preventing the 33 degree air, made colder by their windspeed of 132 mph rushing in through the cracks. Mert had told Emmet to dress warm. Emmet had been insightful enough to obey that suggestion. He had on a wool mackinaw, combat boots with three pairs of wool socks, wool mittens, and a goofy light blue wool hat with tie strings. All the wool garments had been knitted by his mom, Betty Lou Sourcer, homemaker extraordinaire. When she wasn’t knitting, she was cooking something. Whatever she was knitting always came out warm and comforting. Whatever she was cooking came out smelling, and tasting great.
“I could do with some of Mom’s oatmeal right now,” Emmet said wistfully.
Mert didn’t respond, he was focused on the blue expanse of water, his strong large head on a swivel, on his sturdy football player’s neck, searching, searching. Mert was dressed in his brown leather flight jacket with the white wool lining, and his leather wool lined bomber helmet complete with googles fully affixed. Combined with the wool lined flight pants and wool lined combat boots, and even wool lined gloves, the air corps had outfitted her boys for cold flying.
They were flying very close to the water, crazy close, at times the drag of the plane was sucking up some water which spattered the fuselage.
“Why so low?”
Merton was still searching, searching.
“I said, ‘Why so low?’
“Just keep your camera ready.”
“Okay, Captain Grim.”
“Look, Emmet, I’m doing my job. Do yours. Keep that blazin’ camera ready!”
“Okay.”
“And to answer your question we’re flying under the radar.”
“Whose radar?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Suddenly, Emmet was very uneasy. Just then the mage jolted, and Mert quickly pulled the sticks down, pointing the fighter at the sky.
“Feel that?”
“Great blazes yeah! Of course!”
“Updraft.”
“Updraft? Wait, a minute, doesn’t an updraft usually surge up from off a cliff?”
“Or a great big building. Or a bunch of great big buildings.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Trust me, Emmet, I don’t either.”
Mert took the mage on a circular course about a mile in circumference. Each time he infringed upon the circle, they felt the updraft again.
“What is going on, Mert? Why would there be an updraft? There’s nothing out here but cold, cold water half a mile deep.”
“You sure? I’m not. Keep that camera ready.”
And suddenly it was there. Emmet let out a high pitched girlish gasp. Before them was a mile wide island of gorgeous wooden towers, climbing the icy sky inexplicably like a pipe dream. The steeples and towers atop the buildings put one in mind of churches. Calligraphy in a language neither Mert nor Emmet recognized, was scrolled beautifully across the surfaces of every building.
“What in the…”
“Emmet, take a picture before it all vanishes again!”
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Emmet was getting every angle, getting every nuance he could. “Take us lower, Mert!”
“Can do!”
Click. Click. Click.
“What in the the blazes is this place? And where in the blazes did it come from all of a sudden?”
“I have no idea.”
“Nothing in any of your dad’s reports?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing whispered about at headquarters in St. Martin’s?”
“Nothing like this.”
The buildings were of a fine grain of wood. Solid as steel, they seemed more as if they had grown here than as if they had been built. Emmet could detect no joints no connecting pieces just smooth, perfect wood. Between the buildings, if that’s what they were, were narrow streets teeming with people, all going about their business and only occasionally looking up at the spitting, sputtering mage which, as far as Emmet could tell, was the only thing in this vicinity making noise of any kind. The people were dressed in fairly conventional clothing. Nothing that wouldn’t have been right at home on the homey streets of Stony Crag back to the south.
Click, click. Click.
“We got company.”
“Huh?”
“12 o’clock.” Met pointed directly up. Less than 30 yards above them was a flying vehicle apparently made of the same wooden material as the buildings, shaped like a compact bird with very wide pointed wings, fitted or grown out from a circular frame. The craft made no sound whatsoever except the kind an owl might make gliding. The cockpit had no glass. They could see the pilot as the vehicle veered off and down. He was dark skinned and wearing a uniform and helmet exactly like Mert’s.
“Does the air corps have an invisible island full of pilots who fly noiseless wooden planes?”
“I think we can find that out if we follow him.”
“You sure you want to do that, Mert?”
“Blazes no, I’m not sure, but that’s clearly what he wants us to do. See the airstrip?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re the reporter. Don’t you want to know what in blazes this is all about?”
Emmet swallowed hard. “You bet.”
As they approached the airstrip on the south side of the island, the wooden plane veered down towards the end of the smooth stone runway nearest to one of the many towers.
“At that angle, he doesn’t have enough room to land that thing!” Mert said.
“Mert, look.” Emmet gestured to the end of the airstrip where hundreds of flying vehicles identical to the one they were following, were lined up in neat rows. The pilot suddenly, and impossibly, brought the vehicle to a stop in mid air then dropped his craft like a feather right into a space just big enough for his plane.
“Well, we can’t do that, but there looks to be plenty of room on the airstrip.” Mert expertly lined up for his run and came in with flaps down for a pretty impressive landing. Impressive, on any air strip, that is, but this one where the planes landed like butterflies.
When Emmet and Mert squeezed out through the underside hatch of the mage, the pilot and a grizzled old crewman stood waiting for them. The crewman help two stone cups of steaming liquid in his hands. He handed them to Emmet and Mert as they stood amazed in the frigid air. A light fall of snow began.
The pilot, was also holding a cup of the hot liquid. He raised his cup and his goggles, and grinning said, “The strip is just for you mage flyboys. Our owls, as you saw, don’t need them. Welcome to the Island of Muir.”
***
Any way you looked at it, and despite the very friendly nature of the conversation with the pilot and the crewman, what Mert and Emmet had just been through, was a military briefing. And the nature of the intelligence revealed, was just about the limit of what Emmet and Mert, or anybody else of sound mind, could take in.
They were inside a dark paneled interior room which had all the feeling and light of a sunny parlor. They were truly enjoying the incredibly hearty drink in their wooden cups. The drink, called Muir Blend seemed to Emmet like a combination of his mother’s oatmeal, the greatest coffee he’d ever had, with a hint of fine Stony Crag whiskey dribbled in. The pilot had introduced himself as D’Auk S’essta Kontala. Emmet asked him to spell that out, which he obligingly did, despite the crewman’s not so subtle clearing of the throat at the request. Before Emmet could inquire further the pilot added, “Yes, Emmet, Mert, Odaya is my daughter. Later I’ll introduce you to her mother, my wife, Mochalla.”
Emmet’s jaw dropped wide.
The crewman, Mick O’Grady, smirked and added, “Fellas, don’t call the king anything but ‘your majesty’ in front of anybody else. He’s humble, but we his people are proud. Boys, you are looking at the 8,107th King of the Island of Muir, his highness D’Auk S’eesta Kontala, defender of the Stony Crag Portal and a hero to us all. Sometimes known to those of us who have a difficult time with the Indosian pronunciations, as King Dark Star of Muir, and by the most conservative estimates he is one of the best kings of them all.
“Oh, Mick, that’s enough,” Dark Star said, truly embarrassed.
“It’s not near enough, your highness, but it will have to do. More Muir Blend, boys?”
“Please,” said Emmet. Mert nodded and gave Dark Star a level, serious expression and a touch of a bow as O’Grady left the room to fetch more of the brew.
“Your majesty,” Mert began as the ornate wooden door closed behind O’Grady.
“D’Auk,” Dark Star grinned.
“As you say, sir. Is this island in some way connected to our air corps?”
“‘Our’ is the right word, Lieutenant Bailey. We’re one in the same. When you get home, there will be a further briefing waiting for you in St. Martins.”
“You knew we were coming?”
Dark Star laughed a friendly baritone laugh, “Your Major Kujala, at the Crag airstrip and I were laughing over the radio before you came about you stuffing Emmet into the life raft bag. Funny stuff.”
“Blazes…” Emmet said sipping his Muir Blend, and shooting a quick, only half amused look at Mert.
“You see, boys, until now the public wasn’t ready for all this. So we keep introducing you flyboys one at a time to the island and what it represents, just as we’ve done for years.”
“How many of us know?”
“Just six at the moment, not including President Rosenberg of course. High General Brundidge. Communications Chancellor DeSale, Col. Costas at St. Martins, Major Kujala, and you.”
“That’s five flyboys…uh…your…(Dark Star shot Mert a sardonic look) “D’Auk.”
Dark Star sighed, “Well, there is another, we think, though, we haven’t seen him in a while: your father, Mert, Captain Henry David Bailey.”
Mert took in a little breathe of air. “I knew it…”
Dark Star, reached across the wide oak table and touched Mert’s shoulder. “He’s missing in action, Mert, but we have a pretty good sense from those that know these things, like my wife, and…um…my daughter and of course Mr. Worth…”
“Mr. Worth…” Emmet felt like he was dreaming. His craggy old English teacher, who never met a sentence of Emmet’s he liked, was in on this?
“We have a pretty good sense that your father is alive somewhere.”
Mert looked out the window towards the water. “What can I do to aid in the action, your Majesty?”
“You’re a sharp one,” Dark Star said appraising Mert. “You both are. My Oddie is right. If your father is missing in action, that means there must be action.”
Mert looked back at Dark Star, the traces of a tear working down his right cheek. “Yes.”
Dark Star nodded, “Boys, the war is about to begin. I wish I could tell you differently. The enemy, led by a person known only as, The Alchemist, even our best spies can learn no more, is launching an attack from up north.”
“Up north?”
“Try not to let your head spin Emmet, and take out your notepad, because we’re depending on you to get the word to the people so when the war begins, they’ll know what they’re up against.”
“I get to write the story?”
Dark Star laughed his majestic laugh again, “You bet! “
“You were saying, “ Mert said, “up north?”
“Yes, we believe their fortress is under the polar ice cap. We’ve never been able to find it, but attacks have come from there. Normally they can’t find us either, for obvious reasons. We’re not only invisible, we’re mobile.”
“You mean this isn’t an island?” Emmet asked.
“It’s a ship of a kind…”
“Powered by what?”
The laugh again. “Oh, now we get to it. Powered by, for lack of a better word, magic. Magic of the crag stone.”
“Um…”
“I’ll tell you what, Emmet,” Dark Star said, reaching into a massive brief case and dropping with a thunderous sound a massive hard cover book onto the table. “Here’s your…briefing. “
“Looks more like an ancient epic…”
“That’s exactly what it is. You are a smart boy. Emmet,” here Dark Star gave Emmet his most serious look to date, “every word you’ll read here is true!”
Suddenly, an earthshaking explosion sounded from the sky outside. Snow had begun to fall in heavy flakes, and the wind was building from the north.”
O’Grady suddenly burst through the door, “Your majesty, I’m sorry. We didn’t see it coming. The attack has begun! They must have been waiting for us to reveal the island. Even though we’re invisible again, we need to move now!”
Dark Star’s face grew grim. “Mert, you and Emmet get to your plane. We’ll give you cover. O’Grady sound the alert.”
“Done.”
Momentarily, and without a single sound or other alarm, corpsmen and pilots were rushing about outside.
“Get going boys, you’ve got less than five minutes to get your mage airborne and headed for the Crag. And when you get there Emmet, tell them everything you know and everything you can learn from the Tale as fast as you can.”
“The Tale?”
“The epic, son. Get on it. It contains everything you need to know. More than any of you anywhere have ever known, even the President. If you ever wondered why none of the big papers came to claim you after your bang up fire story, it’s because we needed you for this! You’re working for us now.You had the highest of recommendations: Ralph Henry Worth.”
Emmet swallowed hard and nodded, finally managing, “Roger.”
Dark Star grinned at the military terminology and slapped him on the shoulder. In a matter of moments Mert and Emmet were airborne and rushing towards the mainland. Behind them fire was in the sky. Emmet, between the reading of jaw dropping words from the Tale and the explosions in the distance could hardly contain his thoughts.
“Holy blazes!”
Suddenly, Mert cranked the mage towards the sky and headed off at full speed straight up.
“We’ve got company again, Emmet. And this one ain’t friendly!”
A metallic disk rocketed by them to the north blocking their path and narrowly missing the mage’s tail with a fireball. Mert pointed the nose of the Mage towards the water and careened straight down in a suicidal nose dive.
“Jumpin’ trout cheeks!” Emmet yelled, clutching the Tale tight to his chest.
The disk was nearly on them, when Mert at last executed a bone shattering veer to the west and then pointed the mage again at the sky.
“How long can you keep this up?” Emmet said.
“He’s got us in speed, but I think I’ve got an edge in maneuverability. That thing turns like a stone. I figure I can get you to Muscat Island.”
“What?”
“Remember, the wolf story? You parachuted in to ‘add to the adventure?’ That’s what you said at the time. Make a better story?”
“Yeah, that was fun, but I was not under fire.”
“We’ve got no choice. You can’t fly the mage. I can’t get away from him overweight like we are with you aboard. And I can’t risk you being taken with the Tale, or worse, having it destroyed!”
“Okay Mert.”
“Take my parachute. And hang on.”
Emmet loosed the chute from Mert, and strapped it in over his shoulders, as they rose and dove and veered and dodged. Mert at last got turned to face the attacker and opened up with the wing cannons, which slowed the disk but seemed to have no permanent affect.
“You strapped in?”
“Check!”
“Here comes Muscat Island! Try for the beach! Just like before.”
Mert, with a moment or two to spare, slowed the mage as much as possible, leveled it out and opened the hatch.
Emmet was suddenly airborne and windblown in the driving snow. He was spinning and clinging to the Tale in his arms. He pulled his shoot perfectly but the beach was not beneath him. Below him was the thickest stand of hardwoods at the height of Muscat Island.
“Blazes!” Emmet said, and looked aloft as he drifted down to see the Mage headed north for the Crag with a stream of black smoke and flame tailing from the right wing, and the metal disk in hot pursuit.
Chapter 3
The Tale
Revised Standard Version
as compiled, edited and translated from the ancient Muirian texts,
which were derived from the 63rd Scribe’s Songs
by Ralph Henry Worth:
Scribe 7,777 of the Crag
In this year 77
of the 115th Millennium, Muir Time
With additions by R.H.W.
First, there was water. Deep water. Cold water. So cold that it seemed nothing could live there, but the Seer saw that the water lived. And that was good. It lingered alive under the ice for the cold seasons. The water sang muted songs of creation to the icy sky from below the snow sheet, and when the warm months came, the water sang them all the louder in the clear day. This pleased the sky. And the Seer saw that it was good.
When the dark came with all the myriad stars, the water sang teasing love songs to the sky and at last the sky sang back in its deep rumbling voice, so full of itself, yet so true to the water. And the Seer saw that this too was good.
At last, through the eons, the songs of the water and the songs of the sky slowly coaxed a child from the depths: the Stony Crag. The Crag was alive. The Crag is alive. The Crag emerged in the form of its great stony self, but was really composed of the pure and simple will to love and create love and it sang its song; it sings its song; more lovely than either the songs of the water or the sky, but in harmony with both. Or rather, the songs of water and sky came to be in harmony with that of the Crag, for the Crag was greater than either, and loved them both equally. And the Seer saw that this was very good indeed. And through the vast eons the Crag and the Sky and the Water sang their song together and the Seer looked on enraptured and reluctant to look away, but there was work to be done.
The Crag had come forth to create the people and all the creatures of the cosmos and it did so by singing. And the people and the creatures were good. The Crag’s song reverberated throughout all the great dome of the sky and the depths of the water and created everywhere on all the worlds and on this one, and drew the people it created to itself. And from everywhere on this world and from every other, they came and gathered around the Crag and grew a great city from the wood of the song of the crag and all was in harmony, and the Seer saw that this was very, very good indeed.
Then one dark day one among the people of the Crag, the one known as Wildark, turned to the Seer and said, “The song of the Crag is good, but I could put it to use, to make an even better world.”
The Seer, at first amused, and then alarmed said, “Oh no child! It is the Crag’s song that puts us to use to make this world as the Crag sees fit.”
And Wildark nodded, but in his heart did not agree. The Seer, who saw and sees all saw this too and sighed and sang with the Crag, and knew that Wildark’s ways must be allowed so that in the end he would see that the will of the Crag would always and will always triumph. And so Wildark left Muir and began his attempts to rough hew the will of the Crag how he might, by bringing the darkness, in an attempt to create a cosmos in his own image. For many great ages he won out, thinking he had bent the will of the Crag to his own. But the Crag works well and slowly, and ever and again Wildark’s will fell fallow and he himself diminished only to start again. And it was ever thus. And it is thus and there is pain and suffering and evil lurking in the cosmos and in the hearts of the people, and there will be until that day which is past and is now and is forever in which Wildark finally knows, finally accepts, finally, willingly, learns to love the will of the Crag.
And so, it continues. On one side the will of Wildark, ever attempting to possess the Crag wholly by severing pieces and turning those pieces to his will, but ever and again the pieces as the Crag itself, bend back the wills of evil towards good. But Wildark is deceptive, and Wildark is wily, and Wildark is a master of the mind and wins people to his ways: people who believe the Crag can be theirs to own and control.
And on the other side are those who sing the song of the Crag over and over, in their actions, in their individual free wills, choosing good and ever good and ever good.
And these two forces come ever and again into conflict, and Wildark rises to great heights, then inevitably falls to great depths, only to begin again, and the Seer looks on and longs for the day which is today, and yesterday, and tomorrow when Wildark will finally see, and all will be in harmony again. The Song is still being sung.
***
Emmet sat in the middle of the thicket, by the fire he’d kindled with great difficulty, shielding himself from the frigid wind, against the trunk of a mammoth oak. He’d spent most of the day huddling there, hiding from the explosions overhead, and the dire thoughts about Merton and all his other friends and family in Stony Crag within his head. And, as ordered by Dark Star, he had read from The Tale.
He had reached the halfway point of the 1,000 plus pages, and what he had read after that baffling and inspiring opening chapter was a massive story of continuing conflicts all inspired by the machinations of Wildark. There were stories of whole dark ages of time, thousands, at one point, close to 50,000 years of thralldom for everyone on the World, and according to the story, most of the worlds of the cosmos except a few where the light of good was kept burning until the Crag could assert its good through the people again. Was now another of these ages? And if it was like the longest one, wasn’t the World doomed to die and fester in evil for what was virtually an eternity or might as well be for all those affected? It was easy for the Seer, whoever that was, to take the long view, but for mere mortals, 50,000 years of thralldom sounded pretty long, pretty bad.
“Blazes,” Emmet said to the darkness.
And why wasn’t any of this in the history books or the papers? Well, it was a secret, obviously, and actually some of it was in the papers, just not in this context. And the history books only went back about 5,000 years and a good 2,000 or so was pretty sketchy.
“The Song is still being sung…”
There had been no explosions overhead for a while. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? It had been one bear roar of a day. So much to think about. How had he somehow survived that crash in the parachute down through the oak thicket? How had he gotten that fire going in this snow storm with a bit of bark, half a dozen half wet matches, and the dry wood he’d found under a dead fall? He’d never been that lucky before. Was it all the will of the Crag? Did it really work that way? In little bitty pieces of little bitty Emmet’s life?
King Dark Star had sworn that every word in The Tale was true. Emmet hated to be a skeptic but the hard-bitten newspaper man’s brain was coming out in him. It all seemed so mythological. Singing sky and water. An immortal Seer who, if the story was to be believed, must be alive and well somewhere still watching it all. Was that meant to be seen as metaphor, or was he to believe that some person somewhere was The Seer and he could sit down and have coffee with him or her? And Wildark. Where was he? Dark Star had said something about The Alchemist. He hadn’t found any mention of him so far in the book, but was that another name for Wildark? Was Wildark too embodied somewhere on the World or was he more like an attitude, a belief system?
And whoa! Maybe the thing he was having the hardest time getting his head around was the fact, and this was incontrovertible, even if none of The Tale was true, that his old English teacher, R.H. Worth, had put this latest version of the text together.
“Blazes!”
What would Jimmy Cratz, his editor in St. Martins say to all of this? Likely he’d look at Emmet like he was a blazin’ fool for believing any of it and say, “You moose brained paperweight, go find me a real story!” or some such.
The war, though. That was real.
“Poor Mert.”
And folks on one side of it believed every word of The Tale. And the Island of Muir! He’d seen it with his own eyes. He’d taken pictures. He had a mission too, to get that story and those pictures to the public so they knew what this war was all about. To at least let them know that dark times might be coming. The kick was that all this time he’d thought he was at the far end, and a dim one at that, of the Cosmos, when all the time little ol’ Stony Crag was the blazin’ center of the universe!
But first things first. Somehow, he had to get off Muscat Island. Somehow he had to get word to the folks in the Crag before it was too late.
Emmet looked up from the book in the firelight for a moment, and suddenly everything he’d learned so far about Wildark, the Seer, the ages of war and peace, the Crag, the Water and the Sky, seemed pretty secondary. In every direction, all around the edges of the light of the fire, eyes were shining in the dark.
“Wolves…” he whispered to himself.
“Yes, wolves,” said a half amused, half incensed, raspy female voice. “Emmet Sourcer, you wrote the story about the wolves. You know they don’t attack people unless there’s a much better food source, and boy, you’re way too scrawny!”
“Hello…?”
“Hello yourself, you muling bear scat! Do you know how hard it was to find you in this thicket? Why in the world didn’t your friend drop you on the beach like the last time you came out here to bother the wolves and me?”
A small stout, dark skinned, gray haired woman stepped into the firelight. Her long straight hair was tied back with a leather thong. Her buckskin coat, pants, and boots were very worn. She carried a buckskin bag over her shoulder. She reached into it now and handed him a bladder bag full of liquid.
“Here, drink this.”
Emmet, grabbed the bag and guzzled. He was dying of thirst. A moment later he felt like he was just dying. His throat burned in a way that made him wonder if he was ever going to speak again. He had just drunk three shots worth of the roughest moonshine he’d ever tasted.
“Easy boy! It ain’t water!” the old woman said smirking.
“I know that now!” Emmet rasped, his eyes watering. “How…how do you know me?”
“Well, among other things, I watched you watching the wolves during your research for your magnum authoritative opus on the creatures of this island… Seriously, like you could find anything out in two weeks! What a piece of iron pyrite you are! Oh, and also, I’ve gotten lots of bulletins on your progress from the husband. Well, a few…”
“Who’s your husband?”
“May the Seer preserve us and the Crag sing us a song! You mean to tell me that old rascal has never told you about me?”
“What old rascal?”
“Why Ralph Henry Worth, of course! Just like him to leave out any mention of his much better half. Of course I guess he’s under no obligation since the marriage was never really consummated and I’ve been waiting for him out on this island for 25 years to attend his honeymoon, but a deal’s a deal.”
“Um…”
“See he came out here one day when he was much younger for the same reason you did. He’d heard about the wolves and wanted to do a study. Well, the wolves surrounded him, just out of curiosity like they did you just now. I stepped in to take him to my camp, and he started pleading with me to save him. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘if you’ll marry me’. So he says, ‘Anything, anything! Just don’t let them eat me!’ Total coward that husband of mine, but he’s got a good clear head most of the time and I like the set of his jaw.”
“So you were never really married by a minister or a magistrate…”
“You seeing any churches or courts around here? You see any other people? I am the minister and the magistrate, and the mayor, and the President, and the Queen of Muscat Island! You gonna dispute me?”
“Nope…Mr. Worth is your husband all right.”
“There now, first sense you’ve spoken or my name’s not Otter Worth.”
“Nice to meet you, then, Otter.”
Otter shot him a hard look. “I prefer Mrs. Worth from youngsters, thank you. Ha, anyway, well it ain’t the first time I’ve seen you, but I expect it’s the first time you’ve seen me.”
“It is that. Listen, Mrs. Worth…”
“I like the sound of that; I like the sound of that…”
“I have to get back to The Crag to get the word of the war out.”
“Of course you do! You think I don’t know the news from the neighbors?”
“Neighbors?”
“The folks on Muir!”
“You know about Muir?”
“Do I…well how in the rabbit runnin’ wolf wallow would I not know? I sail out there all the time, until the ice comes, then I ski.”
“But the island is invisible, how do you…!”
“Invisible? Why it’s clear enough to those with eyes what see!”
“Okay… Holy blazes…I guess there’s so much I don’t know, but what do you do out there?”
“Do? I’m doing business! Pelts! Berries! Fish! With wolves for companions, and…whatchacall…co-workers. ! What not and like that, you danged steamin’ young dumb bear drop! You know, business! Course I don’t sell the wolves. I just do the free pet match service for some of the outdoorsy types on Muir. If a wolf don’t want to go with folks, he don’t go. That’s not up to me. But the Murians like the ways wolves act and think, and vice versa. The Muirians don’t really need guards, but the right wolf can be a right good friend right, Emerson?”
Emmet leaped back as he suddenly realized a mammoth gray wolf had come up out of the woods and was standing beside Otter. His eyes were keen, intelligent, in the firelight. They even looked, well, amused.
“Don’t tell me you’re a scairt of Emerson? Why he’s the best friend I got! Nice folks got nothing to fear from him, but should the ol’ Alchemist show up here? Well, he better watch out! Anyway, the folks out there on Muir need my goods, and I need theirs…business!”
“I see. So can you sail me back to The Crag?”
“First thing in the morning when the wind dies a bit and the blizzard goes away.”
“I was hoping we could go now…”
“Now? Why boy I can’t let the folks in the Crag know I exist! Other than my lovin’ husband… That’s not part of the plan. Why if the Alchemist and his bunch knew I was here they’d come and try to squeeze all the cragstone out of me! I’m oozin’ with it you know, according to Dark Star and his daughter…”
“You know…?”
“Why Emmet you’re ignorant as a marmet, ain’t ya? Of course I know the king, and his wife and the whole royal family. I’m an honored guest out there! And of course I have to keep them abreast of the goings on on Muscat and in the Crag and well, the world! Yup, lot of missives going back and forth. Some by word of mouth, some by whisper of mind if you know what I mean.”
“Um afraid I don…”
“Well, come on. You’ll freeze to death by this puny fire you’ve built. Push some snow on it, and let’s go to my camp.”
“That’s very nice of you, but I really need to get to the Crag as soon as possible. I have to warn the folks.”
“Oh now you rest your mind Mr. Emmet. The Song is still bein’ sung and things ain’t as dire as you seem to think. At least not yet. We’ll head out from my place in the mornin’ long before it gets light. Gotta be back in case my hubby shows.”
“Is Mr. Worth…”
“Not that I know of, but a girl can hope…ha, ha, ha!”
Otter turned and walked into the darkness. Emmet turned, doused the fire and tried to make out the direction she and Emerson had headed. The night was wearing on, and he had a lot to do.
“The Song is still being sung…” he whispered.
“Stop jabberin’ to yerself like a crazy catameroll and c’mon boy!”
Chapter 4
It was very cold and nearly still as they sailed into Crag Harbor in Otter’s nifty little boat.
“Did you build this?” he’d asked Otter when Emmet first glimpsed it dimly back on the dark beach of Muscat Island’s south shore.
“Me, build something that cragful? Are you a complete deer drop? No, I traded a lifetime supply of Muscat jam to a a Murian boat grower for it. Nice fella, name of Steiner. Had one of them beatific smiles, seemed at peace with it all. Asked him if he wanted to marry me too, like I do; he wasn’t buying, just smiled back. Anyway, a beauty, eh?”
“Blazes, I’ll say! What does that say on the bow?”
“Scribes, boy! I don’t read Muirian! Or any other tongue, but I’m told it says, ‘The Song is Still Being Sung’ just like it does on all them wonderwood tree towers on Muir.”
The skiff’s progress through the cold water that morning with minimal sail unfurled was astounding too. Otter seemed to hardly move the tiller as the narrow but sturdy seamless wooden craft she called, The Kingfisher flashed through the water with barely a wake, in a light wind. The skiff even had a little cabin below deck, but watching this little craft in action had been too much for Emmet to resist and he stayed topside, cold as it was. It seemed they had barely left Muscat, a solid 15 nautical miles from the mainland, when they were streaming towards the harbor dock in the dawn with Emerson standing on the bow like a masthead. They could hardly have made it faster in Mert’s firemage. Speaking of which, there was Mert standing on the concrete municipal dock, seemingly in one piece and standing next to him, too close, said Emmet’s somewhat jealous heart, was Odaya. And next to her, Mr. Worth. Most of all, what was conspicuously absent, was any sense of alarm in the town, any gathering of townspeople, flyboys, peacekeepers, or military footman. Didn’t they know the war had started?
As they neared the dock, Mert stepped forward to catch the lines from Emmet, who during his childhood, had spent a day or two with his long lost father, Ernest Sourcer, fishing in the bay and knew a thing or two about boats. Emerson, still acting the masthead, gave a low growl, and the warmly bundled and decidedly circular form of Mr. Worth backpedaled for a moment before stiffening his shoulders. Emmet could swear from the wag of Emerson’s tail and the drop of his jaw that he was laughing.
“Hello husband o’ mine!” Otter called out bounding from the Kingfisher and throwing her arms around Mr. Worth, who quickly recoiled.
“Madam, please,” he said, wrinkling his nose behind his round glasses. “I thank you for your past kindnesses and for rescuing me from the likes of that tattered mange pile, but we are, once and for all, not husband and wife.”
“Um…” said Odaya. “according to my father, Mr. Worth…”
“Princess, please!”
So, things were coming out in the open. Nobody in Stony Crag had ever referred to Odaya, as anything but ‘Odie’, a humble everyday nickname that she, like her father, insisted upon. Nobody in Stony Crag even knew she was a princess, or that there was an Island of Muir for that matter. Emmet had long suspected that folks in Stony Crag didn’t know much of anything, and this all seemed to be a confirmation of that. Only later would he understand how uncharitable he was being.
“Mert, I’m glad to see you in one piece! The last time I saw you, you were running with a flaming wing from that flying saucer!”
“Oh that?” Mert grinned. “Old flyboy trick. I jettisoned some plasma and ignited it by backfiring the engine. Made just enough of a smoke screen to give me some room to move and made him think I was crippled. Then I headed off at 200 naughts low and sideways through the trees at Broke Bell Island, headed up the shoals and back to the air strip. When I came over the Crag he was nowhere in sight.”
“Blazes! But how come I don’t hear any alarms ringing? And how did you all know I was coming?”
“The song is still being sung,” said Odie, who smiled enigmatically at Emmet.
“As for the lack of alarm, Mr. Sourcer,” said Mr. Worth, “I believe the job was given to you; so sound it!”
“Besides,” said Odie,”word is we’ve got a day or so; the Alchemist’s forces have fallen back. So far, the Owls are doing a number on them, unless that attack of theirs was a feint.”
Emmet’s jaw dropped as he stared at the beautiful girl he thought he knew. She opened her mouth to speak again, but Emmet cut her off, “Blazes…how…why…”
Ode shot him a little smile.
Emmet sighed. “I know, ‘the song is still being sung’.”
“First things first,” said Mert. “You need to jog up to your office, file your story, then get over to my house in your runabout. We’re having breakfast with the ladies. Odie…er Princess…you and Mr. Worth are invited too.”
“Be delighted,” said Mr. Worth licking his chops. “The sisters’ oatmeal and venison sausage?”
“With pickled fishduck eggs I’m told,” said Mert, then looked at Otter with a mischievous smirk. “Uh…Mrs. Worth…”
“For the last time…” started Mr. Worth.
“Oh don’t you folks put yourselves out for the likes of Emerson and me! Besides, we’ve got to get back to Muscat before them Alchemist’s stones start flying again. Might have a time outrunnin’ em, though the Kingfisher would give it a whirl.” She quickly jumped back aboard, untying as she went and in a matter of seconds was back at the tiller and headed at an incredible pace back out into the deep water. “Bye, bye honeypot! See you next time!” Otter called to Mr. Worth.
“Blazes, Mert! We don’t have time to have breakfast with my Mom and your Mom! There’s a war on!”
“I told the ladies, Emmet, but all your Mom would say was, ‘Hurry causes worry.’”
Emmet shook his head. He didn’t really understand any of this, and yet at some core of him, there was a spark of jovial comprehension. And that was only serving to confuse him further. With a helpless shrug he said, “All right, I’m off. Meet you at the cottage.”
Emmet took off at a run up the hill to his office in the attic of the city hall just up from the pier. The others headed east along the shore road to the cottage where Emmet and Mert had both spent their childhood summers, and where their mothers now lived full time. Emmet’s mother Betty Lu, and Mert’s mother Betty Lynne Cragstone, had both grown up in Stony Crag. In fact, their family had a long history there, which both ladies always laughed off.
“Oh we’ve been here a long time,” Lu would say with a wave of a dish towel or ladle.
“Some of us longer than others,” Lynne would counter with a sardonic smile and a gleam in her eye aimed right at her older sister.
They had married two outsiders, Emmet’s father, Ernest Sourcer, a swarthy, bespectacled college professor who had moved up from Southport, in Ternlund across the Indosian sea from Odie’s homeland, and Henry David Bailey from an academy flyboy family in St. Martins. When the boys were small they’d been quite a band. Two jolly, beautiful wives with shimmering green eyes, homespun ways, and a startling native intelligence coupled with two educated outsiders.
Emmet remembered his father as being very serious. As being always fixated on what Emmet’s mother called his ‘important studies’. Then one day he’d gone on sabbatical to further those studies. Just where, was top secret, and if his mother knew where, she wasn’t telling. He’d never come back, and strangely, Betty Lu had never shed a tear. No amount of boyish heartbreak or whining, or later, reporter’s questioning had ever gotten Emmet any further intel. And in the meantime, Mert’s father had disappeared too. They now knew he was MIA from his secret missions for the Muirians. That was at least something. Emmet didn’t know what to think about his own father. What was Mom covering? Was he MIA too, or just a big pile of coalbear dung on some remote island? Or, worse, had he just left them because he didn’t care.
“Blazes,” Emmet said, as he started up the long stairway to his office thinking about all he’d learned and all that was still mysterious in the last 24 hours. “What in the world am I going to write?”
***
“Are you sure you really want to file this thing?” Katie Cratz, said through the phone from the main office in St. Martins. “Dad will blow a gasket!”
When she finished that question Emmet heard the sound of her tobacco striking her spittoon which she kept next to her desk. He remembered the first time he’d met this fellow cub reporter and been attracted to her perky smile and inviting torso. He’d asked why she had the spittoon next to her desk and she’d spat and grinned, “No reason.”
“When is your dad not ready to blow a gasket?” he said over the phone, half grinning at that memory.
“Good point, but this reads like a fairy story.”
“I know, but I swear to you, I have it from very reliable sources: the very ones mentioned.”
“There’s a king on an invisible island in the great lake who flies noiseless planes at supersonic speed, powered by something you’re calling ‘cragstone’, even though you and me both know the only mining going on in the Crag is the so-called ’Secret Mine Resort’ Big Bill Castini plans to build when Stony Crag becomes a metropolis, which is about as likely as silent supersonic planes and buildings that grow.”
Emmet sighed. “I know it sounds crazy, Katie, but I’m telling you this is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a 1,415 page synopsis of the…well…the history of the cosmos, that I’m wading through right now. I’m planning a series.”
“Okay, but Emmet…”
“Yeah, Katie?”
“Before you talk to Dad about all this, I’d get my resume handy.”
“Check.”
“See ya, cutie.”
“Miss your face, Katie.”
“Then Kiss more accurately next time, Sourcer,” she said dryly, and hung up.
Emmet smiled and wondered, even amidst all that had so recently happened, about that whole kissing and Katie prospect, grabbed his coat and hat, and headed for the door. “Now for my mom and Mert’s mom.”
***
For his mother and Aunt Lynne to move any more slowly around the ornate little kitchen, in ladling out the oatmeal, setting the sausage and eggs just so on everyone’s plate, or pouring their special family blend of Crag coffee, they would need to be dancing with Indosian sloths simultaneously.
“Mom!”
“Hurry makes worry,” Odie said giggling.
“Seriously, Aunt Lu,” Merton was saying between sips of the coffee.
“Now we’re ready!” said Betty Lynne.
“The song is still being sung,” said Mr. Worth making a circular motion above his head with a raised index finger.
Emmet’s Mom looked at Mr. Worth with a smile.
“Isn’t it great to hear that blessing again, Lu?” said her sister.
“Been a long time, Lynne.”
“Too long.”
“Hurry…”
“Makes worry,” the boys chimed in and began to dig into breakfast.
Emmet, noticed, though, that neither of the ladies were wearing their characteristic smiles.
“Ladies, the duck eggs are exquisite!” said Mr. Worth.
“File your story?” Mert asked Emmet his mouth full of sausage.
“Merton…with your mouth full?” Mert’s mother admonished.
“Sorry.”
“Blazes, yes, Mert!”
“Emmet, language!” Emmet’s mother admonished.
“Sorry. But who’s going to believe my story, Mert? Do you see any of Dark Star’s planes in the sky? Any of those Alchemist’s Stones? Any explosions? Any invisible islands which are really ships floating up to the peer? Everybody’s going to think it’s a fantasy!”
“They won’t soon enough,” Odie said.
Emmet wasn’t going to ask her how she knew that, yet. He looked up and noticed his mother had paused in her labors to stare out the window. She straightened her house dress, removed her apron and started for the back door, opening the screen. “Emmet, it’s that nice young Cratz girl from St. Martins.”
“She got a chew in?”
“That’s enough out of you, Merton!”
“Sorry, mom.”
Emmet quickly gobbled some sausage, which was truly hard to resist and headed for the door.
“Oh please invite her in, Emmet. There’s plenty more.”
“Mom, I’m pretty sure I have to go.”
“Nonsense! Hurry makes worry! Hello, Ms. Cratz, care for breakfast?”
Katie called from her convertible, “Afraid I’ll have to take a raincheck, Mrs. Sourcer! My pop’s fuming and he wants to see Emmet right now! Made me drive here fast as a jack bunny from the office!”
“Well, all right dear. But don’t be a stranger. Emmet, why don’t you bring Katie over for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, do!” said Odie, flashing that enigmatic smile.
“That’s enough out of you, Princess!” Emmet said heading for the door.
“Emmet, mind your manners!” Betty Lu said, blowing her son an embarrassing kiss from the doorway as he raced down the walk.
No sooner had Emmet’s bottom hit the passenger seat than Katie gunned the convertible’s engine and roared off at top speed the whole length of the 15 mile drive west to St. Martins.
“Pretty mad, huh?”
“What do you think?”
“Do you believe the story?”
“I believe you do. And I put in a word to save your job.”
“What did ya say?”
“‘Please.’”
When they arrived at the offices of the St. Martins Light, all of the reporters were huddled low over their desks tapping away at their typewriters. Nobody was shooting the breeze, grabbing their hats to go out on some breezy assignment, interviewing gorgeous members of the opposite or same sex in lengthy and or amorous interviews at their desks, or otherwise goofing off. Jimmy Cratz, all six foot eight two hundred and fifty pounds of his former heavy weight wrestler frame of him, was standing in the middle of the staccato fray behind his desk chomping mightily on a cigar, under his bald dome and eyeing up the door that Emmet was now passing through.
“Sourcer!!!”
“Jimmy, I can…”
“You can what? You pusillanimous jack bird? Explain to me why you took a sojourn out into a frosty no man’s land with your deranged flyboy cousin and came back with a story your mother wouldn’t believe?”
“Oh she believes it…every…”
“Close your gibbet you malodorous magpie! If I want nursery school stories I’ll send you over to Amherst Elementary, and have you interview the 4 year olds! What in the world did you think you were doing filing such a lugubrious line of seagull hockey? I have half a mind to fire you on the spot! I set you loose there to see what you could do on your own, on your home turf, in that barren wet wasteland under that monotonous rock and all I’ve gotten so far is one fair to middlin’ story about a third rate fire…”
“It won awards, Dad, made the national wires…”
“Can it young lady or I’ll take away your chew!”
“Soon as you stop smoking, Dad!”
“Katie!”
“Father!”
“…and the only other decent thing you’ve given me, Sourcer, is some tidbit about a mangy bunch of half wit dogs on a frozen island, and now this odious, ectoplasmic, concoction, about Indosian kings from invisible Muir Island and flying phantoms and nefarious alchemists…”
BOOM!
A massive explosion had just sounded from the south, the direction of the St. Martins Airbase.
Others quickly followed. Suddenly all of the phones in the newsroom began ringing simultaneously.
A moment later a tall, dark, handsome figure in military dress was striding through the front door and straight towards Cratz’s massive desk. Jimmy removed his cigar from his mouth and involuntarily slumped into his heavily padded swivel chair.
“Dad?” said Katie Cratz, holding a phone in her outstretched hand, her eyes the size of Betty Lu Sourcer’s coffee cup saucers, “The President is on the phone.”
“In a minute, Katie,” said Jimmy staring at the apparition of the very man, the very king, Sourcer had described in his ‘ectoplasmic concoction’. “Sourcer…what are you waiting for? King Dark Star is, I’m sure, a busy man, and I believe, unless I miss my guess, he has a seat in his silent supersonic owl from which you can view the battle. Go get me a story!”
Chapter 5
Odie Kontala, Princess of Muir was biting her lip. She looked out from the ancient stone building which the locals called ‘The Trapper’s Cabin’ but which she and all of Muir knew as The Portal of the Crag grown from the living rock beneath. The view was cold, out over the great waters. The wind was coming in hard from the north, but this was not what worried her.
“Something’s wrong.”
Ralph Henry Worth 7,777th Scribe of the Crag, sat on the little stone outcrop known as the Scribe’s Seat, before the somewhat larger outcrop known as the Scribe’s Table, “What is it, Princess?”
“‘Odie’, please, Mr. Worth.”
“Ralph then, my dear. What troubles you?”
“There are words, and they’re true, but something’s not right.”
“The words, please…Odie,” Worth said holding an ink stained eagle feather in his hand as he hunched over the table and his ancient writing pad.
“‘Flaw under stones’.”
“Interpretation?”
“I’m not exactly sure…Ralph.”
“You are shard of the Crag, Odie. You know.”
“My training isn’t complete…”
“You know.”
Odie sighed, “There’s a seam, a design flaw in the underbelly of those saucers, I think. If the firemages pinpoint it, they can blow them out of the sky with their cannons, and the Owls can use it as a fulcrum to force them north with blasts of crag plasma…but…”
“But?”
“It makes no sense. The Alchemist’s design are the work of a master engineer. He doesn’t leave flaws.”
“Nonetheless.”
“Yes, nonetheless it’s there and we need to use it.”
“Tell your father.”
“I just did. Along with my doubts.”
“We’ll have to get word through radio phone to the St. Martins Tower. We could do that by alert ing the Crag Air Strip first. Princess, you can run there in moments.”
“No need. Mert already knows. He’ll tell the others…”
Worth’s sizable brow wrinkled, “Can Mert hear the song of the Crag now?”
“No,” Odie smiled. “but he can hear my songs.”
“Does he know that’s what they are?”
“No, the silly boy. He’ll think he figured it out himself. And I’ll let him.”
***
“Where is that caterwauling kid with my story?” said Jimmy Cratz again standing with folded arms chomping his cigar in the clattering newsroom of The Light.
“You might want to cut Sourcer some slack,” said Katie. “He only left an hour ago, and it might take longer than that to win an air war.”
“He’s not a participant, he’s an observer, blast it to the wide green moon! No good newspaper man takes a side. He’s got to remain objective.”
A veteran reporter scratching his unkempt mane of fly away gray hair approached with a clipboard. “Here’s the casualties in town, chief.”
Jimmy sobered for a moment. “Grim, Billy. Grim.”
“Still think we shouldn’t be takin’ sides, Dad?”
He leaned in towards his daughter and whispered, “I know you love him. I’m worried about him too, but we’ve got jobs.”
With a slightly quivering lower lip, Katie turned back to her typewriter.
***
The only sound was the wind outside. There were no dials. There were no radio phones. There was no steering column. There were no cannons, no windshield, no hatch, no ladders, no nothing other than two rather ornate wooden chairs with The Song is Still Being Sung, inscribed in Muirian on the armrests and across the seat back. Emmet was surprising himself, through his studies of The Tale. He was starting to recognize a good deal of Muirian. A great deal really. How had he gotten so good, so fast?
There was another inscription across the roof of the largely open cockpit. When, amidst the explosions erupting near the offices of The Light, Emmet and Dark Star had climbed through the empty front window into the king’s owl, and the owl had then silently rushed at incredible speed into the flak marked sky, Emmet, in shock, had absently asked what the inscription said.
Dark Star looked over with a grin and said, “‘Watch your head.’”
Emmet, a moment later, had translated the words as actually saying, “Love for all is the wisdom of the Crag.”
And now they were rushing at an alarmingly vertical angle to higher space. Beneath, Emmet could see the lines of firemages heading headlong at the Alchemist’s stones. More than one mage, and several of the climbing owls had already erupted in fireballs and plunged into the icy water far below.
“Shouldn’t we be, down there?”
Dark Star, unperturbed glanced grimly at Emmet, “We’ll be there soon enough.”
Suddenly the lead mage executed a barrel roll and dropped beneath the horizontal wall of stones firing off its cannons with shots pinpointed at a spot on the undersides of six of the Alchemist’s saucer shaped crafts. All six erupted and vaporized, with no signs of pilots or parachutes, only particles falling to the water.
“That’s Mert who did that!”
“It is indeed. Smart boy. Wonder how he knows.”
The rest of the remaining mages were following his lead and stones were dropping like flies as the fighters made their pass through the Alchemists ranks then banked back south from above to make another run.
“Now its our turn.” said Dark Star calmly.
As if by a shared command, the owls dove beneath the level of the stones at an impossible angle in impossible silence, then floated as one for a moment in midair angling upwards at the approaching stones.
“What…” Emmet’s word was barely out when he felt rather than heard something rush out from the owls like a flying wall of granite. The air left his lungs with the collective blast from owls, his eyes began to water and his mouth dried. He couldn’t speak but look questioningly at Dark Star.
“Crag plasma. Powerful stuff.”
The stones before them had suddenly disappeared, but in the distance to the north he could suddenly see them: dots tumbling northward like windblown houseflies.
“Blazes!”
The owls calmly headed off in pursuit. Through all of this, Emmet noted, he and Dark Star had never been so much as jostled, despite the fact that the seats had no restraints and the front window had no shield. When Emmet thought of it, he didn’t even remember his hair being mussed. And with that in mind, why did Dark Star wear the protective uniform of the Air Corps? Certainly not vanity. Solidarity? When this was over, that would be a lesser query of the whole new round of questions to ask Dark Star.
***
“How’d you know to hit them in the belly seam Cap? They’re running now!” came the exuberant words of Lieutenant Margie Pedderson over the radio phone from her mage in position immediately off Mert’s starboard wing.
“They are, but take it easy lieutenant,” those things are still danger…Whoa!”
“What in the flaming bullfeathers was that, captain?” came the call from Matt Critzhoff off Mert’s port wing.
“I don’t know, chums, but it came from the owls, the North Waters lov’em; now let’s get after those infernal stones!”
The firemages roared off in pursuit, but the blasts from the owls had propelled the stones so rapidly to the north that all that remained were a few dozen stragglers which hadn’t taken the full brunt of the crag plasma.
Newly named Sky Captain Mert Bailey, and Lieutenants Pedderson and Crtzoff led the way bobbing and weaving at break neck speed among the stones and blasting the stragglers from the sky into streams of vapor.
Still, there were no parachutes.
“Was that Dave Kingston I saw bail out, Margie?”
“Yeah, Cap.”
“Mark it for St. Martins Rescue.”
“Firm.”
“No chute from Fuller’s mage though,” said Critzhoff. “Nothing but pieces.”
“I saw… Fuel low. No way to catch those stones. The Owls have ascended and turned. Time to head back.”
“Right, Cap.”
“Firm that, Cap.”
“Leader, coming about.”
Acknowledgements of the order rang out as the Mages turned south for home.
***
The St. Martins Light
“the word from the shores of the big water”
Day 11, First of the Cold, Year 77
115th Millenium
Air Corps and ‘Murian Sky Force’ Strike Back at Forces
of ‘Alchemist’ in Successful Counter Attack: 72 Casualties Reported
Exclusive to the Light
by Staff Junior Reporter
Emmet Sourcer and the Light Staff
SOMEWHERE OVER THE GREAT LAKE —Combined forces of the United Air Corps and the newly revealed Murian Sky Force struck back Thirdday following the unprovoked attack Secondday by forces of the so-called and mysterious Alchemist. The counter attack seems to have silenced the onslaught, driving enemy forces north and perhaps as far back as their stronghold reportedly under the Pole, according to military sources and eye witness accounts. Not, however, before Alchemist forces took the lives of 72 Air Corp and Murian pilots combined, wounding 17 others. Casualties among the Alchemist forces were unknown at press time. Today’s casualties bring the combined death toll to134 deaths among military and civilians since the conflict stated Firstday.
“It’s a first step and only that,” said King Dark Star of Muir Island. “If we know anything about the Alchemist’s forces, it’s that they will certainly be back. We have been fighting this battle in secret for nearly a century.”
His Highness stressed that while this battle may be new to the people of the north, St. Martins and Stony Crag in particular, it is an ancient conflict involving countless battles and cease fires to those of Muir.
SEE ATTACHED SYNOPSIS OF ‘THE TALE’ PART I OF A 10 PART SERIES EXCLUSIVE TO THE LIGHT. BY EMMET SOURCER
————
SEE ALSO LITERARY REVIEW OF ’THE TALE’ PAGE 10B BY LIGHT BOOK CRITIC ANTONIA WILDER
—————–
SEE ALSO “LOCAL THEOLOGICAL REACTION TO ‘THE TALE’ PAGE 13 C BY JUNIOR REPORTER KATHERINE CRATZ
———————–
ALSO SEE “PROFILE OF THE MURIANS, THEIR WORLD, AND THEIR KING” EXCLUSIVE TO THE LIGHT BY EMMET SOURCER AND KATHERINE CRATZ PAGE 2A
—————
LIST OF CASUALTIES PAGE 3A
——————–
ALSO SEE “INSIDE AN OWL” BY EMMET SOURCER PAGE 2A
High General Brundidge commented through a staff press release, “We have long been aware of the Murians and in cooperation with their forces. They have done great service to The North and the United Air Corps for many years. In the past, the nature of our association was best kept secret for the safety of all concerned, but the magnitude of the recent attack has now made that impossible.”
President Rosenberg, commented, “Presidents of the North have, for over 200 years been apprised of the actions of the Murians. They are our true allies in the Great Lake region and beyond, and have no ulterior motives. They seek only the harmony which the Alchemist’s forces have shattered with this attack.”
In a high altitude battle, the United Air Corps and their 600 fighting firemages took the flying saucer like ’Alchemist Stones’ head on with high velocity attacks by corpsmen from St. Martins led by Stony Crag’s lone corpsman Merton Bailey who first encountered Alchemist Forces over the Great Lake on Firstday morning. Bailey, is the son of Corps veteran Henry David Bailey, who had been aiding the Murian forces in secret missions for years according to King Dark Star. The elder Bailey has been listed as missing in action for six years, according to allied forces spokespersons.
“The stones don’t have our maneuverability,” said the younger Bailey, who reportedly shot down 17 of the saucer crafts singlehandedly “but their starburst weapons are very dangerous. We lost some good flyers today.”
Aiding and at times leading the attack against Alchemist forces were the Owls of the Murian Sky Force. Powered by a mysterious force known as ‘cragstone’, (outlined in The Tale Synopsis) the Owls swooped down on the more linear stones from high altitudes unleashing invisible ‘crag plasma’ and propelling the stones north, disabling without destroying the crafts.
“They have their ways. We have ours,” said Brundidge.
“Peace is our goal,” said King Dark Star. “Force is always a last resort for us as it is for the Air Corps.”
The Owls operate absolutely noiselessly, and clearly confounded the Alchemist Forces, especially following the high powered air corps counter attack, according to numerous military observers, and this first hand observer.
Mlitary force spokespersons emphasized the need for vigilance among citizens of both St. Martins, Stony Crag, and the entire North. Groundforce Footmen and Peacekeepers are on the alert and patrolling in both municipalities according to military and municipal spokespersons.
“Another attack could come at any time,” said Brundidge.
***
“How’s the soup?” Lynne asked Lu in the cottage kitchen.
“A little more, pepper I think. And we maybe should cook a bear brisket. Those boys and Odie will be hungry when they get back here.”
“How do you think it’s going?”
“Yes…pepper…what? Oh…well, the song…”
“…is still being sung.”
Chapter 6
In the press room at the United Forces Event Center in Domestown, Communication Chancellor Daryl DeSale was shaking the last hands of reporter/friends, and giving his aides final instructions before heading home for the day. He walked quickly through the connecting door from the press room to his private office which was one short, private flight upstairs. He looked at the ticker of the day’s events, mostly rehash of the days events at this point.
“Good.”
The weather had turned chilly, but nowhere near as cold as at the Crag, where the action was taking place. He could see ice crystals forming on the trees two floors below. He knew that 600 miles to the north, depending on the level of cold on the Great Lake, the offensive might or might not take place. Blizzard warnings had been issued for the so called, “Day of the Song” on Muir Island. Would the King be willing to press on into the snow to pursue the offensive? The Muirians were hard to figure. They would go to war, but their intention was never to annihilate. Their intention, outlined in their own communiques, was always to educate. And if the King and his council decided less aggression would better educate the Alchemists, they would certainly back off, especially with the weather giving them an extra nudge. If King and Council, made that decision, it was all up, at least for now. Word should be coming soon, as the Muirians would no doubt want the matter decided before the holiday on Sixthday.
His phone buzzed. It was the switchboard. He pressed the flashing button.
“Holding for General Brundidge.”
“Go ahead.”
“Desale?”
“General.”
“King and Council have given the okay.”
“That’s good news!”
“By the Crag it is, as the Muirians say. Get your people back in there for another press conference right now, Daryl.”
“On it already, sir. Any particular issues need clarification?”
“No, Chancellor. You know what I say. Say it for me.”
“Will do sir.”
“Out.”
DeSale made several quick phone calls to contacts and aids to arrange the calling of everyone back to the press room. He laughed. He could hear the moaning already, but it would subside. This was a big story. That Jimmy Cratz and that boy Sourcer had done quite a job on the write up in The Light. Really ringing the gong. “What a green berry that Sourcer is.” He chuckled to himself for a moment, walked to the office door, looked both ways in the hallway, then closed and locked the door. He then pulled the three window shades tight.
He walked to the east end of the room and removed a floor board in the far corner next to a filing cabinet, by pressing and turning a slightly raised nail head, which was actually a latch. From the space created by the removal of the board, he retrieved a small, sophisticated looking radio phone. Glancing towards the door, then turning his back toward the west wall he pressed a code into the call button. When the button light flashed he spoke into the receiver, “Wind and Water in place. Alert Fat Man and Friends. Message: Bait the hook, then stir the pot.” He clicked out, stashed the radio phone, and readied himself for the press conference.
“What a green berry!”
***
“It’s out of the question, Katie.” Jimmy Cratz’s voice was uncharacteristically high, and uncertain. In addition he was pacing, as opposed to his usual statuesque pose by his desk.
Some of the reporters were nudging each other and leaning in from their surrounding stations. They loved it when the boss’s daughter got going.
Katie Cratz spat, a ferocious wad of gum, tobacco, and seeds into her spittoon. It rang hollowly. She pulled a lovely lock of her flaming red hair from her eyes and shook it about, tying back the skimpy excess with a rubber band.
“Katherine, I’ll call your mother, if this nonsense doesn’t stop!”
“And what will you say, Dad? ‘We can’t let Katie do her job because it’s too dangerous? You don’t seem to have that trouble with Emmet.”
“That’s different…”
“How? Because I’m a woman?”
“Katie you’re barely a girl…”
There were oohs and aaahs in the newsroom.
Jimmy shot a ferocious look at his reporters and said, “You piliated woodpeckers better start pecking in about two seconds if you want to keep your jobs!”
Suddenly the room was full of the clatter of typewriters.
Jimmy leaned close to his daughter who turned her back. He clenched down on his cigar.
“Kate, you’re my only child…”
“Other girls my age were in cockpits the other day. Some of them died.”
“Yes, Katherine, some of them died…”
Katie turned around and locked eyes with her father. They stared each other down for a moment or two. At last the giant wrestler, who had faced masked and/or armored fiends in the commercial ring for 15 years, looked away, from his feisty, pixieish daughter.
“I’ll talk to your mom.”
“No, Dad. You’re an editor. I’m a reporter. I’ve been writing the sidebars for Emmet’s stories right along, and this one requires me to go to the invisible Island of Muir, and accompany the troops as the Island drops anchor and heads north. Emmet can’t do it all. He’ll need the sidebars, and they can only be found on the Island of Muir, where the troops are going. It’s that simple, and you know it.”
“Katie, it’s not that I don’t think you’ve got the stuff. You’re my daughter, how could you not have the stuff? It’s just that…”
“If you say no, I’ll drop my credentials at the Bureau of Fair Press Practice, and file a grievance… Wouldn’t that be a story…”
“You wouldn’t…”
“I’ll go right now. And when this is over, Emmet will write the story of how the famous editor won’t let his daughter go to war because she’s a girl. You know he will. Even if you fire him.”
Jimmy’s eyes narrowed, but Katie detected just a note of admiration in them. “You don’t dare…”
“Watch me.”
Jimmy blew three tremendous streams of smoke into the newsroom. Katie tucked a new wad of chew, gum, and seeds under her bottom lip.
“Fine…your Mom already threatened me this morning anyway.” He sighed. Then looked about with suspicious eyes across the clacking typewriters. “You and your mother are a pair.” Jimmy blew yet another furious cloud of smoke across the newsroom.
“By the way, Dad, Big Bill Castini is in your office. He came in when you were at the Mayor’s.”
“What?! What does that steaming pile of bear scat want?”
“Don’t know, but I imagine it’s something about his Secret Mine Resort, he’s been spouting off all over town that the Crag is going to dwarf St. Martins in both population and new construction now that the word is out about the healing power of the rock.” She smiled a malicious smile.
“Healing powers of… What has that got to do with me?”
“He’s made it known he’s going to offer you in particular an insider’s deal on prime real estate near what he’s calling The Castini Crag…I believe those were his words…if The Light will give him a front page story on the healing powers The Tale ascribes to ‘his properties on the escarpment…’
For the love of…Katie this is not the day… I don’t know what to make of The Tale yet, but nowhere in there and I’ve read all 1,400 plus pages thrice, does it espouse the healing powers of anything but familial love, individual freedom, and world wide good fellowship. And the very idea that that rancid windbag would offer me a bribe in connection with so pristine a belief system… Go in there and tell him…no wait. I’ll tell that bloated, mucus brained chipmunk what he can do with…” The mammoth ex-professional wrestler, anger muting his erudite capacity for speech, was suddenly stilled with fury; then, clenching his mammoth fists, he turned ominously for his private office door. All eyes except Katie’s looked away. She had to see this. Jimmy stalked towards his office nearly tearing the hinges off the door when he opened it, then slammed it so hard that the newsroom vibrated as though St. Martins were under attack again. A moment later following some muffled words and muted shouting, a kind of explosion did occur. It took the form of a gargantuan crash as all 300 pounds of Big Bill Castini was catapulted through the plate glass window of Jimmy’s office crashing onto the newsroom floor right in front of Katie’s desk.Two of Castini’s dark suited goons rushed in from the outer office reaching for concealed weapons, and helped Castini to his feet. Furiously picking up his characteristic white fedora with the red feather, Castini brushed the shattered glass from his massive white suit.
“Put the heaters away boys,” said Castini, his eyes cold and dark. “That old wrestler don’t know what’s good for him.” He glanced at Katie. “…or his family.”
Katie spat her newly installed wad of tobacco, gum, and seeds onto the lapel Big Jim had just brushed clean. His red face went all aquiver, then slowly subsided to deadly white.
Castini raised his hand to stop his men from taking action.
He said quietly, “Your father was offered a prime real estate deal and rejected it. So now, we’re gonna give him the business.”
He spun on his heels and moved surprisingly quickly towards the newsroom door, just as Jimmy took a ferocious step from his office doorway, then stopped, puffing furiously on his cigar. watching Castini and his men exit.
***
On the dais in the Great Hall of Muir, President Rosenberg had just finished his address to the people of the world.
Emmet, who was an honored guest in the press pool today, had a fine view as Rosenberg echoed his soon to be famous words in his equally famous stentorian tones, “Two great nations, allied in sacred morality and ethical authority, will never permit the powers of a shadowy potentate to strike liberty from this world!”
Katie sitting next to Emmet, by his invitation, was half filled with competitive rage, half filled with sincere admiration for Emmet. Of this, Emmet alive with the scene around him, was also perfectly aware. His former romantic thoughts about Odie, were suddenly dimmed. He noticed that for once, Katie had neglected to put in her chew. It suddenly occurred to him, that the habit might be purely for her father’s benefit, and for the benefit of any man who thought he could outsmart, overlook, or overmaster Katie Cratz.
The cheers were fading away, as King Dark Star, who had expressed his sentiments earlier in the more cryptic, “Love for all is the wisdom of the Crag,” again took the dais. He called lieutenants Pedderson and Critzhoff forward to receive The Order of Muir, a medal bestowed on only the bravest in battle. Next he called Captain Merton Bailey to the dais to receive, his honor.
“Captain Bailey,” he said addressing the thoroughly humbled Mert, “having seen from a bird’s eye view (at the comment, there were a few good natured titters in the audience, as Dark Star had known there would be) of your actions in battle, I bestow upon you the Cragstone Crescent.” The audience gasped. Never in the living memory of Muir had an outsider been awarded The Crescent. With it came lifeline citizenship, that is, any descendent of Mert’s from this day forward would be a citizen of Muir, and have free choice of housing, schooling, and membership on the King’s Council. Only 9 times in the 150 millennia of recorded Muirian history, had an outsider been so honored. In addition, the bell itself, composed, of compressed Crag plasma, was said to give the wearer extraordinary powers. Each crescent was designed for the wearer by a master plasma horticulturalist. The wearer would receive gifts, suited only to him or her. Emmet took in a breath.
“Huh?” Katie whispered.
“I’ll tell ya later.”
“Big deal, huh?”
“Page 639, third paragraph. Yeah, very big deal.”
Katie shot Emmet an inquisitive and slightly jealous look. When did he get so smart? “Huh, missed that one.”
Standing on the Dais and bowing to receive the Crescent, Emmet thought, Mert looked much more terrified than he had on the day when he first faced the Alchemists.
“And now,” Dark Star said, in somber tones, “with the week’s events, which have so shattered our mutual peace, calmed for a time, the moment has arrived for us to commemorate this Day of the Song, by expressing the Note of the Crag.”
Those non-Muirians present were about to see something none such had seen for two thousand years. Emmet was well aware of this. He wondered how many others knew. He wondered how many of the non-Muirians realized how thoroughly their world had changed or that this was not the first time such a change had occurred or even the 101st time. He wondered too, how many of them realized that the Muirians were not foreigners at all, but only part of the people of the World who had been forced to hide themselves from persecution, by forces like the Alchemists, no doubt allied with Wildark. Lastly, he wondered how many understood that the City of Muir had once not been an invisible island at all, but a vital metropolis surrounding The Crag and the so called ’trappers cabin’, which was actually the Portal of the Crag. What was about to happen, was a commemoration of all that had come before. The song was still being sung.
Odaya, escorted by her mother Queen Mochalla, both dressed in sleek white robes stepped to the dais. Emmet was struck by the fact that their dress was simple, their hair was tied back by ordinary white ribbon, and there was no bowing, no groveling amongst the populace. Emmet wondered if the Royalty of Muir had always been so gracious. Judging from his reading of The Tale, he supposed they had. Odaya and Mochalla closed their eyes and then Odie sang, the note. It was a single exultant, ethereal note echoing in the mighty rafters of the living wood of the towering great hall, and momentarily it was joined in a harmony provided, by Mochalla. Emmet’s eyes, along with those of all non Muirians began to tear up then spilled over as a hidden room behind the dais was suddenly revealed by the sunlight from a suddenly opened portal high in the distant ceiling focused directly on the space. The revealed room was filled with a thousand fold choir dressed in the ordinary street clothes of the Muirians. The choir now began its own mighty and multitudinous harmony filling the great hall with sound. Every voice enhanced in its own unique way the opening note of Odaya. Emmet heard hard bitten Katie gasp. The myriad harmony lasted, one, two, three moments, then abruptly ceased, at the very height of its magnificence. And then, one beat later, every Muirian in the Hall spoke, “The song is still being sung.”
Suddenly, on que, every Muirian filed quickly, silently out of the hall and went back to his or her daily routine.
Emmet, Katie, and the other reporters sat stunned, as did President Rosenberg, Merton, and the whole company of air corps. Eventually, the visiting citizens of the North wandered out of the hall as well, and stood enraptured staring to the north as the great island that was a ship pulled up anchor and began moving in the direction of the Pole, and the war ahead.
Merton found Odaya and family near the bow, and seeing a question in his eyes, she took him aside aside, while the local dignitaries now headed back to the mainland by owl. Her royal duties were now done, and she could be simple Odie again.
“I have a question for you Odie,” Mert managed to get out, then added a trembling smile.
“What’s that?” she countered, playing along.
“Why didn’t you ever try out for the Stony Crag High School Choir?”
Chapter 7
The City of Muir, on the Island of Muir, was not really an island, as the world is not really a world, but actually, in both cases, a ship; one traveling north into worse weather and inevitable battle, the other through the infinite cosmos towards the Crag only knows what. Deep inside the city walls of the Island of Muir one did not feel the great ship’s movement, especially not on a still day like this. From the great tree towers of Muir, this morning, Emmet and Katie, when not looking deep into each other’s eyes, had seen a chilly view of the lake, with the deep waters looking more like and becoming more like ice the closer they got to the Pole. They’d sent numerous profiles of Muirian and Air Corps warriors home by radio phone. The’d done a photo tour of the island and teletyped that home as well. They’d done stories on each member of the royal family, the wildlife of the Great Lake, an account of the Day of the Song Ceremony, and of the speeches of the President and King Dark Star. They’d done the world’s shortest interview with the boat grower named Steiner, whom Emmet remembered Otter had mentioned.
“Could you tell me how the process of boat growing works?” Emmet had tried in that old man’s garden.
Beatific smile.
“Just a general overview, not trade secrets,” Katie tried, turning on her plentiful charms.
Beatific smile.
Otter had pretty much nailed it with her assessment. You weren’t going to charm a Murian craftsman. Very nice fellow, though, they both agreed. So many of the Muirians were like that, Emmet had noticed: friendly, unassuming, salt of the earth. If you were looking for gossip or boasting, you’d come to the wrong place. They were from a very old culture. One with traditions that would baffle almost anyone Emmet had ever known. And they had seen dark times. Talking to the Muirians made Emmet feel very, very young. Something was growing in him, though. Ever since he’d set foot on Muir. Ever since he started to read The Tale. It was as though there were things that he’d always known, that were coming back to him. He could hear Jimmy Cratz scoffing at him now. “You simple minded muscat! Don’t let those islanders turn your head around! Get back to your job!”
He was beginning to wonder what his job actually was.
Anyway, in the past two weeks, he and Katie had exhausted all possible journalistic endeavors and so they had taken a day to be lovers, strolling about the great city amidst the snowflakes, and chilled air, and also, as now, down the great hallways under the towering wooden ceilings. They didn’t notice much of this grandeur, because they were just coming to the realization that they were in love.
“I’ve noticed you haven’t had a chew in in a couple days.”
“Would you prefer I did?”
“Um…no is that all right?”
She grinned and pulled back a crimson strand of hair from her eyes. “I don’t mind. You probably figured out I mostly do it to irk Dad.”
“How is Jimmy?”
“Same old dad. Radio phoned him last night. He was grumbling about our stories being too fanciful.”
“Hard not to make them that way here.”
“Uh huh.”
“Ultima biochre coifia denna cril otuf lov.”
For a second Katie let out a little gasp, moving closer to him, “Come again?”
“Your hair is the color of love.”
She sidled towards him, touched his chin lightly, and for the seventeenth time that day— Emmet was keeping track— they kissed.
When they parted, Katie grinned at him still very close, still looking very directly into his eyes. She whispered, “Keep talking like that and I’ll put a chew in again. What would my Dad say?” She suddenly, moved back a bit and looked him over. “And since when do you know Muirian?”
“Since now.”
“How much of it?”
“Um…most of it, I think.”
Katie stared at him hard for a few more moments. “How exactly does that work?”
Emmet shook his head. “I don’t know really. Worries me a little. Mr. Worth, er, The Scribe, says he’s never seen anything like it.”
“There you are, Mr. Sourcer. Miss Clatz.” Ralph Henry Worth waddled his small frame down the parquet floors beside the mammoth windows which revealed still more tree towers and blue, blue sky.
He caught up to them, and was obviously pleased about something. It still amazed Emmet to realize that his grumpy old English teacher, who until a few months ago, he felt rather sad for, his being an old bachelor with no prospects but more stacks of papers to grade and all, had all this time been one of the most important people on the World. The chief guardian in charge of a document that transcended history.
“I suppose the two of you believe you have already seen and written about all of the wonders of the island. Well, there’s one more. Follow me.”
Worth increased his pace and headed them to the right down a narrow corridor with towering walls on either side, then up a spiral staircase, which by the time they had ascended 14 floors was giving Emmet the same feeling he sometimes had driving up the switchback to the Trappers Cabin…make that The Portal of the Crag. At the top of the stairs in an unobtrusive nook, Worth stopped and sang, not badly, a single note, similar though far from equal to the one Odie had sung on the Day of the Song. A small door opened before them.
“Ooooh, I like it.” said Katie. “Mystery. This story, whatever it is, is mine, Sourcer!”
Emmet chuckled, but his interest was peaked. “Mr. Worth…”
“Prepare, youngsters, to be amazed.”
“Worth ducked his head, which wasn’t that far from the floor to begin with, under a very low arch. Katie, then Emmet did likewise.”
In the dimness, at first all Emmet could make out was a sense of enormous space. Then, as his eyes adjusted he realized that what he was looking at was a room, the size of the great hall, entirely filled with bookshelves.
“A library?” Emmet managed.
Worth clicked his tongue. “Yes, I suppose, in the same sense that you might say The Great Lake is a body of water. “This, my friends, is the Great Bibliotheca of Muir. There are several rooms beyond this one, all this size or larger. Can you guess what is contained in this room?”
Katie whose eyes were very wide, stared around in the dimness. “It makes my head spin just looking at it.”
Emmet, felt an unaccountable sense of certainty. “This is The Tale isn’t it…?” And before Mr. Worth could explain further Emmet added “…complete, in Muirian, 150,077 volumes. The last one is incomplete, of course. Everything in this room and in many of the others, just The Tale.”
Worth stared at Emmet. A slight look of disappointment on his face. “Yes…has someone…”
“I’m sorry to spoil the surprise, Mr. Worth…er…Honored Scribe. I was compelled somehow. I just knew it. Nobody told me.” His brow furrowed for a second, then he looked very seriously at Worth. “I guess, I’ve got some work to do.”
“Yes, yes, I should say.” Worth said, still taken aback.
“Emmet, we were going to take a look north from the bow.” Katie said. Emmet thought her voice, at that moment, made her sound very, very young.
“Oh, oh yeah. Well, I might have to meet you…later.”
She went to him, stood close. “We…we were going to find some place, to have some… soup. Maybe quietly talk…remember.”
Emmet stared around at the shelves, then began walking swiftly towards a particular book, “Volume 1. Uinita emerento ral tol tay optica the aunguanelish sey Cosmotalla sal Crago. ‘The first year, and the visions of the water and the night sky, as recalled by The Seer.’ I’m sorry. What, Katie?”
“Oh, oh nothing.” A tone of realization even resignation came into her voice. “It can wait. I’ll…I’ll leave you two to your work.”
Worth showed Katie to the door. She glanced back wistfully at Emmet who was engrossed in the book, then followed the old man outside to the top of the stairway.
“What’s…what’s happening to him Mr. Worth. Is he okay?”
“I’m not certain, Miss Cratz. I do know he cares for you deeply, but very soon he’s not going to be the same boy you’ve known, unless I miss my guess. There may be some…adjustments, for both of you.”
“Yeah, yeah…I can see that.” She twirled a bit of dazzling red hair. “Well…bye.”
“Goodbye, Miss Cratz.” Worth hurried back through the door. It clicked tight behind him.
Katie sighed. Then her eyes narrowed. She stood very still for a moment. Then stomped a small foot on the parquet floor, the echo down the stairwell reverberated for a long moment. She nodded her head, “Okay, for you Sourcer.”
She walked quickly down the staircase, out into the narrow hallway, and back to the main walk near the windows, heading determinedly, she knew not where. She reached into her purse, pulled out her tobacco bag, some gum, and a handful of seeds from a special pouch and put them all in her mouth. Just as she did so, she noticed a number of young owl pilots and air corp flyboy and flygals rushing past her. She reached for her notepad. Racing up to the nearest owl pilot: he was dark, handsome, an inch or two taller and a year or two younger than she.
“Where ya goin’ handsome?”
The young pilot, a bit taken aback by the vision of this lovely outlander, slowed his pace.
“The stones have returned.”
“Going on a sorte?”
“We are.”
“I’m a reporter. I’m taking your extra seat.”
The pilot looked uncertain, “I would need…”
Quickly Katie extracted a card from her purse.
The pilot looked at it, then stared at Katie. “If the King wishes my cooperation. I am yours to command.”
“I like the way you think, chum. We’re gonna be very good friends!”
***
The sky was so brilliantly blue to the north, it was hard to think danger lay in that direction. Odie and Mert could feel it though, as certainly as if it were written before their eyes, as they stood looking out from the shore, or deck, of the Island of Muir.
Since receiving the Crescent, Mert had had difficulty sleeping. His dreams were nondescript, but bothered him. It was as though voices were calling to him, whispering close at hand as if they belonged to people who were walking past, then disappearing behind him. He felt when he woke from these dreams as if he had been in a dim room amidst the talk of much older, much wiser people. In typical Mert fashion, he hadn’t told a soul. But he didn’t need to tell Odie anything in order for her to understand.
They stood holding hands, gazing into the blue. “The song is still being sung, Mert. It’ll be all right.”
“What? Oh sure. Sure. Pretty sky, huh?”
“Are you afraid of what might be in it?”
Met looked around then leaned in close. “Yeah. I can’t lie. Something about the other day doesn’t seem right.”
“The flaws in the underbelly of the stones?”
He jerked a look at her. “Your father tell you that?”
She smiled a disarming smile. “Sort of. You’re wondering why that massive a plan of attack, could be tripped up in so simple a fashion?”
“Well…I was wonderin’ why they’d be that dumb.”
“Me too.”
“I figure they will have adjusted by the next time.”
“And you’re wondering what you’ll do then.”
He nodded.
“Something will come to you.”
“You seem pretty sure.”
“I am. I know you…oh…”
‘What’s wrong?”
“You’ve got to go. The stones…oh…something else…”
“What about the stones?”
“They’re headed this way…where’s…oh…where’s Katie?”
“With Emmet, I imagine, ferreting out a story. You sure, about the…”
“Captain Bailey…” someone suddenly shouted. It was Margie Pedderson approaching on a Muirian power scooter.
“The stones are back, right?”
“How…”
“Pilot’s intuition…uh Odie…”
Odie suddenly closed the gap that had been created when he turned to his lieutenant, and kissed him full on the lips. “Be safe, Mert.”
“Yeah…yeah…”
“You love me, right?”
He winked at her. “You bet.” He jumped onto the flat wooden floor of the scooter behind Pedderson and worked his boots into the rider notches, then grabbed the rail. “Let’s roll.” The two young flyers rolled, swiftly, silently, for the airstrip balancing on the Murian scooter.
Margie shot a crooked smile over her shoulder. “You and the princess seem to be moving along well…”
“That’s enough out of you, lieutenant…” Mert grinned back. “Let’s get to work.”
Margie’s face straightened. “That’s a firm.”
Odie watched them go, off through the towers towards the airstrip. All around, young warriors were motoring or running for their crafts.
Suddenly, she noticed the slight form of Emmet Sourcer approaching, “Odie, have you seen…”
“Katie. No. I was going to ask you. She’s…”
“In danger. She’s gone off with some handsome lug, to hear Lieutenant Critzhoff tell it. Just spotted him in the corridor; he was on his way to his mage. I think she might be headed on a sore…Katie’s just trying to spite me, because I ignored…”
“Oh Emmet. We haven’t got time for your ego…I’ve got a message for her. Please tell her, when you see her that she needs to get back to St. Martins.” She sighed looking in the direction Mert had gone. “And Mr. Worth and I need to get back to the Crag.”
“What do you mean? How do you know?”
She looked long and hard at Emmet.
His mind was suddenly awash with words in two languages. The words were coming from somewhere else. Some were Ode’s, but others were from…elsewhere. “I’m…I’m…” he began.
“Say it,” Odie said with an intense expression on her face.
“I’m a shard of the Crag, just like you.”
Odie nodded. Then shook her head “No, not exactly, Emmet. You’re different…somehow…more I think.” Odie said looking inquisitively at Emmet. Then she grinned, “I’m a little surprised, Sourcer. A few months ago, I would never have suspected. You were such a…boy.”
Emmet remained serious and shook off the teasing, “What do you mean…’more”?”
For a bright moment they stared at each other. Then, suddenly they spoke together,
“See to the Crag.The wrestler has fallen.”
Coming back to himself, Emmet said, “The…the wrestler…that’s, that’s Jimmy.”
Odie nodded.
“And you and Mr. Worth have to get to the Trappers…to the Portal.”
“Vocala sur voca, Emmet,” Odie said nodding again.
“The song is still being sung. Yeah. Mr Worth is in the library. You better get going. I’ll find Katie, if she hasn’t already taken off with that flyboy.” He turned and ran for the air strip.
Odie watched him go. Who is that boy? she wondered.
Then she ran, very, very quickly with her long runner’s stride, towards the library.
***
In the cottage kitchen, back at Stony Crag, Betty Lu and Betty Lynne were sipping tea.
“They’ll be back for the card game soon.”
Lu looked up from her tea.
“The leaves are…pungent. This was a good choice.”
“And there are others coming too. Oh dear… Odaya is coming. Why?” She looked up at Lu. “Mischief.”
“Always, dear. Always.”
Lynne sighed deeply. “Well, we’ve played the game before.”
“Should we bring out some thizzlenut cookies?”
“Oh, let’s. Henry loves those.”
“And Ernest… Well it doesn’t matter for Ernest. He’s so mercurial.”
“He does like his cards though.” Lynne laughed, a bit sardonically for her.
“Oh yes. Always. Always.” Lu sipped her tea and looked out the window towards the big water. “Vocala sur voca.”
Chapter 8
Emmet’s father, Ernest Sourcer, shouted above the sound of the quad engine of the firemage beta. The Plane was designed with the same capabilities for speed and maneuverability as the fighters, but with the capability of carrying up to 30 personnel. This one had carried exactly that many with the pilot, on a rescue mission to the Pole fives years ago. The lone occupants this day were Ernest Sourcer and the pilot.
“I really can’t thank you enough, Henry. I was in that cell underneath the Pole for 15 years. Literally kept in the dark. If I had had any idea that such a thing could happen, I never would have come north. You military types know the risks. You tried to warn me, make sure I understood what it means to be a corpsman before I took on the mission, the dangers, I mean, but I wouldn’t listen. It was for the North, that’s all I knew. And, in truth, it was to build my own reputation. I…I should have listened to you. I just didn’t know… Thank you, Henry. Thank you.“
The pilot, Henry David Bailey, father of Merton Bailey, nodded, but kept his eyes focused on the horizon to the south. The fuel level was well within the range to get them back to the airstrip south of Stony Crag. It was five years after they’d taken off, from the air strip, and 30 men lighter.
“Those Muirians certainly were convincing: ‘There is activity under the Pole Professor Sourcer. Our sources inside the Alchemist’s fortress tell us it is a kind of engineering we have never seen before. It is much in keeping with your steel and electronics type of science, but more highly advanced. We understand that you are working into such innovations yourself. You come highly recommended by the Air Corp’s top scientists and so, naturally we came to you.’ Then, they whisked me away from my family, and off to the Pole, in one of those infernal Owls. And when they got me there, I found out there was no such thing as the Alchemists, but only the Muirians and their horrible prison where they interrogated me for years, trying to get the secrets of the Air Corp’s research from me. But I didn’t crack, Henry. I cried and I begged, but I never cracked. I didn’t tell them a thing.”
Ernest Sourcer sighed deeply, wiped his eyes and pulled his air corps flight jacket closer about him.
“Thanks for the clothes, too Henry. I’m sorry about the man who used to wear them. I’m sorry about all of our boys who came along to help you save me. So, so sorry. My hubris, my damned hubris caused this! You need to give me a list of their names. When we get back to Stony Crag…oh, just the thought of it…I’ll visit all of their parents. I’ll tell them they all died heroes… Though, I’m not sure if that’s much consolation. They’ll probably hate me for it, but I’ll just have to deal with that. It’s the least I can do.”
Ernest Sourcer suddenly lost his composure and began sobbing. Henry Bailey reached out his right hand and lay it on Sourcer’s heaving back. Sourcer looked up after a long time through teary eyes.
“I can never repay you, Henry. When you showed up in that doorway…I thought I was dreaming. To think, for five years you hid in the snow outside that fortress, after they shot you and your boys down. You’d lost a leg, and been badly wounded in the throat. That medic of yours, what was his name…”
He reached into the pocket of the coat and pulled out a paper covered in Henry’s writing, “Higgins, Sergeant Matthew Higgins. Must have been a great kid. He saved you. You and he were the only survivors. For five years you re-rigged this plane. Five winters at the Pole, scrounging what food you could, stealing fuel.”
Henry nodded. Ernest looked over at his old friend. Major Henry David Bailey’s once ruddy face was a mask of grief and hardship.
“And then that boy died in that prison hallway trying to save me, five years after the others in the crash. You and he gave up so much, you all did, just for me. Those ruthless Muirians…may they rot in the fires.They shot that boy with their so-called Crag plasma. Vaporized the boy right before my eyes. But they didn’t bargain on you, Henry. They didn’t bargain on your courage, and your strength. Even with one good leg and one metal one, scrounged and rigged up by you from the wreckage… the stars know how you did that! Oh Henry, your determination, Henry. Your determination was something even the Muirians just couldn’t reckon with. You used your sidearm, and your two strong arms, and your wits. And you got me out and back here on this plane, headed home.”
He started to weep again. “It cost your men, and a leg and your voice, and all for me! Just so I could see Emmet and Betty Lu again. And you, Henry, you’ll see Merton and Betty Lynne. Oh, those lovely ladies, and those boys! Why they’d be in their 20’s now. Out of high school, off in the world. And what a world, Henry! A world of secrets and lies. But we’ll set them all straight. We’ll tell the corps about the menace of the Muirians, bring them and their plans right out into the open. Show the corps that you can never trust a Muirian. And we’ll beat them, once and for all, Henry. We’ll beat them.”
He laid a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.
This time it was Henry David Bailey shedding tears.
***
Outside the Bard Theatre Jimmy Cratz was once again having an opinion. “Jesse, that kid who played the prince couldn’t act his way out of a wet tissue paper bag! And the girl who was the princess? They said she’s been getting great reviews all over the North for her displays of genuine pathos? Strictly a leaky faucet.”
Jesse Barfield-Cratz clung to her husband’s massive arm laughing, “I hope you’ll let your critic do the review for the Light. You’re much too harsh, as usual.”
The weather had taken a very cold turn. Snow was in the air as they turned down the alley towards The Light’s parking lot where Jimmy had parked the family sedan. Jimmy, who was grinning for the first time in a number of days, patted his wife’s gloved hand, then brushed the snow from the brim of his wide winter fedora.
“Seriously, Jimmy, there must have been something you liked about it.”
“I liked, the add in the program for The Light, and I liked the musical tribute to our Air Corps boys and gals, but that’s about…”
Suddenly a dark wide figure stood in the alley before them: Big Bill Castini. He lit a cigarette and stared at Jimmy Cratz. “Mrs. Cratz.” He tipped his white fedora.
“Ms. Barfield-Cratz, Castini,” said Jesse, her joyful face suddenly going hard. “Oh, and Summer is over. White is gauche.”
“Listen to her fellas,” laughed Castini. “Tough as her little girl. Wonder if she’s got a chew in too.”
“Don’t know, Boss,” said a voice from behind Jimmy.
“Want me to check?” asked another behind Jesse.
“No boys, leave her be. All we want is the big fella. Your husband could have made you a wealthy woman Mrs. Cratz, but he had to be difficult. Now, he’s going to make you a widow. Grab her boys!”
The thug behind Jesse Barfield-Cratz reached for her, and a moment later was bent over holding his mouth, thanks to a swift left hook, from the former lady’s golden gloves champ. In the interim, Jimmy had pinned the thug behind him against the wall shattering his right hip after crushing his gun and hand so quickly, the man, a life long gang runner named Sid “The Trumpet” O’Calahan, hadn’t had time to cry out yet.
Two more of Castini’s men stepped out to his left and right.
“Ah, you guys can’t do nothin’ right,” said Castini and emptied a full clip from his automatic pistol into Jimmy’s chest.
“Jimmy!”
The former title holding wrestler lurched forward, “It’ll…be…okay…Jess. Run. I’ll handle…” He fell forward at Castini’s feet and lay silent.
“You see Mrs. Cratz? I don’t lie.”
Jesse stared Castini down, holding back tears, “You better kill me now, Castini, because I won’t ever stop hunting you. As sure as there are stars in the heavens.”
“Yeah, I believe that’s true,” said Castini pulling a second pistol from his inside pocket and opening another barauge, striking Jesse in the head, neck and chest, killing her instantly. “Tough little broad. We’ll see if her daughter is that tough, if she ever comes home…” laughed Castini. “Now, let’s get over to the Crag and start greeting our honored guests; we got a business meetin’ tonight. You cripples,” he added to his two ailing henchmen, dump them bodies in the lake, pronto. Maybe now that they’re both stiffs, you’ll manage to keep them from hurtin’ ya.”
***
Emmet was right, these things are spooky! Katie Cratz thought as she looked out the empty front window into the still, silent, blue sky.
“So handsome,” she said to the pilot, “when does the fun start?”
“Stones,” he said pointing briefly to some objects at 7 o’clock below them.
Katie followed his gaze and then saw a moving wall of firemages in the direct line of the attackers.
“When do we…whoa!”
Suddenly the owl was making a patented swoop from above the mages and Katie was suddenly introduced to war. Again, the stones were exploding and vaporizing as the buzz saw engines of the mages roared through their host dousing them with cannon fire, suddenly, to their west, a firemage took a full on hit from a stone’s torpedo gun, and exploded in fragments.
“Oh, I think that was Critzhoff…”
“Ms. Cratz hang…” That was all the young pilot managed. His head sagged in Katie’s direction, a steel fragment from the mage protruded from his chest, where it had nailed him to his seat killing him instantly.
The owl followed its line of trajectory through the formation of the stones and emerged on the other side in the open air, alone, silent except for the wind and Katie’s screams…
“Muhat…? Oh, the poor boy…”
The owl, losing momentum, suddenly started gliding towards the open water below, then fell into a tail spin.
Oh…oh…so this is how. This is how I go. Isn’t there something I can do? With what? No controls. I can’t even try! Oh what am I doing here? Why did I do this? Just had to show everybody! Had to show Dad and Emmet…oh Emmet!
Hi, Katie.
Emmet!?…Emmet…what’s going on? Where are…
No time. Now, what do you want to do?
I must be dead already, or hearing things…
Blazes, Katie! Focus. What do you want to do?
What do I want to do? I want to be where you are. I want to take you in my arms…
Okay. Okay. Me too, but right now, right now. What do you want to do?
Well…well…I guess saving myself would be a priority.
Right. So what would do that?
Well, I guess if this plane would suddenly…
Instantly, the owl leveled out and began a wide bank back in the direction of the fight.
I assume you don’t want to get into that again.
Yeah…smart guy…you assume right, but Emmet, how are you doing…
Never mind, Katie. Just think what you want to do.
Climb!
That’s it. That’s it.
Head for the city.
That’s it. See you there.
Emmet?
Yeah, Katie?
I love you.
I love you too. Sorry about your friend Muhat.
Me too. Nice boy. Hope…I’m not to blame.
No, Katie. It was his time. Hurry back.
I’m hurrying love.
***
Otter hadn’t changed. “Blue turtles and centipedes, you folks have sure led me a far piece! It’s getting too cold even for Emerson! Get your gear stowed, and let’s us come about. The wind is shifting right towards the Crag. I can have you there inside 24 hours.”
Odie and Emmet helped Katie into the Kingfisher.
“Your majesty, are you certain, this is the best way to get them home?”
“ My name is D’Auk, Mert. Yes, absolutely. There’s a storm coming from the north, all air ships grounded, and we took some big hits from the last sortie anyway. No boat ever grown in Muir flies before the wind faster than the Kingfisher. Steiner the boat grower’s word on that.”
Emmet managed a smile, as he stood above the deck of the Kingfisher, holding Katie’s hand. “We never managed to get even a word from Steiner, did we Kate?”
“No,” she said blankly, looking at Emmet for a moment. “No, we never did get that old fellow to talk.” Suddenly she kissed Emmet. “Now, I’ll get you on radio phone as soon as we hit land. And don’t worry, since Mom and Dad disappeared, the peacekeepers have been on the case. And I’ll be met at the dock and under 24 hour guard until they get whoever is responsible. And I already have a big fat clue for them about who that might be.”
“Now let the peacekeepers handle it, Kate.” For a moment, 100,000 doubts went through Emmet’s head, and no small number of voices. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? Otter could have me back here in 48 hours any time I asked. I could maybe help them track down whoever is behind this.”
“You’re a reporter, Emmet, not a detective. I’ll have my hands full running The Light. And you still have your duty here. You’ve got to tell this story. For my dad especially, and mom, and me, and everybody in the North. The folks still need to know. And nobody tells it like you.”
“Oh, I can think of another.”
Katie managed a smile. “Thanks.”
“I’ll write you a great story. Leave space above the fold. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able.
Some new tears welled in Katie’s all but dried eyes, “Be able.” She kissed him hard, turned, and walked to the stern of the Kingfisher, disappearing into the cabin.
Odie sprung quickly up on to the dock, hugging and kissing her mother and father.
“Vocala sur voca.”
“Vocala sur voca.”
She turned to Mert, “Be brave. And remember the Crescent is at your disposal.”
“I’ll use it Odie,” Mert said. “If I ever figure out what it does.”
“You will.” She kissed him and stepped blithely into the Kingfisher.
“Well c’mon husband o’ mine!” Otter said to Ralph Henry Worth who had been standing uneasily on the dock.
“Madam,” said Worth, stepping slowly down into the Kingfisher. “Kindly keep that beast at bay.”
Emerson stepped forward as Worth climbed aboard and nuzzled his hand.
“Blazes! Looks like you’ve got a new best friend Mr. Worth.”
“That, Mr. Sourcer, will be the day.”
Quickly Otter moved to the tiller. “Wave bye bye and hang on! Comin’ about!”
Almost too fast for believe, the Kingfisher had come about, sped away and disappeared over the horizon.
“Odie said she got a message,” said Mert when the others had finally dispersed. “’See to the crag’. What in the world does that mean Emmet? You seem to be getting the hang of these things.”
Emmet shook his head, then turned to look north towards the Pole. “Blazes if I know, Mert. Any more than I know what’s waiting for us up North. By the way, sorry about Critzhoff. I know you guys were close.”
Mert looked down for a moment, then back at Emmet, “Vakaylee so voda, huh, Emmet?”
Emmet thought of how much had changed in the last month, of the lives lost, the alterations of fate, of the revelations inside his head and heart. He thought of it all for a moment, then, remembering their boyish, carefree days before this had all begun, managed a smile at his friend’s massive mispronunciation of the Muirian sacred words, “Something like that, Mert. Maybe just stick with, ‘The song is still being sung.’”
Chapter 9
Emmet’s intermittent clairvoyance, and telepathic abilities, were not working here in this cold, cold wasteland. There were no voices. In fact, he had one of the worst headaches of his life. It was as though something was preventing him from knowing anything. It was almost a sound, this interference operating just below the level of his consciousness. Whatever it was didn’t seem organic. It seemed almost electronic. He didn’t understand. There were no answers to the other puzzles laid out before him either. Just snow, and wind. Dark Star’s recognizance team hadn’t found much either.
“It’s a prison, your majesty,” said the square jawed shadow recruit, wrapped tightly in his gray polar suit. “Or it was. Nobody’s in there now. There’s a lot of machinery though, and a blue whale of a humming coming from the lower levels.”
Dark Star looked at Emmet, “Well newsman, I believe it’s time we had a look.”
He looked at the recruit and said, “Tell the men to fan out. Cover all levels. Report everything.”
The recruit nodded, then hesitated. “Your majesty, almost everyone is having a hard time communicating. I know that sounds strange, like something the outlanders from the mainland would say, but…”
“You feel like you’re being jammed,” said Emmet.
Dark Star nodded. “Yes. I thought it was just me getting older. All right. Well, pause, take a breathe. Concentrate. The usual.” The recruited nodded, half bowed and ran on ahead over the wind packed snow.
They’d flown to the Pole in the owls, with the firemages on standby back at at the Island of Muir, invisible and still 50 miles to their south in the last of the open waters. They were on standby anticipating an attack by a massive wall of Alchemists Stones. No attack had come. What was more, the stones were all here. Thousands of them, on the ground. Another mystery. A small group of shadow recruits and officers with a few Air Corps mechanics were investigating the stones. All the rest of the young men and women in polar garb, over 300 in all, were now investigating the prison.
When Emmet and Dark Star proceeded inside the fortress prison, they found great numbers of cold steel ladders. Great steel ladders, and as reported, an enormous humming coming from lower levels. Each level, connected by the ladders, was identical. A central catwalk, and hundreds of standing cells. No windows. No tables. No beds. Just space and tubing apparently designed for food supply and waste disposal. All smooth metal surfaces. No bars. No hope for anyone entrapped there. A study in horrifying monotony. Something only a truly cold, evil mind could conceive.
“Blazes…”
“Or worse,” said Dark Star. “Who was kept here?”
Emmet suddenly had an inkling of something, but as he did, the irritation that was almost sound intensified. “His breathe caught in this throat. His head pounded horribly. Something here. Something right here was causing it. I’ve, I’ve got to go back to the surface…”
Dark Star looked at Emmet quizzically. Then with the compassion so evident in every Muirian but especially in him, and the members of his family, he said, “Of course, Emmet. We’ll be done here soon. It’s all the same. Nothing new to report. We’ll call you back if there’s anything.”
Emmet nodded, barely able to breathe, and headed up the ladders for the surface. What was it? What was it? When he emerged through a cold steel door into the frigid air, his head began to clear. “It’s not… It’s not who was… It’s…No, blazes, just not clear. Not coming.”
Nearby somebody cleared her throat.
“Mr. Sourcer…”
”“‘Mr. Sourcer? Blazes,that’s a new one! I’m 22. Try Emmet…”
The shadow recruit pulled off her fogged polar glasses. Her green eyes were wide, “You really have to see this, Mr. Emmet.”
Emmet laughed. She paused, confused, then turned and ran through the snow back in the direction of the fleet of grounded Alchemists Stones. Moments later Emmet, the shadow recruit, and an Air Corp mechanic stood over a dismantled vehicle. The mechanic puffed out his visible breath and shook his head looking down into the disassembled Alchemist Stone, suddenly pounding his wrench agains the framework in frustration
“What is it, corpsman?” Emmet asked.
The chubby mechanic said, “It’s a machine.”
Emmet, chuckled, “Well of course…”
“No, I mean, it runs itself. It’s a blamed…robot. There never were any pilots!”
“No parachutes. That’s why there were no parachutes…” Emmet said
“And remember how they would just vaporize?”
“That was built in.” Emmet said. “ A self destruct as soon as the mages made contact. They wanted us to think we were winning a great victory.” The mechanic and shadow recruit stared at Emmet.
“But there’s no they!” Emmet suddenly had a flash, despite his headache. “It’s not who was kept here it’s who’s going to be kept here! Oh, blazes! The King is down there! We’ve got to get your men out of that…”
Suddenly there was a massive clanging, like the closing of an enormous door.
Emmet froze in place and said into the vacant air, “It’s a prison, D’Auk…Built for us…”
Suddenly, the stones roared to life, rising with an electronic roar and rushing off in the direction…
“The Island of Muir… The whole thing. The whole thing was a trap! Get to the owls! Get a message back!” He shouted to the shadow officers and recruits near him as they rushed by, already on their way. Several rushed towards the prison door. They stood like small children gloved hands in the air. The door was closed. Locked tight. Before the remaining shadow soldiers could get to the owls, the stones blasted the Muirian planes to burning fragments of wood on the ground, and with them most of the pilots.
“Blazes! No! What do I do?” His head was searing with pain.
The irritation. It is a jamming. It’s so they won’t be able to communicate in the prison. Dark Star. Come on your majesty. Can you hear me? Can you…
Emmet…Emmet…save the city. Save Muir. Save the People. Go now. Go now. You have to get out of here. You have to live. Do what you can to live! Go. Nothing to be done here. A trap. Futile to try. Save the People! Save the People…Vocala sur voca!
Dark Star. No. I can’t…they’ve destroyed the owls. Don’t go… Too late…Can’t hear him anymore…No good… Waste of time. Gone. Gone. Call Mert. Got to alert them. Mert. Mert! Scramble those mages and the rest of the owls, they’re coming… Save the People! Save the City!
“Blazes! What am I doing giving orders? I’m a reporter. I’m a kid.”
Odie. Odie. Can you hear…?Something’s happening.
From a great distance, like a voice down a mile long and narrow hallway, came a voice, clear but faint.
I know.
You…you do? Where are you?
They’re taking me to prison, Emmet. Mr. Worth and me.
Prison? But…Where?
The Crag. They’re drilling underneath. Trying to extract the plasma. And that stupid Castini, has a resort! Rich people, despicable people from everywhere, saw them on the way up. Something about magic powers to heal. That’s how he’s selling it. And the war…They’re blaming us. Blaming Muirians for everything! The Trapper’s Cabin. The Portal. It’s a special prison for Mr. Worth and me. The Air Corps is building it! Soon I won’t be able you hear you. This may be the last time.
No! I think. I think I understand…but…Katie? What about Katie?
They didn’t care about her. She doesn’t know what’s happened, yet. She went home. It was after…And, Emmet, her father…
What? What? Odie?
Oh…my head…tell Mert….love…so hard here. Can’t break through.
Yes, yes, I know. The Pole…the pole is the same…your father…prison…
Yes. Yes. I know…Emmet…Emmett… Save the city! Save yourself! You have to survive! You are crucial to it all! Get out of there now! Vocala sur voca…
Suddenly a searing pain ripped through Emmet’s skull. He fell to his knees. He looked up to see the Muirian shadow soldiers had also gone down. The few Air Corps mechanics were stepping forward trying to help them.
And then came the voice, in was electronic, full of static, it snapped and pained as it spoke,
“Greetings from the Alchemist. Did you find no one home? That’s because you weren’t looking for the right kind of folks.”
Emmet looked up to see a motorized sled rushing towards him, two mechanical hands extended. He attempted to stand, and a jolt of electricity jagged out from a point between the hands. Melting a hole through the ice just before him.
Around him the shadow soldiers running for the owls were struck down by electric bolts from dozens of sleds. The young soldiers twitched for a moment. Then stopped. The men by the gate shared the same fate.
The voice sounded again. “You’re a special one. He wants you alive. You’re to be the prize of the prison.”
“Blazes…”
Another voice came. Strong. Clear. Unfazed by it all.
Emmet. Emmet. What can you do?
Now, now, who is this? You…you sound familiar…very…but who…
Emmet. What can you do?
Well…blazes…I want to blow that thing to bits.
Well, do it! It’s just a thing. You can.
At his merest thought, aided by the mysterious voice, it happened.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The sled suddenly exploded. All the sleds, exploded.
How, how did I…Now, now, the door. The prison door. I have to free them.
The voice was calm. Compassionate. Think about it now, can you do that? Can you break the door down? Can you do that?
No, no…blazes…I can’t. I don’t know why. I don’t know blazin’ why. But I know I can’t. No, no there must be a way!
No. There is not. Nothing to be done. Some facts, much as we hate their existence, simply are. This truth simply is. Right now you can do nothing for Dark Star. Vocalla Sur Voca. Now, how can you save yourself? For the good of everyone, you must save yourself.
Oh…oh… No! I don’t like this…free them. Why don’t you free them?
Concentrate Emmet. What can you do? If you don’t survive, hope dies.
Mert…I’ve got to call…Mert…but I tried…he couldn’t hear me.
He heard as well as he could. He isn’t you. You have to try harder for him.
Oh…blazes… Mert! Save the City! Save the People! Scramble those mages, the owls.
The other voice was back. Stronger, insistent.
EMMET! SAVE YOURSELF! HOPE DIES WITHOUT YOU! VOCALLA SUR VOCA!
Oh, Blazes. Hate this! MERT! COME AND GET ME BUDDY!
Good. Well done. Goodbye, Emmet. Talk soon.
“No, no! Come back! Blazes! Blazes!”
Emmet stood alone, among dead men, among the wreckage of robot sleds, and burning owls, the snow fall grew heavier.
The electronic voice blazed through his head again. “Missed you this time! You’ve got friends in high places! Enjoy the cold.”
***
Mert was flying against his instincts. A voice had called him. Emmet. He was sure it was Emmet. His messages had conflicted. “Save the city. Save the people. They’re coming!” Then more intensely, “Come and get me!” So strange. All this would have been unbelievable, even a week ago. And now, the battle was on. He and Margie with the rest of the air corps and owls had engaged the stones. And it hadn’t been going well. The stones weren’t falling. They were blowing mages out of the sky like clay pigeons.
“Cap, what’s going on? We’ve lost our whole right flank.”
“They’ve adjusted somehow. They’re not even flying the same. Here come the owls. Let’s go around again, maybe they’ll have some luck.”
But it had been just as futile for the Muirian Sky Force. The owls had blasted them with crag plasma, and on the instant of each blast, the stones had simply exploded, taking ten or 15 owls with them each time. Were the stones on suicide missions?
There aren’t any pilots, Mert.
“Cap, cap…should we try again?”
Mert! Mert Fly for the Pole! Fly for the Pole, buddy!
“Margie, Margie, lead them away from the island. Run the tanks dry if necessary, run them into an ice berg, but lead them away from the island.”
“Cap, cap, where to then?”
“ Just lead them away. If you manage that, meet me at the Pole. I have to go there; something has happened.”
“That’s a firm. Corps I’m the leader now. Scatter them, find a point and fly for it. Maximum maneuvers!”
“Firm.”
“Firm.”
The affirmations echoed through the radio phones, and the mages buzzed away to the east. The owls continued to swoop and explode with the saucers, swoop and explode. Mert couldn’t watch anymore.
So now Mert was flying for the Pole.
“What am I doing?”
The voice had been irresistible. Honed by years of life together. Honed by a shared sense of honor and duty. But it still seemed wrong.
He thought of the crescent hanging on a chain around his neck. He focused his attentions on it.
Okay. Okay. Do something. Emmet? Emmet? Where are you?
Mert? It’s bad. It’s bad, Mert. The whole thing is a prison. The whole fortress. Dark Star is down there, with all of his shadow soldiers, trapped, and I can’t help him. All the information they have, all their knowledge… The Alchemist, whoever that is, will get it now. And then…and then…I don’t know. I know we can’t save them. We can’t free them. But you’ve got to come get me. If there’s going to be any chance of anything, come and get me. I know it sounds insane, selfish, but I can feel it in a hundred ways; it’s right.
Okay. Okay. Emmet. Almost there.
In the air above the frozen prison, the smoke was dissipating. Emmet heard the sound of Mert’s engine.
“Atta boy!” Emmet said, then looked over at the prison and began to cry.
As Merton brought the firemage in on the flattened ice left by the departed stones, Emmet ran across the frozen surface towards the plane, stumbling twice; then he fell and got a faceful of snow. He rose and struggled on against a violent wind. By the time he got to the plane, Mert had the hatch open and had jumped out.
“Emmet, there’s an attack; I left it to come.”
“I know.”
“Dark Star?”
Emmet couldn’t manage words; he pointed towards the barely visible dome of the prison.
“What, what do we do?” Mert asked.
“Blazes. I don’t know, buddy. Or worse. I do know. I know we can’t get them out. Dark Star told me. The door, the door is as big as a building and ten feet thick, and locked down solid. Your cannons wouldn’t make a dent. Even if we got in, the guards aren’t human. And they’re heavily armed. We’d just be killed…It’s futile.”
“Well…Emmet…” Mert shot Emmet a wild angry look. “Why did you call me here? Just to save your bacon? I’ve got friends back there…”
“I…” Emmet stared around him. Trying to pull answers from the air. “I think we have to try to save the island. Then maybe…maybe if we do that…”
“Something about a song, I bet.”
“Yes. Yes Maybe if we can save the island. We can figure a way to come back here and…”
“Okay. Okay. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, but let’s go.
***
The Island of Muir was visible. Emmet could feel the hope draining from the people below. And with their hope, and with their psychic, telepathic, empathic, knowledge of the dire fate of their leader and his daughter, their power to resist, to conceal the island through their joint mental effort, had gone too. Emmet could hear the voice of the Queen somewhere among the people below calling to them to him. Calling to anyone who could hear. Vocalla sur voca. Live. Live. The song is still being sung. But the people on the ground, in their despair, had grown deaf to her voice, her call to resist.
Now it was up to Emmet. Up to him alone. Emmet had to survive. Tears flowed freely down his face. He had to survive. The city, the island was burning. Firemages had roared back from their diversion when Margie realized the stones weren’t following. And now the stones were wrecking havoc. Owls lay burning amidst the burning towers and the last of the mages had fallen from the sky and found water, ice, or the once wondrous and now burning wood of the island.
Emmet and Mert were in the same positions in Mert’s mage they’d been in on that day, was it only two months ago? That day when they had first seen the island? Then it had been an adventure. Now, it was a nightmare. And the nightmare was only beginning. Something was happening in the water around the island. Something enormous was emerging. As the stones zipped and zagged around the city looking for planes to destroy, the thing began to rise. Suddenly the stones did a very strange thing. They landed on the island.
“An invasion force,” Merton said.
“No, no. Remember, I told you. They’re unmanned.” Emmet gasped in sudden realization. Then he sighed. “Oh blazes! They’re going to self destruct.”
“What’s happening in the water?”
The thing in the water was metal. It was many things. Enormous metal tendrils rising, rising to the height of the towers and far higher.
“It’s a cage,” Merton said.
“No…it’s the Alchemist’s idea of a sick joke. Don’t you see, it’s his version of the Crag, rising from the water, only it’s not the beginning. It’s the end. It’s not going to praise the cosmos, it’s going to swallow the Muirians whole!”
“Emmet, we’ve got to do something! All those people!” Mert drove the stick deep and dove hard towards the city.”
Emmet said quietly, “It’s already too late, Mert.”
As they drew close, Emmet saw the people. The people of Muir had come out onto the streets. They were standing calmly watching the tendrils rise high above their city, their island, their world. And their mouths were open…wide…
“Oh…they’re singing the note…”
Merton gasped. Then he pulled back on the stick and flew straight up through the tendrils. When the plane leveled out, he looked over his shoulder at Emmet.
Emmet nodded and confirmed Mert’s thoughts, “Yeah…if we fly down there…we die with them. And the story dies with them. The hope dies with them.”
“And Odaya…in prison on the Crag? You’re sure?”
“Sure as we’re seeing what we’re seeing here.”
The tendrils now had reached their height, hundreds of feet above the city. And they began to close. And as they did, the stones began to explode.
“Oh…Seer…how can you watch? How can you watch and not take a hand?” Emmet said. He hated himself for knowing he had quoted from the Book of Jedo, 75th millennium. The Scribe Edon calling to the Seer upon the destruction of the City of the Crag. It was that moment, Emmet knew, that had first sent the Muirians into hiding.
The fire was raging within the tendrils and they closed tight and began to descend suddenly, at a furious pace. Merton circled higher, and Emmet watched as the tendrils disappeared beneath the water, raising an enormous wave rushing off in every direction.The Island of Muir was gone.
The engines sounded forlorn as Merton pointed the firemage south.
They flew on in silence for half an hour. At last Mert stated the obvious. “We’re gonna run out of fuel, in about eleven hours. We won’t be a third of a way to any place we can land.”
“Vocalla sur voca.”
“Oh shut up, Emmet! You’re the one whose supposed to be so smart now, and all you can think to do is to spout some old saying in a foreign language!”
“It’s really our language too, you know. We’re all one.”
Merton turned around and stared angrily at Emmet. “Well, if we ever find her and free her from prison on the Crag, you and Odie and Mr. Worth can speak to each other in your high fallutin’ language like one big happy family. But you know what Emmet? The rest of our family is back there, locked away in a prison with robot guards according to you. And the woman I love is in another prison back at the Crag according to you. I’m starting to wonder what to believe. The only thing I do know, is that this civilization which is hundreds of thousands of years old just disappeared beneath the waves and lies in a wreckage of ancient dreams a mile deep. And thanks to you, we’re now about half way between the Pole and the Crag, with enough fuel to make it a third of the way to either one. So take your pick because we’re not going to come close to making it either way. We’re going to die out here in the frozen wastes, a smoking wreck on some iceberg, if we’re very lucky. But that won’t really matter, because the Song is still being sung…according to you and everything is going to be just peachy if we just look at it with a long enough lens!”
Suddenly, the world became fire. A stone was close behind and had just engulfed them with a burst of electronic flame.
“Speeches. I should never give speeches,” Mert muttered and pulled back on the stick and the mage roared towards the stratosphere. “Hang on!”
Emmet, forced by gravity against the back of the cockpit could do nothing else. Slowly in the thinner air, the flames went out, and Merton, turned to his trade. He dove and rose, dove and rose outdistancing the stone then headed for the water.
“What’s the plan, Mert?”
“We’re gonna skip a stone.”
The firemage angled steeply in the direction of the rising waves, brought higher by the sinking of the island, then he brought the mage about and headed directly for the biggest wave he could find bringing the plane level. As the enormous wave broke, Mert pointed the mage again at the sky, narrowly missing the apex of the wave, but the stone, much less maneuverable, and without a living pilot, only followed its target, directly into the crowning wave and watery oblivion.
“You’re pretty good at this.”
“Yeah? Let’s hope that’s the last of them, and let’s see if I can find us a place to land, in a tidal wave.”
On they flew, watching the wave, working its way south roaring through icebergs, and over calm blue waters, at last exhausting itself in a barrier of solid ice, 200 feet high, 700 miles south of the Pole and 15 minutes from the exhaustion of the firemage’s fuel.
“Okay, Emmet. Any ideas? ‘Cause I’ve only got one.”
“Shoot.”
“Exactly: parachute. We bail. I can’t land on that ice wall, but it is solid. We use the chute, both of us. We’ll come down pretty hard, but we might be okay.”
“Okay. Then?”
“Then?”
“If we’re still alive, I mean?”
“The song is still being sung as you and Odie say…”
“Uh, huh. Yes, that’s right,” Emmet said grimly.
“You ready?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really. Get around in front of me. Okay, get your arms under the straps. Yup. Hang on.”
The hatch burst open, the frigid air rushed up. They swirled and fell Mert cooly trying to aim them for a flat surface. The chute burst open, Emmet began to slip loose and Mert jerked sideways pulling him back, but bringing the chute out at an odd angle, they struck the surface of a jagged berg sliding like kids on a toboggan, but infinitely faster. The chute caught air behind them and slowed their pace, and then suddenly they came to a crashing halt against a solid wall of ice, Mert pulled Emmet behind him at the last moment and took the brunt of the crash.
Emmet came to himself a moment later seeing stars. There was liquid running from his forehead. He put an aching hand there. it came back bloody. He got to his knees and pulled snow from his mouth. Something was very wrong with his right knee. His left foot didn’t seem to be pointed at the right angle either. He looked up in time to see the firemage crash into the half mile deep waters beyond the ice berg wall. He looked to his right and saw Mert lying still. Between screams of pain he made his way the short distance to his friend.
“Mert…Mert…” His cousin was unconscious. His right leg was twisted at an odd angle, his left arm bent strangely, and bone protruded through his flight jacket, and where Mert’s left eye had been, was an enormous gaping wound, running blood. Emmet, turned away and was sick for several moments. Then, he got mad.
“Okay. Okay. Seer? Crag? What have you got for me? What have you got for me, huh? This is the bravest guy I know. This is a guy who put his life on the line to save my sorry behind! There must have been a reason for it. If the song is going to go on, then there’s gotta be something good that’s going to come out of all of this. What point,other than a sick sense of humor, can there possibly have been in letting us see all the horrors we’ve seen, and make it this far, only to die on the top of a blazin’ iceberg in the middle blazin’ nowhere!”
“Whatcha hollerin’ about Emmet? I’m comin’ as fast as I can!”
“I have to be seeing things…”
Fifty feet below, rising quickly up the iceberg, was Otter, ice ax in hand. Behind her, Emerson had made his way to a plateau and stood waiting with a wagging tail. In the distance below, Emmet could just make out the elegant lines of the Kingfisher, moored in the lee of the iceberg below.
“Vocalla sur voca…” Emmet said into the cosmos, before he lost consciousness.
Chapter 10
Midnight. Summer rain. In the offices of The St. Martins Light, Katie Cratz, newly named owner, editor and publisher, at age 23, hunched over her private office typewriter. It had been six months since the disappearance of her parents. Six months since her departure from Muir aboard the Kingfisher. There had been no word on any front.
Detectives from the local peacekeeper force, operatives from the government of the North, and her own reporters had been investigating the disappearance of Jimmy and Jesse Cratz, and investigating Big Bill Castini who was hiding in plain sight at his crass and ugly new resort at the base of the Crag, with all of his loathsome wealthy friends. Nothing linking Castini to wrong doing had turned up, damnit! He’d even sent her a greeting card. “How goes the hunt?” It said. That was much worse than nothing.
Every single one of the flyboys and gals who headed north had disappeared without a trace, complete with their firemages. Absolute radio silence could be heard on every radio phone in the North tuned to the frequency of Air Corp communications over the Great Lake. Static. Occasionally there were rumors, and she and her staff had followed them all up. Nothing.
And the Muirians? Well, the official word now from all government sources was that the Muirians were behind the whole thing to begin with. They had thrown sand in the eyes of everyone with their crazy tale of hundreds of thousands of years of civilization and love and oneness, and in the mean time they had been plotting to take over the whole North for themselves, and setting up a fraudulent king in the place of The President. They’d lured the Air Corps out where they could make mince meat of them, and they’d done just that. The theory was that our boys and girls had all died fighting off the Muirians. Died somewhere out there in the Great Lake, but not in vain. Somehow, they’d managed, despite dying, to inflict some severe damage on the Muirians. Had anyone seen one of those infernal owls lately? And while we’re at it, had anyone ever really seen this invisible Island of Muir? Pictures could be doctored. A good story, a good old sailor’s yarn, that you want to be believe can be pretty convincing. The only true Muirian anyone had seen was the one they had locked in the new military prison at the crag: Odaya Kontala. Odie, her friend, her confidant, in some ways her savior, who had talked her down as they returned aboard The Kingfisher. Odie, a plotter against the good of the North? That was the part that rang most untrue.
“Odie, is not a war criminal,” she whispered into the darkness.
And out of nowhere Ernest Sourcer and Major Henry David Bailey of the Air Corps had returned home in a modified firemage, somehow managing the flight back from a Muirian prison at the Pole. Sourcer had been there for 15 years, the story went. Bailey had disappeared with 30 air corps troops, in a rescue attempt at that same prison some time later. When the attempt had gone south, and all those flyboys and gals had died on the ice as a result, Bailey had held out for five years there, then found a way to rescue Sourcer and bring him home. She knew what her father would say, “That’s stretching credibility to the breaking point. Something is as rotten as skunk cabbage here!”
But by comparison to invisible Island Nations out in the Great Lake, mystical flying kings? To the public, the rescue story seemed more plausible.
President Rosenberg had spoken out, challenging the Sourcer story, supporting the Muirians, demanding that the military release Odie, and suddenly, he was gone as well. And in his place, the rising star, President Daryl DeSale, formerly a mid grade functionary, with the military’s communications department. Her father had never liked that guy.
And Emmet. Where in god’s name was Emmet? If there was a way for him to communicate, he would have done so. He would have found a radio phone, or he would have used these new telepathic powers of his, wouldn’t he? There was that one night. She’d woken up, thinking her name had been called. And it had been Emmet’s voice, but it was weak, garbled. Almost incoherent. Something about Otter and the Kingfisher. Maybe it had just been a wishful dream. Or…worst thought of all…was that a lie too? No, no, he’d called to her that time when she was falling in the owl! He’d taught her in just a few moments how to save herself just by concentrating on the thing she needed to happen. But why, why didn’t that work any more?
Everything was exactly the opposite of the way she wished it to be.
She sighed, stood up and walked out through the doorway of her office. Her Peacekeeper guards were still on duty, by each of the doors. There were seven in all. Soon, she might request that the detail be cancelled. Castini, if that who was really responsible for her parents’ deaths: what would he have to gain by doing her in now, when all of his sordid dreams had come true?
She stepped into the empty newsroom and gasped when she saw an enormous figure seated at one of the reporter’s desks.
“Hello, honey.”
Katie couldn’t speak. She shook her head violently. No. No. I’m not going to start seeing things now.”
“It’s okay.” said Jimmy Cratz standing up and walking slowly towards her.
“Dad. Dad…is it…”
He opened his eyes wide and she ran to him, folding herself into his massive trench coat, losing herself under the brim of his enormous fedora.
“Mom?” she managed after a few moments.
“No, baby. She’s really gone.”
“Yeah. I felt that. How did you…”
“It’s a long story. Some day I’ll tell you the whole thing. It hasn’t been safe until now. I used the old tunnel from the back of the theatre to get in here tonight. Some time I’ll show you that too. Might come in handy. I just wanted you to know, I was alive, and well, and that I’ll be here with you in the shadows, if you ever get scared.”
“It was Castini…?”
“Absolutely. But don’t you worry. I’ll get him. He’s surrounded now, with an army of thugs, his thugs, and some from the Air Corps, and government too, and a lot of other shadowy folks all tied up with this Muirian misadventure. I can’t quite figure it all out, yet. Castini is going to be hard to get, and it might take a long, long time, but I’m going to get him. First, though, I’m going to get you the story. I’m going to be your unnamed source. That’s why I’ve got to stay missing, and that’s why I’ll have to do some of the other things I’ve got to do. You got your notepad handy?”
Katie sucked back tears. Wiped her eyes and nodded, “You bet. What kind of a newswoman would I be without it?”
“Thatta girl!”
****
Otter, walked out towards the water, down the jetty which was below the hill from her hidden cabin door. She always took pleasure in the fact, that nobody she didn’t want to find her, was ever going to find her. That was especially important now.
The wolf, Emerson, stood nearby, looking out at the water.
“Good day for fishin’, Emerson. Want some trout?”
The wolf licked his lips.
“Gotta get those danged boys healthy first, though. At least gotta wake’em up. What haven’t we tried? They’re young. They’re strong. They should be out of it by now. Something funny about it. Couple sleeping beauties. Like to take’em to their mamas, but I don’t think it’s safe. Lotta funny goin’s on up to the Crag. Lot of words in the wind. Don’t quite have the skinny of it yet. What’s it all about?”
Emerson looked at her quizzically.
“Oh, listen to me! Listen to me! What I’ve needed to know has been told me all my long life. What I don’t need, I don’t need. Them boys are good people, though, come from good people, mostly, I know that. Sure would like to get’em fixed up and back with their families and their girls. Those poor girls got their own problems, though, I hear. What’s gonna become of’em all?”
The wind shifted around towards the north, blowing in ripples past her Otter’s cove on the south end of Muscat Island.
“Oh, bad tidings, bad tidings from the Pole. Like to make a run up there, Emerson, but with the boys the way they be…can’t do that. No sir. What’ll we do to wake’em up?”
She turned back from the lake and headed up the jetty.
***
Emmet?
She tried again.
Emmet, listen to me!
The dream, or whatever it was, had come back the night before. This time clearer. Ever since her Dad had returned, she’d felt more certain that it was real: Emmet was alive somewhere.
Emmet, darling… Where are you?
She sat on the edge of her office desk concentrating. Deadline time had passed, most of her reporters were out of the office. She’d told Billy she wasn’t to be disturbed.
Emmet. Emmet, I love you. I will always love you. Whatever has happened?
Katie?
Emmet?
Yes. Yes. I think so. That was the name…Kingfisher…we got here on the Kingfisher. It’s, it’s foggy…
Oh Emmet…where? Where?
Don’t know. So foggy.
Who is with you?
Mert…bad shape…broken…oh…Otter…Emerson…
Emmet Sourcer, never mind the blazin’ wolf! Are you on Muscat Island with Otter?
Don’t know…must be…It’s real foggy…night…
It’s day time.
I know. Night now, Katie. Nice talking to you…
EMMET!!!
“So, so he’s on Muscat Island. And he’s hurting. How am I going to get out there?”
She paced the room.
They’ll want to follow me. The Peacekeepers, and probably Castini’s men too and whoever else. If they find out Emmet is alive their whole phony story falls apart.
“Dad…”
Of course. Dad can go out there and get back with nobody knowing. Nobody follows dead men. And Mert’s alive too. How do I get word to Odie?
***
Odie looked out the window that had once commanded the greatest view on the Great Lake of any window in the region. Now the panorama had been replaced by a high concrete wall. Concertina wire topped it, along with an armed military guard. What did they think she would do, shoot her way out? She was tired and Mr. Worth was ailing. Mr. Worth’s illness, wasn’t just old age. Her weariness, wasn’t just that of her typical runner’s joyful over exertion. There was dreadful news: her father’s imprisonment, the inklings in the air about the destruction of Muir. She had felt it, even through the wall, even through these psychic barriers someone had somehow erected. Muir, had fallen, or was gone entirely. All this, combined with Mr. Worth’s worry about her, and Merton, and Emmet had aged Mr. Worth 15 years in the last six months. He wouldn’t last much longer. This too, was a deep seated source of her weariness. She loved the old man.
She had tried everything. There was no getting out, that was certain, but was there a way around the psychic barrier? She couldn’t talk directly to Emmet. She couldn’t talk directly to anyone. If she formed words of communication, any type of message, her mind erupted in searing pain. So, there must be a frequency. There must be a kind of psychic channel that the forces against her had found some way to jam…
She paced about the ancient room. Those forces were studying her too. They sent in a military psychiatrist three times a week to interview the two of them. The last three times Mr. Worth had looked at the woman and said, “My mind is my own, madam,” and refused further conversation.
Odie had tried to control the conversation, get the woman to reveal something, anything about herself. She’d tried the old Muirian technique of simply telling the woman the truth. The truth of anyone steeped in the teachings of the Crag: I love you. She’d said it to her. “I love you, doctor, even for the harm you’re trying to do me. Because, if you fail, you’ll see it’s fruitless to alter the intentions of the cosmos, and if you succeed, it will only delay that lesson until the power of the Crag turns it back to good.”
It hadn’t worked. The woman wasn’t buying it. Even though it was the truth. There were so many lies in this world. People lying to themselves and others so much, that they made the truth seem like daydreams, meaningless fantasy.
Wait. Fantasy. What’s the frequency of fantasy? What if I could fantasize, that I was somewhere real. Where? Where? It has to be somewhere I’ve been. Somewhere where I can get my message through.
She tried the Island of Muir. Easy. She could imagine every hall. Every street. The family apartments… Nothing. No nothing seemed real. It was nice, pleasant an escape, but,,, she forced down her feelings…the stories the psychiatrist told must be true…it wasn’t there anymore.
What about someplace nearer then. Some place that absolutely existed. More obscure. Where was Katie? Noon. At her office. Yes. She’d been in there a number of times, posing for shots with her running trophies. All right. All right. The newsroom. No. No. Something not right. I have to get there. I can’t just be there, that’s not real. I have to get there. She imagined putting on her running shoes, exiting through the door, running past the guards, faster, faster, fast as she could go. She was blazing, flying down the switchback, past all the guards, down into Stony Crag, out the west road. Faster, father than cars, breathtakingly fast, into St. Martins now, into the parking lot down the alley from the theater. Through the newsroom door and zip right past Katie, she’s, she’s standing, looking at a story. Past her again, and again, just smack her on the shoulder, and again. That’s it! That’s it!
Odie?
Tap her again and again. Come on, come on get the point! Tell me something. I can’t speak to you. Tap. Tap.
Odie, Odie? The boys. The boys, they’re on Muscat Island.
Tap. Tap.
Are you okay?
Tap.
Follow you. You want me to follow you through the prison, up to your cell.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Show me. Thatta girl!
***
The grandfather clock in the front hall of the cottage chimed 1 a.m. The card game was on in earnest.
“Oh Ernest, must you always play that card?” Betty Lu said with a smile, looking down at her husband’s latest play. “The maid of lies is a silly play. It only leads to confusion for everyone at the table.”
Ernest Sourcer, seated to his wife’s right at the kitchen table smiled, “The confusion is the fun.”
Betty Lynne, opposite him at the table, laughed. “Oh you would say that, wouldn’t he, Henry.”
Henry David Bailey, occupying the remaining chair nodded soberly. Glanced out the window into the night.
“Yes, your old friend loves his confusion.”
“Sew the Maid of confusion for a good long while,” said Ernest Sourcer. “Let her settle in with everyone at the table and then, ‘Blam!’” He quickly lay his next card, “The lightning bolt!”
“You’ve overplayed. You’ve overplayed, Ernest,” said Betty Lu laying her next card: The old lovers.
“Love’s wisdom wins, Ernest. How many times must I tell you?”
“So you say, my love. So you always say.”
“And she’s always right,” said Betty Lynne, “isn’t she Henry?”
Henry was suddenly staring at the kitchen door. A moment later, Emmet and Mert entered.
The others turned.
Henry got to his feet and took his son in his arms. He took a step back, and looked him over. Tears welled in his eyes. Merton wore a patch over his left eye socket and walked with a cane.
“Hello, Emmet,” Betty Lu said, looking up from the cards, but not coming closer. “Ernest, say hello.”
Ernest Sourcer rushed forward, enfolding his son in a bear hug, nearly lifting him from the floor. “I’m so glad you’re back! So glad you’re back! You escaped! You escaped! Merton saved you just like his father saved me! Oh…oh…those Muirians! But no time for that kind of talk! Ladies, let’s have drinks! Champagne if we have it!”
“Oh let’s,” said Betty Lynne, calmly.
***
Jimmy Cratz, kept close watch from the summer darkness, in the shadows of the maple stand, just outside the open cottage windows.
His newsman’s instinct told him that Emmet Sourcer was the key to the whole shooting match. The Muirians, this Alchemist and his supposed prison under the Pole, and the blasted Tale. What had happened to the boy? To Emmet? He’d always been a smart one, but not this smart. What would the military make of it when they found out Captain Merton Bailey was back in town? And what would they do to Merton if they heard the story Jimmy had just heard the young captain and Emmet tell of the Alchemist’s Prison, and the sinking, swallowing really, of the island of Muir? That was not in keeping with the present accepted public narrative concerning the Murians. And what about the reappearance of Sourcer and Bailey seniors?
“Lovely family gathering.”
Ah, right on time.
“Hello, Castini, here to shoot me again?”
Big Bill Castini stepped out from the shadows and lit a cigarette, offering one to Jimmy.
“Nah, I quit.”
“Just here to tell you Jimmy. I won’t be after you any more.”
“Oh, but I’ll be after you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, when I’m done telling you what I got to say.”
“What’s that?”
“The fix is in, Jimmy.”
“How’s that?”
“Tomorrow President DeSale is going to make a visit to our little berg and announce a full scale scientific study of the Crag. Up to now they’ve just been drilling, but now we’re going whole hog. Whole team of scientists are going to go after it. Uncover every detail of that stone. Government research. They’re even going to do some more intense studies of that little cutie in the Trapper’s Cabin. Friend of your daughter’s, I understand. And guess what else, Jimmy: President DeSale, is also going to help me announce my candidacy for mayor of our fair city. And I’m going to announce an expansion of my resort, health spas for everyone, views of the Great Lake, even a special escarpment trail around our little prison, with audiences with our evil princess granted to the wealthiest donors. She’s gonna be a cute little lab rat, that girl, and a tourist attraction!”
“Sounds like quite a plan.”
“Oh yeah, and one or two more little things. I’m gonna make young Bailey there into a national figure. Me and the Air Corps that is. Why he’s a bonified hero, that one. We’re gonna put him in the spotlight! Oh, and his little friend, Emmet Sourcer, your girl’s intended? Well, he could be a lot of things: another lab rat, maybe even fit for dissection up on the hill. I hear some strange changes have come over him since his encounters with the Muirians. Maybe a few experiments could get to the root of his problem. I got other plans too though. I think I’ll start a newspaper of my own.”
Jimmy laughed out loud.
“Not so funny, Jimmy. I’m gonna call it the Castini Crag Beacon…”
“Castini Crag?”
“Well, thought it had a better ring to it, for a growing city name. Got a feeling nobody is going to object. Anyway, guess who I got in line for editor? Young Sourcer there…”
“That boy will never go along with your lies.”
“No? Cozy little family group there. Be a shame if those two old fellas, after all they been through, should meet with an accident. And the ladies…How do you think little Emmet would react if I explained it to the little guy, how maybe those sweet old girls might be in danger if things didn’t go just so?”
“Okay. I get the picture, but let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Suppose those folks were just to disappear, like me?”
“Could happen, could happen, but then the same might happen then to your little girl, only it might be more like what happened to your wife, what with me the mayor and all those Peacekeepers on my payroll and all. Not to mention my friends in high places.”
Jimmy’s next words were cold as the crag stone on a winter night. “I’m going to kill you, Castini. I just want to make that clear to you. However long it takes; I’m going to kill you. You want a truce? You can stick that where the sun don’t shine. Go ahead, cut your deals. They’ll probably work, but I’ll be right there in the shadows, all the time. One step ahead of you. And I’ll figure it all out, Castini, all of it. And that’s when the boom will land on you and everybody else behind this darkness. Here’s my card.”
Castini took the small rectangle of pasteboard and stepped forward, leaning into the light from the open windows, his lips moving as he read.
“Ha…The Wrestler…and the Ring of Justice…kinda corny.”
“Maybe, but it seems to be working so far.”
“Think so? Let him have it boys!” Castini stepped quickly back from Jimmy Cratz and waited a long moment for a roar of gunfire that never came.
Suddenly, Jimmy Cratz had disappeared. But a moment later Castini heard his voice from the shadows behind him.
“Oh, forgot to tell you, your boys met with a little accident just before you came along. I’m guessing you’ll find them in the hospital tomorrow, or the morgue, depending on how well they can swim with their legs tied together and their guns stuck down their throats. So, go ahead, make your pitch to Emmet and Mert. See if they bite. But remember, I’ll be watching.”
Big Bill Castini reached for his pistol, and blazed away in the darkness. But the spot where he fired was vacant, and suddenly his gun hand was empty and pulled up behind him.
“I’m one step ahead of you Castini, like any good wrestler.”
A moment later, there was nothing but silence by the lakeshore. Then, with shaking hands, Big Bill Castini looked back at the cottage and lit another cigarette. “Okay Jimmy, the preliminaries are over. Let’s see how you do in the main event.”
Chapter 11
Ten years. Ten years of the Ring of Justice. Where was the justice? Castini was still mayor of what was now on the maps as “Castini Crag”. DeSale was, despite several constitutional prohibitions to the contrary, still President of the North. President Rosenberg was still officially missing, and presumed dead, but no newspaper but Katie’s dared say that aloud. She said it in banner headlines, weekly, along with her constant reminders of the destruction of The Island of Muir. The imprisonment of the King. She even had pictures. She’d sent her cub reporters with Otter aboard the Kingfisher all the way to the Pole 16 times at great risk to all involved for updates. But nobody cared. Nobody believed. What was the upshot of it all? The official line was still holding sway with almost everybody. The Light was seen as a third rate tabloid pitching fantastical stories about a race of traitors who had sold out the North, and killed the Air Corps.
Well, somebody had killed the air corps, but it wasn’t the Murians.
President DeSale had said repeatedly, that flying to the North was just asking for trouble. If the Muirians were content to stay where they were, or if they even existed anymore, it was better to leave well enough alone. He assured the public over and over that he was being vigilant. And any day now they would uncover the true secrets of the Crag, or finally extract what they could from Odaya Kontala, still in her cell at the Portal, as far as the government knew. Emmet Sourcer knew better.
And what those bastards…that was the only word for them…what those bastards had done to Mr. Worth, the 7777th Scribe of Muir; poked and prodded at him until he’d died. And now they pretended like he was still alive. Sent out press releases attributing quotes to him. Implied he was working for them now. That would have been the day. So, now Emmet was the Scribe. Number 7,778. And what had he done? Written ten volumes in the common tongue and Muirian of 10 years of silence and rumor. Volumes only he had seen. Only he would likely ever see. Emmet had done it just to pass his miserable time. His miserable life.
“Vocala sur voca,” he said half hopefully, half sardonically.
He looked out his office window at the gray sunset and into the snowstorm coming in off the Great Lake. There were gray snow clouds, broken rays of light there in the west. Just enough. Just enough for hope. He had a great view from his corner office of The Castini Crag Beacon on the hill just below Castini’s resort where the fat man was pulling in millions from folks taking drinks of Castini’s magic waters, and injections of Castini Crag Plasma. Talk about phony! But the millionaires were eating it up, and pumping money back into the machine that was the Castini/DeSale partnership. And Emmet was reaping the benefits too, as owner, publisher, managing editor of the Beacon. Editor in what was now the biggest city in the North, packed with the families of Castini Corp employees, Military Footmen, Peacekeepers, and civilian employees of what was now the Footmen base surrounding the Crag and including the Portal where Odie waited out her days, and did telepathic recognizance during the nights, in the guise of what people were coming to whisper of as, The Sprite.
The Crag had become as big or bigger than it had been in ancient times when it was the central city of the Muirians. The difference was, that this great city was rotten at its core. Despite the fact that he knew all this was pretense, knew it was only a facade; knew that he and Jimmy, now known by those who rightly feared him as The Wrestler, and Katie, and Odie, and maybe still to some extent Mert or as he was now known in his guise as Castini’s public hero: Captain North; were just bidding their time, waiting for the moment when they knew enough, when they had the power to strike a blow, that would bring the whole machine down; despite that knowledge, Emmet felt as rotten, inside as the city.
Oh sure, there were the clandestine meetings with Katie; there would be another tonight, where they could be good, and honest, and true to one another and share their love and the hope that some day soon this would all be over and the dream of Muir would be back. But until then he had to slug his way through every rotten day, writing editorials touting the wonders of Castini’s genius, his visions for the future, and his prospects to succeed DeSale as President. Worse, he had to watch his young reporters, bright faces who were exactly the age he’d been when he and Mert had first seen the Island of Muir, write stories that they thought were true and he knew were horribly, criminally, tragically false.
“Just play the role, Emmet,” Jimmy had said on that dark night 10 years ago, when he’d ushered them into the cottage for the family reunion. “You too Mert. Just until I can get enough evidence on that son of a bitch and all the other sons of bitches who are backing them, to hang them all out to dry.”
So, they had all played their roles, while The Wrestler tracked down the leads, fed them to Katie and her people, published what they could, covered what they knew until it was useful and wouldn’t hurt the cause to reveal all. But still, the real power was elusive. Who was the third member of the Castini-DeSale machine? Jimmy and Katie and even Odie in her own way, had told him that there was a third partner, much darker, much more powerful than these two, who were only pawns in a much bigger game. The Alchemist? No, he was pretty sure, and Jimmy and Katie had told him that whatever the Alchemist was, he wasn’t human, and his, its?, attention was focused on that horrible prison in the north, where Dark Star… But that was almost too horrible even to consider. Were Dark Star and those poor Murians alive? And if they were, how could he and the others ever rescue them? And the people of the Island of Muir, was it even remotely possible that any of them survived?
Worst of all, was that he was powerless, to play any but this sordid role of shill for the wrong side. Jimmy had told him over and over, that his was one of the biggest roles and that no ultimate victory would be possible without him and besides, if he dropped the pretense, how long could even The Wrestler and the rest of the Ring of Justice, including the Peacekeepers and Footmen not on Castini’s take, protect his mother and father and Aunt Lynne and Uncle Henry? They had their hands full just keeping Katie and her people safe.
“There has to be something else I can do!” Emmet said aloud into the dimming light of his office.
There is.
The voice was back. The one from that day at the Pole, ten years before. So familiar. So aloof. Full of compassion yet reserved as well. Until this moment he’d almost forgotten that he’d ever heard it. He’d almost convinced himself that this voice was an illusion.
There is something you can do.
Where have you been? Who are you?
Questions for another time.
Why? Why not now?
There is something you can do.
Okay. Okay. I know, focus. What are my resources, right?
You were always a smart boy, Emmet.
All right. All right. I’m a newspaper publisher, but I can’t publish the truth, so…
You can tell a story.
Sure, sure. But how do I get anybody to listen.
You need to be a character, not a teller.
What is that supposed…
Who can you become?
You mean…the way Jimmy has, the way Odie…?
Yes, yes, that’s it…
But all I’ve got is…
He looked around the office.
…a nice corner office and a bunch of newsprint…a bunch of newsprint…
Remember, the robot sleds at the Pole? How they exploded when you put forth your will?
You…you did that.
You know I didn’t.
Yeah, yeah, but I don’t know how I did it…
Focus, Emmet…
He sat down. Closed his eyes.
Newsprint, newsprint, a character…
Suddenly, the stack of newspapers from the last two weeks worth of issues of the Beacon, which had sat undisturbed, since he could never bear to read such lies, began moving, swirling into the air, twirling in the windless office.
Good Emmet…
A character…newsprint…
The papers formed the crude shape of a man but kept twirling, shaping, in a way to make the hair stand on end.
A persona…It needs a persona…an embodiment…and a voice.
Yes, Exactly! Good boy. Vocala sur voca…
The newspaper being kept swirling, walking, floating about the office and now, it spoke, ‘’I AM DEADLINE!!!”
Emmet remained in his seat, but the window flew open and the newspaper being flew out.
Big Bill Castini was in for a wild night.
***
Out over the lake Captain Merton Bailey, tipped the wings of his father’s refurbished firemage beta. Emblazoned on the fuselage was “Captain North: Hero of the Great Lake War”. That was who he was now. Eye patch leather jacket, flight helmet, the whole perverse charade. Public appearances, shopping center openings, political rallies and, just for show, shoreline flybys in full view of everyone along the lakeshore in Stony…rather Castini Crag, showing that he was keeping the North safe from the dreaded Muirians.
All for the sake of the Muirian he loved, imprisoned alone in the Portal of the Crag, or as the Emmet’s Beacon painted her, “The Evil Princess in the Tower plotting her fruitless schemes to reconquer the North.”
“I’m sick of this!”
He wanted to turn this damned plane north, straight to the Pole or however far his fuel would take him, blast a hole in that fortress, free Dark Star, form a flight of owls and bring this travesty of a city to its knees and take Big Bill Castini by the throat and squeeze until his eyes came out. But none of that was even remotely possible.
“Bide your time,” The Wrestler had told them. “Hone your weapons. Take what opportunities you can and believe in the Ring of Justice.”
But justice was so slow. In this world, in this now hideously ugly city. All towers, all pretense. All metal tendrils like the ones that had swallowed the Island of Muir whole. No matter how long he lived he would never get that nightmare out of his head, even while he was living this one. Meanwhile, he and Odie were getting older and their chances for a life together slimmer and slimmer. So many dreams in the ashes. And all they had together, was her ability to zip by him in the night, tap him on the shoulder. Show him pretty scenes of the past, give him intelligence to pass on to the Wrestler. Never, though, never could he see her face, or talk to her directly. He could only try to take sidelong glances as The Sprite flew by.
What he wouldn’t give for a mission where the target was definite, where he felt he had an honest purpose.
“Mert,” Emmet would tell him in their secret meetings late at night in alleyways, in low life clubs, “you’ve got to be strong.”
Easy for Emmet to say, at least he had Katie. He could look in her eyes, hold her in his arms. You can’t build a life with a dream girl.
And when would it be better? When? Jimmy The Wrestler kept making promises, but whoever that third part of the big conspiracy was, he hadn’t shown his face yet, and meanwhile Mert was forced to play this flying clown day after day, night after night, while his chances of a life dwindled away to nothing. All he had that was real was his Mom and Dad. His Mom, so sweet and unchanged, and his poor father, silent, troubled, haunted by all those years waiting for his chance to save Uncle Ernest, who now just delighted in playing cards with his father and mother and aunt night after night. Was that a life? Was that what he and Emmet and Odie and Katie were fighting for, a stupid eternal card game and “The song is still being sung…” It grated on him to the point of fury when Emmet said that, especially in the impossible Muirian tongue.
Impossible because all the Muirians but one, the one he loved most, were dead, or as good as dead.
“Damniit!” Met pulled back on the stick and aimed the mage at the sky rocketing up into the heavy clouds blazing with light from the sunset, on through the driving snow, and now he dove towards the Great Lake before straightening out and flying low along the water, flying north.
“Where am I going? Who am I kidding?”
He sighed, and flew back towards the remains of the airstrip beyond the crag and the portal where his love sat waiting for a better time. He just needed to settle down. Go to the cottage, talk to the family. Maybe have some of that great soup.
“The song is still being sung.”
***
Odie ran in her sleek red running suit along the flat open plain of the Pole. Back and forth across the whole prison compound. Some of the wreckage still lay where it had ten years before. Bits and pieces of half burned half frozen wood extending like broken fingers and arms from the new snow: those were the owls. Twisted piles of metal that were the remains of the Alchemist’s sleds that had tangled with Emmet, the remains of Emmet’s battle with the forces of mechanized darkness, were all stacked in vacated corners of the airfield. Over 2,000 unbroken stones, 2,000 enemy crafts, she’d counted them, remained on the field: waiting.
Any detail. Any detail might be important. If I could just get Otter or one of Katie’s reporters inside, just once, I could use their daydreams, just as we did to see what I can see now, to get inside, find my father, but how are we ever going to manage that?
She ran about the circumference of the Pole, saw the sleds on duty. For fun she stood right in front of one and taunted it. Though she could make herself known even strike out physically in her psychic runs, as The Sprite, and cause no end of confusion to Big Bill Castini, President DeSale and his forces; the sleds, and she guessed, no other machine could see her or sense her in any way. But it was fun to pretend, fun to thumb her nose at the Alchemist. For the hundred thousandth time she wondered who that could be. Was it some manifestation of Wildark? Perhaps, but her sense, her certainty was that the Alchemist wasn’t human. She believed that the Alchemist was the gigantic mechanical heart Emmet had intimated, which lay deep below the Polar surface.
A massive force of some kind. What is its purpose?
If only I could be here once, just once, when the doors open…
But she had spent days, a full month once between feeding time and audiences with the wealthy tourists back at the crag, just running back and forth in front of the door. They had never opened.
So somehow, we’ve got to get them to open them. What can we do? Mert might be able to find a way there, open up with his cannons and knock so to speak, but how would we ever get him back home with no fuel? And why would they open the doors anyway? No, no somehow, someone who can be here physically has to sneak in, tunnel in, drill his way in. Ha, drill…
That was one thing that made her laugh. Castini and DeSale’s pathetic attempts to drill into the Crag. They’d been trying for ten years and every time, every time, the hole would be bored, then, almost before it was finished, it would fill itself back in. Then when they tried to remove what had been taken out, it would become vapor and simply work its way back into the crag. Perpetual motion, and a proof of the insanity of evil, trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
Well, you have to find humor somewhere in this tortured world.
She turned and began to run, over the ice, onto the surrounding flows, over the open water, onto the ice bergs, mile upon mile, upon mile until at last she neared the Crag, stopping off to tap Otter on the shoulder at Muscat as she sat repairing some rigging on the temporarily beached Kingfisher…
“Hello, Spritely! How goes the day?” She was attempting to put a good face on it, but the death of Mr. Worth, her husband, as she’d have it, had cast a bit of a pall over here indomitable spirit. Otter knew better than most, that death was no permanent condition, but she missed him plain and simple. So did Odie. Someday…they’d make it right.
Emerson, who had been sleeping, wagged his tail.
It is as well as can be expected, Otter.
Though of course she couldn’t communicate this in words, only a caress as she sped on to the cottage where she found her love. There was Mert morosely eating some soup with his father, his uncle and aunts. They were an intriguing bunch, those four. In some ways they seemed oblivious to it all. Seemed to have no idea of the dangers they were in, of the terrors from which they had been protected. And what those two old men had endured at the hands of the Alchemist! Something so cruel that it had warped their minds, made them believe that the Muirians, her people, of all possible unlikely enemies, were responsible for their captivity.
Tap. Tap. Tap. She nudged Mert, just to let him know she was there. He didn’t respond as he usually did, by touching his shoulder where she had tapped.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Nothing. He was listening to his uncle. What was the nature of this conversation that had him so attentive? She wanted so much to take him in her arms, tell him that his pretense, his sacrifice of principle these ten years was truly worth it. He wasn’t responding… Why?
She felt a need, in the city. On she ran into the streets of the Crag, so ugly now, so filled with skyscrapers and garish lights as she’d seen in pictures at Katie’s office in The Light. Up the hill she headed towards Emmet’s office and…
He’s just sitting there. He’s not asleep. Just sitting at the desk. His eyes are closed. And he’s smiling. He’s smiling like that boy I knew in high school. What is going on? What has made Emmet so happy?
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Hey, Odie! Glad you’re here. Get up to Castini’s club on the crag, Odie, join in the fun! Katie’s boys and girls are getting some great pictures! When that’s over, I’m coming to get you out of the Portal! It’s a whole new world, Odie! A much better one! Vocala sur voca!”
Chapter 12
The St. Martins Light
“The word from the shores of the big water.”
Day 19, Heart of the Cold, Year 87
115th Millenium
‘Deadline’ and ‘Ring of Justice’
Destroy Castini’s Lakeview Palace
On Night of Political Gala
by Carolyn Antonia
Light Senior Staff Reporter
Stony Crag—“I am Deadline!” announced a ghostly bundle of newspapers in vaguely human form, before unleashing a barrage of force that blew a gaping hole in the front facade of the Lake view Palace, shattered its massive windows, did untold damage to crystal glasses, chandeliers, and other costly glassware, split oak dining tables down the middle, and hurled well known, alleged underworld figures and their alleged lieutenants through the newly rent front opening and down the steep slopes of the crag below, according to countless observers at the scene, including this reporter.
In addition, the ghostly apparition, the self-proclaimed “Deadline” apparently aided by the well- documented invisible personage known locally as “The Sprite”, then herded party goers of the President’s Gala into the main ballroom where Deadline delivered the following address, which was recorded by Light reporters, while Mayor William “Big Bill” Castini and President Daryl DeSale were somehow held aloft in mid air above the ballroom, “If up to now you have been a follower of the vile Mr. Castini, and a believer in the false President Mr. DeSale, believe no more! They have lied to you about the disappearance of President Rosenberg. They have falsified accounts of The Great Lake War, and shamed our valorous allies the Muirians! They have sold you false potions and injected you with poisons! They have polluted your minds with bold-faced lies!”
“You, the wealthiest citizens of the North, of the World, have an obligation to those less fortunate, but up to now you have thrown in your lot with these false demigogues who are in league with the forces of the Alchemist and even darker forces who have not yet shown their faces! Know the truth, and be free to choose freedom for all! Help us, the members of the Ring of Justice, The Sprite, The Wrestler, and all those others in the Peacekeepers, loyal Footmen, and ordinary citizens, to set things right! Make your choice carefully! I am Deadline!”
At the close of this address, Deadline waved his newspaper arms in the dim light of the nightclub, and blew a massive hole in the ceiling, rising, with Castini and DeSale in tow, off into the night. No word had been received of their whereabouts at press time.
———
Join the Ring of Justice
Editorial by Managing Editor Katie Cratz
10 A
———
***
“Your father wanted me to talk to you,” said Ernest Sourcer, adjusting his glasses and flattening his pale hands on the kitchen table.
Mert looked up, his brain awash with a thousand regrets and nightmare visions of the prison at the Pole, the sinking of Muir, and the world of lies in which he now found himself forced to be a major participant. What did this old man want? All he needed at this point was another recitation of his uncle’s deluded stories, born of years of torture at the hands of the Alchemist, whoever that was.
“Now, Ernest, the boy is tired,” said Betty Lynne Bailey clearing away the remains of the late night snack of Crag turtle soup and Crag crackers, she and her sister had made for her son.
“”Lynne, let the boys talk; it’s past our bedtime anyway,” said Mert’s Aunt, Betty Lu Sourcer.
Lynne sighed and followed Lu out of the kitchen through the cozy living room which was hung with family portraits and candid pictures. She paused on the landing at the base of the stairs.
“You know how Ernest talks, Lu.”
“I do. Better than anyone in the world,” she laughed, “or the cosmos, I suppose. And it always comes to very little. Deep down, Lynne, you have to understand…”
“I know. ‘Deep down, he’s got a good heart’.”
Lu nodded.
Lynne sighed again. “How deep?”
***
“Well, fellas, the tide has turned,” said The Wrestler, lighting a cigar in the darkness of a downtown warehouse basement. “Your new playmate Deadline, and his friend The Sprite are about to go do to the Footmen and Peacekeepers on your payrolls, what they just did to your wise guys. And when they’re done with that, they’re coming back here to find out if you’ve told me what I want to know. And if they don’t like what they hear…” He puffed a leisurely waft of smoke into their faces where they sat huddled in a grease stained concrete corner. “…well, I suppose you can guess.”
“Jimmy, Jimmy,” Castini said, his voice cracking, “this has all been a misunderstanding. If you’d just taken my deal…”
For a moment, the Wrestler lost his composure, “A misunderstanding? You soulless bastard! Tell that to my wife! If you say one more word I don’t want to hear Castini, I’m going to fulfill the promise I made to you ten years ago, right here, right now…”
“Mr. Cratz,” said DeSale, in an oily tone, “just what is it you think we know?”
“DeSale,” said The Wrestler touching the brim of his fedora, “I was a newspaper man for 25 years before your friend here decided to make this personal. I know all the public relations you learned in college, and I know all the doublespeak you learned in the Air Corps. Try to pull any of that on me and I’ll make you the same kind of promise I made to this contemptible tub of bear excrement. The only difference being, I won’t give you the payoff on the installment plan, I’ll give it to you when I pay Jimmy off, tonight.”
“I understand the situation. And I hope your understand that the full weight of the government of the North will now be exerted against you and your so called Ring…”
With one hand the wrestler lifted DeSale from the floor while two Peacekeepers loyal to the Ring, who had accompanied them to the warehouse, kept a watch on Mayor Castini.
“None of that matters right now, though, does it, Mr. DeSale? When your life comes up into your throat and your twisted little brain matter starts leaking out your ears, all those troops and missiles and battle wagons don’t amount to a hill of beans do they?”
DeSale’s eyes went wide, and he attempted to gag out words. The Wrestler set him lightly down.
“You were saying?”
“The whole war…the whole war…” began DeSale spitting and sputtering.
“Was a trap!” Big Bill, interrupted.
“Shut up Castini,” The Wrestler said calmly, “you’ll get a chance to corroborate our higher source here. Go on, Mr. President.”
“The Alchemist wanted us to make sure that the whole Air Corps headed North with the Muirians, so he could get the King into his prison and sink the Island. Rosenberg didn’t know, the generals didn’t know. It was all just a way to leave the Crag open, so they could tap into the Crag.”
“Then what?”
“Then it gets a little hazy…”
“Do you think this is a game, DeSale? You have no negotiating chips, not a one. As for my life, I don’t care if I live or die. I have members of my Ring including The Sprite…”
At the mention of the name both Castini and DeSale took in a quick breath, “who have sworn to die to protect my daughter, and they are well trained, as Castini’s men have learned these past ten years. And now Deadline is on the scene. And fellas, I don’t know exactly what he can do, but the world is about to find out. Between you and me, I’m not sure his power is limited at all. I’m not sure he couldn’t lay the whole North flat with a single ghostly breath. Castini’s eyes widened. DeSale took in a ragged breath, and involuntarily nodded. Getting the picture are you? Now, start saying something I don’t already know that makes sense to me!”
“All right, all right,” said DeSale. “There’s another matter…”
“Now we’re getting to it.”
“The…the Alchemist is just a puppet…”
“Go on…”
DeSale hesitated, clearly terrified.
“Jimmy, Jimmy, he, he can’t tell…”
“Shut up Castini…”
“For once the fat blowhard is telling the truth.” said DeSale.
Castini suddenly looked at DeSale with a comical expression of genuine hurt at the insult.
The Wrestler, found the humor. “Really Jimmy, you didn’t know everybody feels the same way about you? You thought all those folks liked you for anything other than you big fat wallet tucked away in the hip pocket of your big wide pants?”
He turned back to DeSale. “Continue Mr. President.”
“If I say even one more word about our silent partner, my head will be filled with a kind of horror even you or this…Deadline…can’t inflict on us…”
“You sure of that?” The Wrestler lit a match and held it close to DeSale’s face.
“I’ll be damned. I think you’re telling the truth, DeSale, and I’ve spent a lifetime smelling out lies coming from the mouths of fabricating pieces of filth like you. Okay for now, but you’ll still get to talk to Mister Deadline.”
DeSale and Castini both shuddered.
“Take them away boys.”
Jimmy Cratz, former champion wrestler, former newspaper editor, now turned shadowy enforcer of The Ring of Justice, waited for the basement to clear, then stood puffing out one furious line of smoke after another.
“Who is in charge of this dark show?” The Wrestler said to no one. “Who is the puppet master?
***
The walls of the Crag prison fortress were in shambles, unconscious and broken Footmen, Peacerkeepers and gang members lay strewn about the rocky landscape. Deadline had swept into the Portal, and laid out the remaining guards. The walls of the Crag Portal itself remained unharmed.
Odaya, grinning, and attempting to hug Deadline, who crumpled in upon himself at the effort, laughed then raced off through the door of the Portal, south down the switchback, through the shambles that had once been Castini’s resort and through the streets of Stony Crag at a pace that defied all logic, and was faster than the human eye. Her years in the Portal had not been wasted; she could tap into the full force of the Crag now. She had learned to race about the World with the speed of daydreams making her presence felt in the real world as The Sprite, and now she could do so in physical form. What was more, finding herself beyond the psychic barriers of the enemy, she was able to speak freely to all she loved, which in keeping with the code of the Muirians, was everyone, except those, including her father, behind the psychic barriers of the Polar prison walls.
Soon father, we’ll break down those walls too!
She spoke clearly, to everyone, with a ring of gravitas, in the voice of a Princess,
Come now! Retake the Crag! Retake the Crag! Rally around the words of the Tale. Vocala sur voca!
Her voice reverberated throughout the North, into every mind, throughout the world, and then even beyond to the stars! Where peoples, long generations removed from this one, but still dimly remembering the Crag and all it stood for, felt stirred by a distant call, and began to move, slowly but surely in her direction.
Come now! Defend the Crag! Vocala sur Voca!
In his office down the hill, Emmet was smiling, rapturously!
Katie, you won’t believe this! It’s all coming back again, the words are true! The words… but suddenly, he sensed danger on the Crag. The sounds of battle wagons rolling up from the south and then the unmistakable sound of the last remaining firemage.
Emmet grinned still more widely in his seat at The Beacon.
This night just keeps getting better. Finally, finally, the world is turning back in our favor! Atta boy, Mert! The gang’s all here!
Deadline stepped through the now vacant doorway of the Portal, tossed aside a broken military wall, and turned to face the onslaught to come. The first combatant came into view.
A battle wagon loaded for bear! Well, they’ve never seen a bear like this one before!
As the battle wagon topped the Crag, it opened fire with its rockets, shredding the form of Deadline.
Slowly the hatch of the battle wagon opened and the cannoneer said to the driver beneath him in the cockpit, “That wasn’t so hard. There ain’t nothing left of that ghosty but tattered burnin’ newsprint…”
He looked up upon hearing a strange sound and suddenly saw whirling bits of fiery newspaper, leaves, sticks, and strips of dirty cloth from the uniforms of his fallen comrades reassemble themselves into a form which roared in a towering ghostly manner, I AM DEADLINE!!!
“Holy crud!” said the cannoneer quickly closing the hatch.
A moment later Deadline unleashed a blast of Crag plasma from his outstretched and burning hands that tumbled the battle wagon like a child’s toy back down the road it had climbed all the way to the bottom of the Crag, colliding with thirty more such wagons on the way down.
And now the firemage, which had flown to the top of the world, proudly roared through the midnight sky above the Crag.
Let’em have it, Mert!
But suddenly the mage dropped from the sky and angled in a power dive through the darkness opening fire with full cannons on the ghostly figure in the clearing at the top of the Crag.
Mert, buddy, what are you doing?
In the depths of her mind, and on the teeming city street below, Odaya turned towards the Crag. My love, what are you doing?
Just giving you Muirian bastards exactly what you deserve, my love!
Said a voice simultaneously dripping with sarcasm and burning with rage. A voice Emmet and Odie barely recognized, as Merton’s.
Our only mistake was leniency! We should have blown up the prison with the island. I should have left you at the Pole to die, Emmet, buddy! I should have smothered you in your sleep, dear, dear Princess! I should have opened fire on the populace when your city went down. I’ll never make those mistakes again. This one’s for my father!
Merton Bailey aimed another blast at the reanimating Deadline.
This one is just for me: Captain North! Long live Mayor Castini! Long live President DeSale!
Death to the Muirians!
Chapter 13
Odaya Kontala, Princess of the Lost Island of Muir, paced the little room deep inside a Stony Crag high rise and attempted to be calm, rational, analytical. Given the circumstances, and in a valiant attempt to be true to The Tale and the trademark compassion of her people, that wasn’t easy. Every time she looked at the men seated before her: Mayor William “Big Bill” Castini, and President Daryl DeSale, out of pure spite she wanted to subject them to a new round of haunting, as she had time and time again as The Sprite, over the last ten years. The very thought of her late night poltergeist acts in their private homes and government offices, she knew, turned their collective knees to jello. They were a superstitious pair, and she’d used that to rattle them. She might use it again to get them to tell her the name of their silent partner. Then again, maybe not. She had a genuine sense from them, and the word of both Jimmy Cratz and Emmet, that the very act of thinking about his identity terrified them more than The Sprite, more than The Wrestler, more even than Emmet’s horrific creation he called Deadline. What to do next? She eyed them over. They squirmed at her slightest look. In fact, her perusal was causing them to positively quiver. She felt ashamed, unsanctified, unevolved, disappointed, that she took a certain perverse pleasure in their fear.
In the aftermath of the Battle for the Crag the upshot was this: Captain North, she couldn’t bear to think of him as her Mert in his present, repulsive, inexplicable, condition, and the Footmen and Peacekeepers loyal to him, could no longer hold their ground, or even the ground of the adjacent military base, not with Deadline on the loose. They had abandoned that ground and were backing away as far as Halfway Canal, 50 miles to the south. That left both The Crag and St. Martins free. However, the psychic barrier erected by someone, probably this silent partner, had frustrated her efforts to more fully utilize her telepathic powers combined with the crag plasma forces emanating form the portal to reach across the World, into the Alchemist’s Polar prison, and across the cosmos. She could still dial locally, so to speak, but the long distance lines were again out. Only during that one glimmer of a moment immediately after she attained her freedom, thanks to Emmet and Deadline, had she felt the full potential of her powers. The silent partner, in that moment, had flinched. Let down his guard or been truly surprised by Deadline. She smiled momentarily, at the memory of little Emmet unleashing his swirling newspaper monstrocity with a voice straight out of the crypt. Her smile, she noticed, made both Castini and DeSale shudder. She again felt her own vindictive pleasure rise and she tried to quell it. That pleasure, unchecked, she knew, could lead to ruin. Revenge was not the answer. Only love could answer the questions, truly solve all the conundrums. Her father and mother had taught her that.
Like so many men and women who dedicate their powers to the forces of evil, Castini and DeSale could clearly dish out torture and death, but they weren’t so good at facing it themselves. She had to again rein in her revulsion at the sight of such ruthless cowards. There was nothing very mysterious about them. They’d seen a way to become rich and powerful and they had taken advantage of the opportunity. They were flawed, avaricious, spiteful. She forced herself to acknowledge that the same qualities emanated from everyone in varying degrees, herself included.
‘Love is the wisdom of the Crag.’ But how does one choose to love such creatures?
As to the barrier, that was a puzzle. It was mechanical, in some way, but, she felt not completely. It was tuned to a frequency. It could not be using the power of the Crag, because the Crag, especially over 10 years, would have found a way to reverse the misuse of its power as it had done over and over throughout history. Unless, a true master of deception were using the crag plasma in combination with something mechanical. Thus, compensating with the mechanical power, whenever the crag pushed back. But the power of the Crag was immense. So, if the compensating force was mechanical, there had to be a power source nearby. The Wrestler and his detectives and reporters were going over every inch of the military base at this moment, and so far had found no such power source.
“Gentlemen,” she began softly standing before them in a formal white robe of Muir, “since it chills your marrow to converse with us about your silent partner, perhaps you could tell me something about a power source.”
The two beaten men, no longer even tied to their chairs, glanced at one another.
“It would be enormous. The size of the municipal power plants, or at least that powerful.”
“There’s…”
“Yes, Mr. Castini?”
Castini looked over at DeSale for approval.
“If you know anything, you gnat brain, tell her!” DeSale said. “Do you want them to bring Deadline back in here?”
Castini shook his head involuntarily, “No, no.”
“Tell her what you know! Ahhh…” DeSale was suddenly gripped with pain.
“Well…well…um…” Castini licked his lips gingerly. “…funny thing, when we opened the Beacon using the plans developed by our…ahhhh….”
“Yes, yes. The silent partner.”
Castini, sweating profusely nodded, “…the workers told me that the power plant under there could run the Beacon…ahhh…six times over…ahhh!” Castini fell from his chair to the floor and writhed there…as DeSale, suffering his own paroxysms, looked on in terror.
“Enough. Enough. Officers,” said Odaya, to the Ring of Justice Peacekeepers standing guard, “take them and see that Mr. Castini and Mr. DeSale get medical attention.
Emmet?
I heard, Odie. Deadline is on it. It was time to tear apart that house of lies anyway. I think I’ll like working for Katie. Blazes, It’s going to be a chore to explain to all those kids on my staff that the whole deal, from day one has been a sham, though.
My guess is, Deadline’s techniques will be too blunt. You better get some engineers on it. As for your young reporters, I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep up the pretense for a while longer.
We still really don’t know who we’re dealing with, even with DeSale and Castini no longer in the picture.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. Do feel bad about the kids, though.
They will understand eventually, Emmet. Vocala sur voca.
Vocala sur voca.
Ode took a walk aimlessly around the room.
So much for the power source, now who is the silent partner?
Whoever it is, is ‘a true master of deception’ those were your words. Did they sound familiar?
Teacher?
Of course, dear.
What do you mean?
He is deceptive. He is wily. He is a master of the mind and wins people with his ways…
Teacher, are you implying what I think…?
Of course, dear.
You’re quoting The Tale…
‘Deceptive’, ‘wily’ , ‘master of the mind’…
Now it was Odaya who shuddered.
You…you mean he’s actually manifesting himself physically in the world?
Answer your own question. You know what you need to know.
Teacher? Teacher…
The voice was gone. For a moment Odaya Kontala reeled with the implications. At last she spoke a single word, a word no Muirian could utter without dread.
“Wildark…” Odaya Kontala whispered into the empty room.
***
The Cratz office at The Light, was a study in contemplation. Jimmy Cratz had unconsciously taken the chair behind the desk upon entering the office, Emmet and Katie stood near the door. Ode sat in a chair opposite Jimmy. She had just finished speaking.
All four had been silent for over a minute. At last Jimmy spoke.
“Princess, you and Sourcer here, are the ones in tune with The Tale. You were born to it; he somehow acquired it. I’ve read it over and over, and while I absolutely admire the metaphor and the lovely sentiment behind it, I’m a man of the 150th Millennium and I just can’t buy the idea that some ancient demon has the world in his grip.”
“Wildark is no more a demon than we are,” Emmet said. “He was just there at the beginning. He saw the rise of the Crag, and in his heart he was selfish, and like so many people, saw only an opportunity to benefit himself. And now because, long, long ago, through no power of his own, he was gifted, by the Crag and the Seer with immortality, he’s been around for a long, long time. And he’s gotten better at deception all the time. He’s taken countless people into his power down through the ages. He always starts with the easy ones like Castini. Then he moves on to the more subtle ones like DeSale. And each time he rises again, as his power increases, he takes on good hearts like Mert’s…”
Odaya looked down and sighed for a moment…
“Any of us could be next in line. And we don’t know who else he’s already won.”
Katie, perusing Emmet’s face, took on the role of journalist, seeking the facts, “Let’s say that’s all true, hon. Let’s say, and I’ve seen and experienced some of the Muirian wonders myself, not least of all in the cockpit of an owl, if you recall…let’s say Wildark is back. Explain to me one more time why The Seer and the Crag and the Water and the Sky, would first of all make such a creature immortal so he could spread evil throughout the millennia, and second why they just don’t slap him down so that the rest of us can get on with the good works of the world?”
Odie took this one on, “The whole point is to prove to the most bitter, cruel, unscrupulous, hateful soul in the cosmos, that the power of love is the only creative source, that the stars and the water and the sky, and the trees and every living and non-living thing in the cosmos are all created out of and are the living embodiment of love. Love as firm and real as the Crag. More so, really. Infinitely more so. When that’s done, when Wildark finally understands the futility of hatred, avarice, lust for power, jealousy, wrath, the forces of evil will at last, of their own free will, put down their hateful weapons and their machinations and join in the song.”
“That makes it sound like the forces of good and evil are just involved in a kind of classroom exercise. Or a silly child’s game with a moral lesson and a song built in,” said Katie. “I don’t mean to seem flip, but that’s the way it seems, to my tiny brain.”
An image suddenly began to gnaw at Emmet. A game. An ongoing game…
Jimmy stared at the floor for a long time. “You two make me feel very, very old and cynical. Maybe I’ve just been reporting on and battling against the likes of Castini and DeSale for too long. Maybe I’ve done too many unsavory things in my life myself, though I like to think mostly in the name of goodness, and maybe I know my own transgressions too well, but I just can’t buy it. If what you two are saying is true we’re supposed to just go on battling with evil throughout this age and however many more ages there are to come with Wildark incarnating over and over each time as somebody else, until, finally, finally, he gets it, and all the nasty souls who have followed him throughout time get it too, and then we’re all just going to sing in harmony?”
“Think of all the evil,” said Katie, echoing her father’s sentiments, “think of all the atrocities committed by people time after time. All of those horrors, all of those lies, once Wildark finally accepts that love is the answer, are just going to be forgotten? Emmet, you were there to see the sinking of Muir. That golden city, that height, that epitome, of what anyone in the World could ever aspire to. Odie, it was your city…”
“And yours too, Katie,” Odaya quickly added.
Katie nodded and continued, “ …I don’t mean to be indelicate, but think of all the people in that city, Odie. Think of…” here she paused for a moment. “…your mother. If the Alchemist, or Wildark, or Castini, or DeSale, or anyone involved were to step forward right now and say, ‘Oh, I was so wrong! I never should have done that! Sorry. I get it now. I love you all.’ You mean to say you would instantly, love them back?”
“No…” Odaya said quietly after a long moment. “ I loved my mother just like you loved yours, Katie.”
Katie nodded.
“I wouldn’t get to forgiveness easily. Not instantly. Not soon. Likely, it would take me a long, long time. A great deal of soul searching. I’m all too human. I might not get to the point of forgiveness in this lifetime, but that doesn’t mean that forgiveness and love aren’t the right…the only true way. I would have to come to a conscious, willing, free decision to forgive. As hard as that would be, the fact is that when and if I finally got back to forgiveness and love for the perpetrators of that atrocity and all the other atrocities throughout time, only then, would I be in harmony.”
“And within the Muirian system of law,” Emmet said, “there is a method of getting offenders to search their own souls, in a way that makes them incapable of any action before coming to a decision about how or whether they will compensate for the wrong they’ve done.”
“And in this system,” said Jimmy, “what if the offender, in the end, after long contemplation, decides he still wants to be…pardon the expression…a son of a bitch?”
Odie nodded slowly, knowing what the reaction would be…”Then the offender is free to continue being a song of a bitch.”
“But it rarely happens,” said Emmet. “According to what Mr. Worth told me, and what I’ve absorbed from The Tale, the percentage of criminal recurrence is less than one percent of one percent.”
“So, even Muirians aren’t perfect,” said Jimmy. “And since that’s true, what about the rest of us sinners? Are we supposed to use the same tactics, techniques, with us ordinary humans? With ourselves?”
“The Muirian precepts were created over 50 millennia… It would…it will take a long time for the rest of humanity to come into harmony,” said Odaya. “I hope no one is offended by that statement.”
“No, Odie,” Katie said. “You’ve just proven Dad’s point.”
“Love is the wisdom of the Crag,” said Odie. “And sometimes, love has to take on the tactics of battle. That’s what my father told me. And sometimes the portals of love become very complicated. And sometimes we stray from our philosophy and that is exactly what Wildark waits for. He waits for despair, like the kind my poor Merton came to. And then he pounces.”
“We’ll get him back, Odie” Emmet said. “I’m working on that right now.”
“And the power source?” Odie asked.
“Wasn’t a job for Deadline. You were absolutely right. A little too delicate. My alter-ego’s techniques would have blown up most of the Crag with the power source. I’ve got a master technician working on that right now. My dad, with his expertise, if he weren’t around the bend with brainwashing from The Alchemist’s prison, he’d be the perfect person to dismantle…” Emmet suddenly paused.
What is it, Emmet? Did you see something clearly?
Suddenly, the voice was back.
You…you know I did. I’m so glad you’re back… but… I…I can’t be right…can I?
Can’t you? Oh my dear, you know you are. Of course you are. Vocala sur voca.
Just as suddenly, the voice was gone again.
Odie was suddenly looking with wide eyes at Emmet. He held her gaze for a moment.
“Emmet, Odie,” said Katie. “You know how much I love you both, but I can’t help following the implications of what we’ve been talking about. If the ultimate good is to love, and to forgive the transgressions of others, then I can’t help following that logic to the conclusion that I’m supposed to somehow forgive Castini for what he did to my mother, and what he tried to do to my father.”
Jimmy dropped his head. When he brought it back up again, there were tears in his eyes, “That’s a tall order, kids. And it’s something that has been nagging at me for a couple of years now, ever since I truly got the message of theTale. And this little talk has put a new spin on it.”
He paused for a long moment with a distant look on his face. At last he came back to the room, as if from a great distance. “When I woke up ten years ago, with those two despicable thugs taking Jesse and me out into the lake, with what breathe I had left, I grabbed a gun from one of their pockets and shot them without a moment’s remorse. And when I dropped them overboard, I felt nothing except for the pain in my chest. Then, when I looked over and saw what they had done to my Jesse… well, the only thing that kept me alive was my determination to see Castini dead by my hands. I somehow turned that boat back to shore, somehow flagged down a cabbie that I happened to know who somehow got me to my doctor’s office. And Dr. Williams somehow patched me back together, and my people somehow got me to a safe house. I’ve been plotting this and planning this for 10 years. And now we’ve got Castini right where I want him. I could go to where he is right now and twist his abominable fat head off his despicable stub of a neck, but when I think about it all sitting here, with you kids, and I see what this evil has done to all of you and to Merton and to…” for a moment he lost the power of speech…”And to Katie. I just think that maybe Jesse would want me to find a better way than stooping to murder.”
“What are you saying, Dad?” Katie asked.
“Kiddo, I’m saying maybe we should give the Muirian way a try.” He and Katie looked for a long moment into each other’s eyes. Katie bit her lower lip and finally nodded. “Now, Odie, Emmet, explain it to me. How do we kill this Wildark bastard with love?”
Chapter 14
“You’re letting us go?”
President Daryl DeSale eyed The Wrestler over in the half light of dawn in the heart of Stony Crag. A moment before, the guards had disappeared from the locked room, Jimmy Cratz had suddenly shown up with a grim expression, and ushered them into the hallway and down stairs through several winding corridors and out into this alley. It was a chilly winter morning.
“I…I don’t like this…Jimmy,” said Big Bill Castini looking balefully around for lurking guards with guns. “I figure maybe you’re gonna have one of your people…”
“How many times do I have to explain to you, Castini? If somebody is going to murder you, it’s going to be me, and you’ll be looking me right in the eye when it happens.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” said DeSale. “Why the change of heart? We didn’t…couldn’t tell you what you wanted to know. You and your people obviously aren’t afraid of repercussions, or you wouldn’t have taken it this far. So why didn’t you just finish us off.”
“Um…Mr. President…”
“Shut up Castini.”
The Wrestler nodded, took a cigar from the inside pocket of his overcoat, lit it and puffed away, looking down the alley to the north where there was a glimpse of the Great Lake.
“I’ve been talking to some young people, Mr. President. And they helped me come to a change of heart. Violence, hatred, suspicion, lies, revenge, retribution, atrocity, war. Those have been the history of the World, whether you read the history books of the North or you subscribe to the mytho-poetic version in The Tale. I’ve lived a violent life myself, both in the ring and outside it. At some level there’s still nothing I’d like to see more than the likes of you two, especially you Castini, dancing the last lead jig in some dirty alley like this one. It’s probably, better than you deserve, really.”
He looked the two of them in the eye with a cold stare that had Castini believing for a moment that The Wrestler’s heart had changed back again. In truth, in just that moment, with a gun in his shoulder holster well within reach, it almost did. Then Jimmy Cratz sighed a long moment, looked out towards the Great Lake and said, “But, I’m an old man now. And maybe it’s just that I don’t have the will to dirty my hands with more blood at this late stage. Maybe I’m so close to the end myself that I’m taking a closer look at my own sins and failings. And maybe when I look at you two worthless sacks of excrement, I see a faint reflection of myself, and I feel that maybe it’s time for mercy. Maybe it’s time that we all had mercy on our fellow men, and stopped looking for a way to control, and subjugate, and butcher each other.”
He looked again in the direction of Castini and DeSale and puffed one more billow of smoke.
“Anyway, it will be something new. At least to me. I’ve never tried it before. So, your cab is coming in a moment or two. I’m running out of time. I’m letting you go, and I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go and tell your silent partner…your master…” Here his expression became very sober and intense, “ Go tell Wildark that The Ring of Justice is is making a sign of good faith by releasing the two of you. We don’t want any more death. We don’t want any more destruction. We will cease and desist from all aggression against him, if he will simply do likewise. Live and let live. And tell him I said, ‘Love is the wisdom of the Crag.’”
Castini and DeSale looked south up the alley when the cab suddenly appeared at the street corner at the other end of the alley. When Castini and DeSale looked back north, The Wrestler had disappeared into the shadows of dawn.
“What do you make of it Mr. President?”
“The real question, Castini, is what is our partner going to make of it?”
***
The power source beneath The Beacon was a puzzle. That’s the way Don Mahoney, a former Air Corps engineer, and former classmate of Emmet’s, described it, as the two of them sipped coffee in Emmet’s office.
“It’s the most convoluted system I’ve ever seen. it’s as though it was wired for the sole purpose of making it difficult for somebody to find a way to turn it off. I thought it was going to take me ages, and a whole team to sort it all out.” Mahoney shook his head and smiled. “But then something happened…”
“What?”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Sure.”
“I heard a voice.”
“You heard…”
“I know how that sounds, but the voice said, ‘He’s just trying to confuse you, dear. Just flip the switch.’”
“Those exact words? Even the ‘dear’?”
“Especially that.”
“So then.”
“So, at first, I was even more confused, but then I reached under that massive jumble of wiring, and there was a whole room full of it, and I found, on a little panel under the paneling on the north wall, and behind it, a simple breaker. I crawled under there and just threw the breaker, and the whole system shut down.”
“Just like turning out the bedroom light.”
“Exactly.”
“So how come we’ve still got power in here?”
“That’s the thing. It wasn’t hooked up to the building at all. Near as I can figure, it was hooked up to a little transmitter I found hidden under the eaves, on the edge of the roof, and aimed right at… well…The Trapper’s Cabin.”
“The Portal…”
“Whatever you want to call it. Now Emmet, I know you’re mixed up in some awfully big doings here. And I’m delighted to do my part, but I’ve got a wife and kids and I’m not in the Air Corps anymore and I don’t want to be ever again, even if it ever gets reorganized. I just want to do my job taking care of the power of this burg.”
“You’ve done your part, Don. You’re out forever. And as far as I’m concerned, you never even saw that switch or that crazy wiring.”
“And the voice? I especially don’t want to know anything about that, ever.”
“It was friendly, though, right?”
“That was the funny part. It was like I was listening to somebody’s old grandma.”
***
Odaya Kontala was whispering across the cosmos. Her voice was traveling at the speed of thought, and at her slightest whim, her physical form seemed to be traveling with it. She had seen all of the planets ever mentioned in The Tale, and now she was on to new ones. She had found friends on the other side of the universe and she could sit beside them and converse with them as she cold with anyone in the World. She could talk with many of them, myriads of them, simultaneously. She had explained the situation on the Home World to all of them, and they had accepted it as Muirians would have, with simple honest expressions and acknowledgement. Of course, they were coming. It was not really a question. All of them had had their own dealings with Wildark throughout the 150 millennia and in some cases even in the shadowy times before that. The very idea that the Lord of Shadows and Lies had re-emerged in physical form on the Home World was a call to arms for them. They would be there and they would spread the word, though Odaya realized that really wouldn’t be necessary, since she was talking to them all at once.
If only I could have called out before. Maybe I could have saved Mr. Worth. Maybe I could have stopped Dad from going to the Pole. Maybe I could have saved Muir. Maybe I could have saved Mom.
All things have a time and place, dear.
I know.
No one is ever really gone.
I know.
We must deal with the World, with the Cosmos, as it is, and wishing through our despair that it were another way will simply cloud our minds.
I know.
Of course you do. And now we’re done, dear.
I know.
Your purpose lies before you. Don’t hesitate. Simply know the Truth.
I will. And thank you.
Vocala sur voca.
Vocala sur voca.
The teacher was gone. Odie would miss the voice. So reassuring, so matter of fact. It seemed amazing to her now, that at one point she had thought the teacher was cold, aloof, and didn’t care about the happenings of the World. She understood now. She knew what she had to do. First, she must simply wait.
She looked out over the Great Lake from the splendid vista of the Portal.
Dad. Can you hear me?
She knew the answer to that as well. Her father was blocked from hearing or answering, by the same forces that had blocked her for ten years: Wildark and the electronic transmitter. This was his new way. The Lord of Shadows was tinkering with the physical realties of the World and combining them with his always temporary manipulations of the Crag. To defeat him this time, they would need to use strategies that combated both. They needed people like Emmet. They needed people like Katie and her father. And oh…they so needed…she so needed Mert.
My love.
What do you want you she devil?
Calm yourself.
Go to blazes!
He’s toying with you.
Ha! You should talk! Whenever I hear your voice this way, I feel like I’m a ball between cat’s paws? Who’s toying with who?
‘Whom’ my love. Mr. Worth would tell you that the correct form in that case is ‘whom’.
Thanks for the grammar lesson.
Do you know what he did to Mr. Worth? He bored into that wonderful old man’s mind until the old man couldn’t resist anymore, even after all he’d been through, keeping the secrets of Muir his whole long life. Watching out for you and Emmet and me and so many others, Chronicling the history of the Crag and Muir, chronicling the history of love in the cosmos.
That’s a pretty story. But you know as well as I do, that that old man was a demon, just like all the Muirians are demons, just like you are, queen of the demons, trying to use your psychic powers to rule over the World, trying to take it away from good simple people like my father and mother and my uncle and aunt, trying to drive us all insane and rule in our places. Well, no! No, not if Captain North has anything to say about it!
Mert, you’ve been thinking about the Crescent.
Yeah, what of it?
You’ve been thinking that if you get it out and concentrate on it, you’ll get the power you need to defeat me and Deadline and The Wrestler.
Ha! I bet that makes you quiver and quake. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. What I’ve been thinking is that if you and your demon spawned race gave it to me, it’s only purpose must be to serve your purposes. So what I think I’m going to do is put on the thickest gloves I have and take it with me in my plane, and drop it into the deepest hole in the Great Lake.
It wouldn’t matter. It would still call to you. And you’re right, the Crescent would serve our purposes, Mert. They’d serve you and me and everyone in the Cosmos who is on the side of love. If you use the Crescent it will help you make Captain North into a champion of the Crag, a powerful force that stands with the love that created the Cosmos. Isn’t that what you really want?
Shut up you devil!
I’ll go, my love, but at some level, you know what I’m saying is true. Find it, Mert. Find the place where you remember what it was like on Muir. What it was like before all the darkness. Before all the whispering.
Leave me alone!
Farewell.
***
In the long run, much as Emmet hated it, it had been necessary to keep up the pretense. Odie had been right about that too. He had to be the editor of the Beacon, loyal to the forces of the North. Loyal to the President, loyal to Mayor Castini, even though both were officially missing. He wondered when they’d show up again.
He still had to hide what he really felt, pretend to be a traitor to the Muirian cause, a great patriot of the North. Wildark was watching, and even though he might see through the whole charade, they just couldn’t know for sure. Emmet had to keep playing the game of being Emmet Sourcer, loyal crusading patriot editor of the North by day, Deadline, the Ring of Justice banshee by night. He was in for the duration, for as long as it all took. Meanwhile, he and Katie had to keep sneaking around, pretending to be at odds with each other. Mortal enemies. They had a private joke in which they competed to come up with new ways to disparage each other in their competing editorials. Sometimes Emmet wrote hers for her and she wrote his for him. They were running out of caustic adjectives. Maybe they were going to have to go to Jimmy to get some help with inventing some more. That part at least was, well, fun, in a silly, playfully twisted way. They had to get their laughs where they could. Emmet sighed. He missed being with Katie. Walking down the street in plain sight, holding her hand. The darkness was still very strong, but he couldn’t help feeling as though the tide might finally be turning.
He wondered what Odie had managed to do now that the power source was shut down once and for all. Don Mahoney had told him that if another such source was suddenly turned on, he could locate it and shut it down in a matter of minutes with a counter transmitter, which Don had supplied him with. The thing would push the new signal right out into space where it would be no harm to Odie. Don, didn’t know what the transmitter in the basement of the Beacon had done, and as he’d made clear he didn’t want to know, but he did know how to keep it form working ever again. The great possibility concerning this new transmitter, and the next step in their plan, once things got straightened out here, he felt certain, was to take it to the Pole and see if it would work on the jammer there.
The radio phone in his office buzzed.
“Yes, Ruth? What is it?”
“Ms. Cratz on line two; she sounds upset. Did you write another editorial?”
“Yes…yes…put her through.”
“Emmet?”
“Yeah, Katie, what’s wrong? One of my latest adjectives get you down?”
There was a long deep sigh on the other end of the line.
“I really don’t know how to feel.”
Something really was wrong. “What Katie?”
“Emmet…Castini and DeSale are hanging from the flagpole in front of The Light.”
“Oh blazes. This isn’t what…”
“There’s more, Emmet.”
“They’ve been…mutilated…their eyes cut out, their tongues are missing…and…and there’s a note pinned to them.”
“Oh…Katie…I hesitate to ask…”
“It says, ‘Justice is served, signed, The Wrestler.’”
Chapter 15
“Let’s deal with the cave bear in the room first,” said Jimmy Cratz, “I didn’t do it.”
Odaya looking out towards the far reaches of the Great Lake from the Portal window, confirmed that thoughts of everyone present, “None of us ever, for a moment, thought you did.”
Emmet scratched his head for a moment and looked at The Wrestler from his perch on the Scribe’s seat, his seat now, at least for the time being. “The real question is, how do we play it from here? Do I keep up the pretense at The Beacon? Get all righteously indignant about the atrocity of The Ring of Justice? Try to draw the enemy in?”
Katie walked to Emmet and put her arms around him, “I think we have to, hon. At least that gives us some kind of a chance to flush him out. Meanwhile, I’ve got to keep up a pretense of my own at The Light. I’ve got to pretend not to know who is behind this.”
Jimmy looked squarely at his daughter from the open doorway. “Well, the truth is we only know the general outline, and…” Jimmy chuckled grimly for a moment, “…even that is a little tough for an old brass tacks guy like me to take. Here are the headlines: ‘Ancient Evil Force Takes on Human Form, but Whose?’ We still really don’t know what he looks like.”
Odie and Emmet exchanged knowing looks.
Katie noticed.
“Okay, you two, there’s a theory isn’t there? Spill.”
Emmet spoke first. “The theory is pretty awful. And it affects some of us personally. If it isn’t true…and I don’t want it to be…I don’t even want to put it out there. Give me 24 hours. By then I’ll know more.”
Katie narrowed her eyes querulously, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with your father’s crazy family dinner idea would it? You’ll be lucky if Mert and his men aren’t waiting to kill…” She looked up suddenly at Odie…
Odie smiled at Katie. “If I were in your shoes, I’d feel the same way. I wonder about the safety of it too. This isn’t our Merton you’re going to meet, Emmet. It’s Captain North. I haven’t been able to reach through at all.”
“The whole family will be there…”
“Baby,” Katie took his hand in hers, “that’s only if you ever make it to the cottage…”
“Mert wouldn’t…”
Jimmy spoke up, “Mert wouldn’t Emmet, but Captain North might. We’ll watch you all the way to the door.”
Emmet grinned, “I’m flattered you’re all worried, but don’t forget I’m not just lil’ Emmet Sourcer anymore, I’m also,” here he did his best imitation of his alter-ego, “Deadline!”
Katie shook her head, “That creation of yours creeps me out. I keep thinking he’s going to show up some time when we’re…alone.”
“Still, be careful,” said Odie, “I’m fairly certain Mert has put two and two together. He knows you and Deadline are one in the same I think. And with Deadline out of the way there’s nothing to stop them from… and your father…”
Emmet quickly cut her off, “Don’t forget, you guys, I don’t really need the All Hallows costume to use the Crag plasma. There’s really not much Mert can do to me. Not to brag, but, blazes, I could knock his plane out of the sky with my slightest gesture.”
“Still,” said The Wrestler, “I’ll be watching.”
***
“Ladies, the snow rabbit casserole was a triumph! Wasn’t it Henry,” said Ernest Sourcer from his place at the head of the table.
Henry Bailey smiled a slow smile and nodded, wiping his face with a linen napkin.
“Have to say, dear,” said Lu, “I thought it was a touch dry. I can’t tell anymore if I’m succeeding or not with the food I serve. You never say an unkind word.”
“Now, now, Lu,” said Ernest, “I always give you an honest answer.”
“Honest yes,” said Lynne, “with a little shading sometimes.”
Merton sat directly across from Emmet. He had yet to say a word, but now added, “Good meal, Mom, Aunt Lu.”
“Thank you dear,” the Ladies said simultaneously, then chuckled at each other as they put away the dishes.
“Now Emmet, “ said his father, “you’ve been doing a fine job, I think, with your newspaper. You’re getting all this Muirian nonsense out in the open. It’s good the world knows what kind of people they are, and how this story of an Alchemist or some such rot, was just a Muirian invention, to lead our boys to their doom. But thanks to your uncle, they didn’t succeed. And with your cousin securing our skies, well, it’s…just good to know that we’re safe from that threat. But this Ring of Justice. Well…I hesitate to bring it up in front of the Ladies, but their barbaric act…”
“Yeah,” said Mert, “that was quite a thing the Wrestler did to our mayor and our President. Wasn’t it Emmet! I think your editorial today hit it right on the head. What was it, ‘As long as such savages are allowed to roam our streets, the North can’t be truly free.’ Just can’t guess who this Wrestler and this Ring of Justice might be. Oh yeah, and that doesn’t even take this Deadline into account. You know, Dad, Uncle Ern, I opened my cannons full out twice on that creature, and he hardly flinched. It’s almost like he’s got some of that Muirian magic we saw, eh, Emmet? What can you tell me about that?”
Emmet looked long and hard at Mert.
What are you playing at here Mert?
“Oh, very little. He just appeared that night at Castini’s club.”
Am I playing at something old buddy? I think I’m looking at the real gamester.
“That sure is something, just out of the blue like that. Those Muirians, they just won’t stop at anything. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were in league with this Ring of Justice. Funny you haven’t been able to get to the bottom of that. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if your old pal Mr. Cratz were in on it, and his girl, your old close friend, the tobacco queen.”
“Never found a link. But we keep looking.”
If you’re trying to rattle me, Mert. It isn’t working.
Ernest Sourcer sat back and smiled at both boys, “Yes, yes. Between the two of you, I just know that you’re going to get to the bottom of it. You simply have to. We can’t have any more boys dying like the fellows of the Air Corps. We can’t have any more of this torture that I endured all those years. We can’t have any more political assassinations. We can’t have hardship and violence and depravity making our streets unsafe. I’m depending on you boys to help bring us back to an age of prosperity. The Stars know, Henry and I would like to just sit out here on our porch and look at the Great Lake, with our mothers and never have to worry about those Muirians again. Do that for us, won’t you boys?” He reached out with both hands and placed Emmet and Mert’s hand together.
I hope you’re aware, with all your mind reading abilities, that I’m not the only one who’s on to you. You might want to talk to your old man. And this time, really listen.
“Our boys,” said Ernest Sourcer, “where would the World be without them?”
***
Odie didn’t recognize the voice. As soon as it spoke in her head, even within the confines of the Portal, where she felt most safe, it filled her with dread. She pulled her mackinaw tight about her thin frame.
Hello Princess. Congratulations on the completion of your studies.
Who…
But you’re not quite through yet. Now the advanced course begins.
Odie steadied herself.
Oh, I’m quite aware of how powerful you’ve become. You are filled with the love of the Crag. But, my princess, love can only get you so far. How much do you want to know?
I think I know more than you think, Wildark!
Oh, bravo, bravo, my dear. You’ve taken the first step. You know I’m here. You know I always have been here. You know I can anticipate your every move…
Liar!
Is that what the Seer told you? That I would lie to you? Why the Seer would tell you that, of course. If you knew I only tell the truth, a darker truth I’ll grant you, but the truth nonetheless, then how could you continue to believe the happy little lies your daddy and mommy told you.
Away King of Shadows.
Are where is your mommy now, Princess? Where is your mommy now? She’s deep down int he cold cold water forever and ever! I did that my darling. There’s a truth for you. And I can do the same to you any time I like. The only real question is do you want to live? If you want to live, if you want your Merton to live, and not end up like my other play things…What were their names? Castini and DeSale… Oh they looked so lovely with their eyes gouged out… And I rather liked them. Think what I could do, what I am already doing to your lover boy! I’ve got his head all twisted around. Bombs away, bombs away, he’s coming for you darling! All around the Crag the bombs will be dropping… Oh and all the way over at St. Martins too…unless you do as I tell you…
You’re desperate, Wildark. You don’t know what I’m thinking. You don’t know our plans. I can feel it. Whatever it is you want I won’t cooperate.
Really?
No, not if you level the North, destroy everyone I love. The Seer taught me well, and before that my parents. Nothing is more important than the integrity of our souls…
Well your friend Emmet, and his friend The Wrestler, and his cute little daughter, Emmet’s little plaything, they don’t seem to mind a lie or two, when it serves their purposes.
That’s different and you know it you monster!
Is it? It’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? It’s just like the Seer to tell you that deception is only evil if I’m the one doing the deceiving…
I love you, Wildark.
What?
The universe loves you.
What?
The Crag loves you…
Oh…oh…she has taught you well.
There’s nothing you can do to make me ever listen to you.
Oh…well…all right then. Bombs away!
***
In the secret airfield at Halfway Canal. Merton Bailey, Captain North was giving his final briefing to the newly reformed Air Corps. The young men before him reminded him of himself all those years ago. This time though, he was sending them on a mission that would do some good. It was hard though. All of those people in Stony Crag and St. Martins would have to die. But none of them, he quickly reminded himself, would be the wives or children of the Air Corps. All of them, every single one had been pulled back this far. The only ones left in those cities might be Muirians, or worse, Muirian sympathizers. He knew from his private contact, who had his instruments up and running all the time, that this was absolutely true. And he was the smartest man he’d ever known.
Nothing stood in the way now. Even Castini and DeSale, who had sold out the cause under questioning from The Wrestler and Emmet’s creature, and that demon the princess, were no longer in the way. Two bombing runs, and he’d ben President. And then he would take his air corps North and deal with those Muirians in the prison. He and his contact would question them, one by one by one, especially Dark Star, until every secret of the Crag was revealed. Then he would make this World safe and lovely again. But until that time, there would have to be some ugliness.
Captain North dismissed his fly boys and gals and sent them to their planes. Zero hour approached, then on to glory.
Hello my love.
Get out of my head you demon.
Is this what you truly want?
The death of men and women and children, most of whom don’t even know me or Emmet?
Get out of my head.
They are innocent, Merton. They aren’t involved in our conflict.
You’ve made singling out the perpetrators impossible.
So the innocents must die? That is the logic of Wildark.
What if it is?
Do you remember the sinking of Muir?
I do. It’s a fond memory.
That’s not what you thought then. You begged Emmet to do something.
I…I was deceived by your father. By you.
Are you certain?
Get out of my head!
What if you’re deceived now? Can you be so sure? What if what The Tale says about Wildark is the truth? Remember when you loved me? I still love you. Even if you drop the bombs, kill all those innocents, I will still love you. Even if you find a way to kill Emmet and me and Katie, I will still love you.
I will never love you again. If Wildark can save The World then I’m with him.
…
Nothing more to say? Good then…
…The Crescent.
What about it?
It’s there in your drawer in your room.
Yeah, more Muirian magic.
What if it holds the key? What if you can use it to get exactly what you want, without killing all those people.
Ha…like I’d fall…
Just suppose.
Suppose it’s a trap.
It’s not.
Why should I believe you?
Think, Merton. Have I ever lied to you, even once?
Leave me alone.
All right.
I hope you die under my bombs.
…I love you Mert. No matter what you say. No matter what you do. Know that will always be true. If you drop those bombs the day will come when you will regret it. You will despise yourself. You will wish not to go on living. If that day comes know that I will never stop loving you. And that there will still be a home for you in all of our hearts. Vocala sur voca.
Rot in fire you queen of demons!
The song is still being sung.
Chapter 16
Ecco Kelton was ecstatic. In his 24 years of life and five years of service for his family and the Tolkien Planetary Republic, he had heard legends of the Home World and the Crag. Now he was about to see it first hand! His father, Premier Umberto Kelton had told him with just the trace of a smile, “The call has come, Ecco, and I am too ancient to make the journey. The long awaited call, the call your ancestors have prophesied, anticipated, and prepared for down all the years, the call from the Home World, is yours to answer. Farewell.”
Almost before he knew it, he and the 10,000 pilots of fighters and transports, those flying ships that carried the Home World name “Owls” (He would have to ask at some point, what that word meant.) were aloft. With the speed of thought they rushed across the quadrant, increased to the speed of imagination, and silently pierced the boundaries of space-time, leaping from galaxy to galaxy across unimaginable, even impossible distances, in a matter of several Tokienian days. And now the blue green home world was in sight. It was all like a dream.
You are welcome friends. You are needed immediately. The attack has come. Protect the Crag!
Ecco flinched for a moment when a map of the Crag and its environs and location was suddenly projected into his mind. He closed his eyes in concentration and his owl together with 10,000 more dropped from orbit and raced towards the Crag.
***
Captain North took the Cragstone Crescent from the drawer in his quarters. He felt the weight of it in the palm of his hand. He remembered the day he had gotten it, how he’d been told that the thing had been designed especially for him and would someday reveal its power.
So, big deal. It’s a medal. I guess the Muirian hypnotism doesn’t work when you face them down like I did that witch. I’m going to do just what I said. I’m going to drop this out the bombay doors when we bomb the Crag and the cities. That’ll be the end of that.
He put the medal in his flight jacket pocket and headed out the door and back to his men who by now were aboard their mages and ready for the bombing run.
***
Emmet! It’s worse than we thought. They’ve rebuilt the Air Corps and they’re going to bomb the cities!
Odie paced the floor of the Portal.
In his office at the Beacon, Emmet dropped the editorial about the death of the mayor and President which he had been about to take to the press room.
Oh, by the Crag, Katie!
She already knows, Emmet. I’ve contacted her. She and her father and the whole Ring are taking cover in the shelter beneath The Light Jimmy built after the Alchemist…
Yes, yes. Good. Thank you, Odie. Okay. Time for Deadline.
Yes. You should take that form, maybe it will scare some of the Air Corps, but what can you do?
I don’t know, to be honest. I’ll draw on as much of the crag plasma as I can.
Yes, yes, do that. And, Emmet, help is on the way…
Help? From whom?
No time to explain…
Odie, where are you?
The Portal.
You’ve got to get out of there! That’s the first place they’ll hit.
No time. Besides, I think I’m safest here at the source of the Crag.
I hope you’re right. Vocala…
…sur voca!
Emmet ran to his door and threw it open to the pressroom, “Everybody, get to the shelter in the basement right now! The Crag is under attack!”
Mickey Blake a young reporter looked up from a story he had just finished, “Mr. Sourcer, if there’s going to be an attack, shouldn’t we cover it?”
“You’re a brave boy, Mickey, but the city is about to be leveled! Get to the basement!”
He ran back into his office and closed the door.
“Okay, two cities, two Deadlines!”
From two corners of the room newspapers whirled into duplicates of the now familiar form of Deadline. Two windows on the north wall flew open and Emmet sat down in his office chair. Suddenly his office door was again open. Mickey Blake stood in the open doorway.
“Chief, aren’t you going to take cover too?”
“Mickey, get to the basement, now!”
“No can do, boss. If you’re going to watch the show, so am I.”
“Blazes! All right. We’ll get under the desk. It’s…reinforced…with…cragstone…you just keep an eye peeled out that south window. And watch what happens. That’s your story. The bombers will be coming right over the Crag!”
“Bombers? Whose?”
“Kid, things aren’t what they seem.”
No they aren’t are they Emmet my boy?
Who…
So sorry about the boy. I’m afraid he’ll have to die. And, of course, you too, that’s the bigger shame.
Wildark, I presume!
Smart boy. You always were a smart boy Emmet. I was so, so sorry to leave you all alone for all those years, but you see, I had to make plans. And now, ha, ha, ha, now those plans are all coming to fruition.
In cities of Stony Crag and St Martins, the Deadlines had taken a stand on the tallest buildings Emmet could find. But they were wavering, as though in doubt.
Father?
Oh come now, you’ve known for a long time Emmet. Haven’t you?
Yes.
Of course. You knew very early on in your heart.
I didn’t want to know.
Ha, ha, ha, that’s your weakness. Your romantic illusions. That’s the weakness of all the Muirians. And it will be your downfall.
We’ll see…
Oh yes, we will. When the cities fall and with them all of the children beneath. Oh, that will be lovely.
Vocala sur voca…
Ha, ha, ha, see if your platitudes protect you from the bombs your cousin is about to drop…
You bastard!
Yes, yes that’s it! That’s the spirit!
No, no…you’re wrong. Father, you’re going to lose. Somewhere inside, you know that don’t you? You’re going to lose because, because…you always do…
What?
The Tale, Father. The Tale.
Ha, ha, ha, that fable.
It’s no fable Father. It’s the truth.
What’s true, dear Emmet, is that you and all your friends, your dear Katie too, are about to die. I’m afraid I’ll have to see to that, and I’ll be flying away to the Pole, where we have prison rooms waiting for the visitors!
What are you talking about?
The help your Princess mentioned? Yes, they’re coming from all over the Cosmos to protect their beloved Crag. And we’ll be waiting for them! We’ll be waiting, your uncle and me in one of the Alchemist Stones! Yes, I have one of my own, dear boy. One that your uncle can fly. Oh we’ll be watching all the fun and we’ll kill them and kill them when they come! The Stones have been waiting! They are perfect, perfect living machines, with no flaws. They are thinking machines, Emmet. They are powered by one massive brain under the Pole! That is the Alchemist! That is my ultimate creation. And we’ll take the best of the visitors prisoner and we’ll find the secrets of the Crag, through our special little techniques! Oh we’ll twist their little noodles until they scream! And when we know, we’ll use all that lovely power to rule the Cosmos! I do love that so, Emmet! Don’t you love it when they scream? The way those men in the battle wagon screamed when your your little horror show, what do you call him, oh yes…Deadline. Love that! Didn’t you love the way those warrior boys screamed in the battle wagon when Deadline threw them down the hill? Oh you did, didn’t you! I knew it. You’ve got some of your dear old dad, some of me, in you yet. We could have made a deal. We could still make a deal. Interested?
You know the answer to that, Father.
Pity. Thought so. So, die then.
Why are you telling me all this Father?
Because, my dear boy, it’s so much fun to see you despair just before you die!
Father?
Yes dear boy?
I love you.
What?
No matter what, I love you.
Wildark’s voice, the voice of Ernest Sourcer, Emmet’s father, cried out in an inarticulate fit of desperate rage.
Love death then, Emmet! Love death, son! Because I am your death! Die with all your Muirian friends and all the children in those lovely cities!
***
“First target in sight, Captain,” came the call from Captain North’s wing man, Jason Stult.
“Very good; open bombay doors.”
These kids are good. They have their orders and they’re following them. And why shouldn’t they? It’s a shame about the cities, but sometimes you have to weaken the body to kill the disease. We don’t know which ones are spies down there. Let…the stars sort them out… Oh, ha, almost forgot.
Captain North reached into his flight jacket and pulled the Cragstone Crescent from his pocket.
“Bombs away,” he ordered as they reached the Portal of the Crag. “Die you devil! Die Odaya Kontela!” he said clutching the Crescent for a second. Suddenly, he saw Odie’s face before him as he’d seen it that first day, those fleeting, long years ago, in Mr. Worth’s classroom. Then he saw her core self revealed, in the regal simplicity of the Princess, during those days on Muir.
Get out of my head!
He saw his father’s face. He was younger, in the cockpit of his mage beta, flying over the Pole.
Suddenly, there was a flash from the fortress, and the mage was engulfed in flames. Behind his father young Air Corps flyboys and gals were covered in fire, screaming, some bailed out, but their parachutes were ablaze, the Alchemists Stones flew everywhere, blasting those who escaped the burning mage beta out of the sky. And then, then, the plane crashed into the ice.
And now…now another scene, a later scene. Somewhere inside the Polar prison fortress, magnetized to a chair, his father was undergoing torture, repeated torture, a machine’s voice was speaking, ordering him to tell everything he knew about, about…any secrets of the air corps…but…but this was strange…the machine also wanted his father to tell about…about Merton’s mother, and Merton’s Aunt…
What, what? That’s crazy! They’re just two nice lovely older women. Innocent…
There were metal arms and ugly metal tendrils…just like those that swallowed Muir…
No…
And they were squeezing, prodding, shocking his father over and over. And…what was this? In the corner, in the corner was another figure…he was laughing. The figure was in shadow, but…
NO!
It was Uncle Ernest! Uncle Ernest who had disappeared. Uncle Ernest who had come back with the story. The story of the evil of Muir. But was that story true? it was Uncle Ernest who had convinced him to DROP THESE BOMBS!!!
“Oh…by all that’s holy…Odaya!”
“What’s that, Cap…?”
“H-hold, hold on the bomb run. Pull up! Pull up! Back to base.”
“But…but Captain…” came the return from Stult, “the bombs are already away..”
***
“Arrgh…”
“Chief,” said Mickey Blake, “you okay?”
“Just…just keep watching kid. You got those binoculars trained on Deadline?” asked Emmet Sourcer, grimacing as he strained in his office desk chair.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s or it’s just standing there holding its arms over its head. Deadline…appears to be weakening. Why…why is Deadline trying to save the city…I thought…”
”Argggh…when this is over, Mickey, we’ve got to have a long talk.”
***
“Katie, what exactly did the princess tell you?” Jimmy Cratz sat huddled in a corner, of a cramped bomb shelter surrounded by the operatives of the Ring and their families.
“All I know is what I told you before, Dad. She said that the Air Corps was reformed and they were going to bomb the cities.”
“Let’s hope it was a false alarm.”
“Yes, yes…”
Katie turned away, and closed her eyes concentrating.
Emmet…baby…
Sorry, no time, Katie. Can’t talk.
Are you…okay…?
No time…I love you.
“I love you,” Katie began to cry. Jimmy walked slowly to where she was sitting and took her in his arms.
“Is it Emmet?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s in danger.”
“The worst ever, I think.”
“He’ll do all he can.”
“He always does, Dad.”
“I’m really beginning to like that kid.”
“He’s a man, Dad.”
“Yes, Katie, he surely is.”
***
Beneath the barrage of bombs in two cities, Deadline strained. In the offices of the Beacon, Emmet tried to see it all in his mind’s eye.
So many of them! How can I…how can I?
Relax, dear.
Ha… relax?…ha…Mom? Oh, oh! Of course! why didn’t I… The…the Seer. You’re the Seer!
Of course. You knew that. You always have.
Yes. Yes. I guess so, but this, this is too much. There are so many. Can you help?
You don’t need my help.
I’m, I’m faltering.
No, you’re not. Relax. Now, think.
What do I want to do…right?
Exactly.
What, what I want is for all the bombs. All the bombs to go out into the Lake.
So…just make that be so.
Yes. Yes. It’s simple. If you just don’t strain, if you just don’t doubt.
Now there’s a good man.
Okay. Okay. I’ve got this.
Yes, you have. Emmet?
Yes, Mother?
That was nice, what you said to your Father.
I…
When you told him you loved him.
Oh, oh that. It wasn’t sincere really, Mom.
I know. But it’s a start. It’s the only way he’ll ever understand. And dear…
Yes, mother?
Watch those tendencies…
Those…?
Your father is right; you do enjoy the violence sometimes.
Yes. Yes. I’ll be careful. I’ll be wary.
Very good dear. I know you will.
Thanks, Mom. I love you so much!
Oh, that’s all we really have dear. All we’ve ever had.
Vocala…
…sur Voca. I’ll have soup on the stove.
***
The bombs suddenly became missiles, headed out over the lake towards 100,000 Alchemists Stones now roaring in from the north. The mages pulled up and turned back south, just as the owls fell out of space and silently went off in pursuit of the mages.
Thank you. Thank you all. Came the calm voice of Princess Odaya. The situation has changed. The Air Corps has joined our side. They’ll be rallying to protect the towns, to face the onslaught from the North. Engage the saucers, the Alchemists Stones.
***
“Chief, chief! The bombers have turned back, and Deadine, Deadline just threw the bombs out over the lake. At whatever that is that’s coming.”
“Good, kid,” Emmet Sourcer said calmly.
“But…what…what are those things flying this way? There’s thousands of them.”
“I know kid,” write this down. “It’s the Alchemists Stones. The Alchemists Stones under the leadership of Wildark, a.k.a. Ernest Sourcer.”
“But, but, Mr. Sourcer, that’s your father!”
“Oh, I know, Mickey. Now get your butt down in that shelter!”
“Yes sir…Where, where are you going?”
Emmet stood and walked towards the north wall of his office. He turned and smiled at Mickey, “Get to the shelter, kid.” He gestured towards the wall and quietly it flew apart leaving a vast open space in mid air high over the city of Stony Crag and giving Emmet a full view of the oncoming saucers, the descending owls from the Tolkien Republic, and the once again loyal forces of the Air Corps coming in low and hard overhead. As Mickey stood in shock, Emmet Sourcer, former cub reporter, the 7778th Scribe, Son of the Seer, Son of Wildark, walked calmly into the abyss, as though he were stepping out his own back door.
Chapter 17
The Tale
Revised Standard Version
as compiled, edited and translated from the ancient Muirian texts,
which were derived from the 63rd Scribe’s Songs
by Ralph Henry Worth:
Scribe 7,777 of the Crag
In this year 87
of the 115th Millennium, Muir Time
With additions by Emmet Bard Sourcer
Scribe 7,778 of the Crag
for years 78-86,
With Additions by Michael William Blake
Scribe 7,779 of the Crag
for year 87.
In the year of the fall of the great cities of the north, the Great Shards of the Crag were revealed. Princess Odaya Kontala of Muir, long imprisoned by the forces of Wildark within the Portal of the Crag, was freed by the mind spawn of Emmet Bard Sourcer, known as Deadline. And Odaya the Great Shard of Voices called to the Cosmos, and the Cosmos answered with first 10,000 in time for the battle, then, as more and more arrived from the Stars, 1,000,000 owls, to combat the forces of Wildark in the years to come.
But the forces of Wildark were strong and powerful with his creation, the electronic mind known as The Alchemist, to power them, and they roared in upon the cities of the North, just as the air forces of that great land, turned dark by the powers of Wildark, dropped their appalling bombs on the cities of The Crag and St. Martins.
Emmet Bard Sourcer, known ever after as, The Great Sourcer, revealed himself on that same day as The Great Shard of Salvation, and Son of The Seer and of Wildark. The Great Sourcer and his mind spawns known as Deadline, first hurled the bombs of the Air Corps towards the forces of Wildark, cleansing the sky of half their number in one tremendous blast. Then, aided by the Air Corps and the Tolkien Republic Owls from beyond the Stars, did battle in the sky with what remained.
In the end, The Great Sourcer, standing in the sky amidst the fire and smoke of the Great War of the Northern Sky, hurled his crag force again and again at the oncoming forces of Wildark, but ever they came by the thousands unleashing their unearthly electronic fire against the planes of the Air Corps and the owls of the Tolkiens. And many were the brave warriors who died on that day, but lo, in the cities, all were spared by the protective shields of The Great Sourcer’s mind spawns known as Deadline.
“No,” cried the Great Sourcer, to his father the Great Enemy Wildark, “the innocents will not die! Not while I live!”
And they did not die, and though there was great sorrow for the fallen warriors of this world and for the misguided others, there was great rejoicing amidst the ruins of the once great cities, when the foes had fled.
And Wildark, though he killed many warriors and took untold numbers prisoners among the Air Corps and the Tolkiens, began to despair.
And over all of the North and all of the World, save the Pole, where Wildark retreated to lay his dark plans yet again, amidst his mindful machines and many prisoners, a new age dawned and Princess Odaya of Muir, The Shard of Voices, was named President of the North, and soon Regent of the World Entire, and all flocked to follow her even from beyond the stars. And The Great Sourcer, The Shard of Salvation, became the great general of all the forces of The Crag, and the Great Healer to all who were afflicted, and the great rebuilder of the cities of North.
The Great Sourcer, whose knowledge was beyond calculation and still growing, recalled the knowledge of all those who had fallen at the hands of Wildark in the drowning of the Great Island of Muir, and taught others what he knew and soon, great growers of the tree towers and the owls and the ships and all the works of natural hands grew up from the people of North, and the two great cities of North rose again, but this time in the ancient woodcraft ways, in harmony with the Sky and the Water and the Forests and the Creatures. And all was in a state of Grace except at the Pole where still the ancient terrors of Wildark waited.
And the Great Sourcer and the Princess Odaya, and all the great powers of the World and the Cosmos aligned behind the Crag met in wondrous synod in the new Muirian Castle at the Great Portal, and there was feasting and celebration at victories won, and grief and formal lamentation for those who had died and those who had been taken. And when the ceremonies, both grim and joyful were done, among them weddings, and funerals of great import, many plans were made amidst questions unanswered and hopes and dread of the future. And love was in the World. And on the Day of the Song in that year, and for the first time in 10 millennium, the Note sounded from the Crag.
***
“Okay, so how am I, former cub reporter, former tobacco chewer, daughter of common as dirt Jimmy “The Wrestler” Cratz, supposed to be the wife and ‘consort’ of ‘The Great Sourcer’?” whispered the nervous Katie Cratz-Sourcer to her new husband Emmet, in the newly grown Cathedral of the Crag.
Emmet smiled, “This is for the folks, Katie, just turn around and smile for them! There’ll be soup at the cottage after, Mom said. And then we’ll both be more comfortable.”
“Oh, soup made by The Seer! Who is what, as old as the Crag and four times as lovely? Honestly, Emmet, it’s all so much.”
“Just smile!”
The two turned on the altar and waved to the throng who had come here from all over the World and the Cosmos. In the crowd were dignitaries from across the North, both military and domestic, dignitaries from the two Southern continents of Indosia, and Pandalayria, from the other World Side Great Islands of Keatosia and Shellyistahn, and from the Archipelago of Callahan and its remaining properties, territories, and islands, all united now under the Bond of the Crag. Also present were dignitaries from the Tolkien Republic, from the Cosmic Cloud Regions, from the Spencerian Hub, from the Barfieldian Star Cluster, and from 1,000 other lesser regions of the Cosmos, and they were still arriving.
A thunderous roar came up from the crowd and Emmet looked out at the faces of his mother and his Aunt Betty Lynne, who had at last been revealed as the Seer and First Scribe of the Crag respectively. Lynne had long, long ago laid down her quill and acted solely as sounding board to her sister Betty Lu, the Seer. Emmet’s new father-in-law Jimmy Cratz stood wiping away tears as he gazed at his daughter who was dressed in a humble but elegant white dress, with a garland of white Murian Starfires in her hair. Emmet had chosen a simple dark suit, much to the dismay of the official Muirian clothiers who wanted capes and cowls. The ceremonies had been conducted by Odaya herself, who was with them on the altar, dressed in her usual simple finery.
“Emmet’s right, Katie, just enjoy,” she whispered to the bride.
As with everything else since the Great Battle of the Northern Sky, the joy was tempered with sorrow. This came home to Emmet as he considered his Father, Wildark, stewing in his plots beneath the Pole, and as he considered his Uncle Henry, Wildark’s unwitting prisoner there, along with the estimated millions of prisoners there from across the Cosmos. At last they understood the mystery of the once empty and countless prison cells they had discovered there 10 years before. He also pondered the sacrifice of the 100,000 warriors who had fallen on that dark yet triumphant day.
What bothered Emmet, perhaps more than anything else, was the absence of his friend Merton from the ceremony, and for practical purposes from the lives of everyone he loved. He had hoped and even approached Mert with the idea of being his best man, who else? But Merton lived now in his humble quarters on Muscat Island far removed from the World. Only Otter had any contact with him and then, according to her, not by his choice. He was living as a trapper and fisherman. Otter said he was in “a purdy deep funk! But I’ll keep working on him!”
Merton, despite heart-felt declarations, protestations, pleadings, by Emmet and Odie that they understood completely what had happened to him, and why he had done what he’d done, and despite their assurances that he wasn’t the first in history, after all, to fall under Wildark’s power, would have none of it. He would not forgive himself for succumbing and he agonized over the fate of his father, yet felt powerless despite his insights with the Crescent, about how to help him. He had barely spoken to any of them before retreating to Muscat. His mother and aunt, who had strangely not approached Merton about his purposeless shame, had simply told them all, “Time, my dears. Merton needs time.”
The one good thing to come of Merton’s refusal as his best man, was that that plucky kid Mickey Blake, had been overjoyed to be second choice. The kid was a quick study as the new scribe, and his Muirian was coming along very well.
Emmet often wondered what the perspective of hundreds of thousands of years of life brought to a person. He had even dared to ask both his mother and his aunt this question. His mother had only asked if he wanted some soup, and Aunt Lynne had said resignedly, even playfully, “You’ll find out, dear.”
They both had the same perspective on their husbands. Aunt Lynne said of Uncle Henry, “He has a purpose yet to serve this time around.”
Mom said of his Father, “He has a good heart deep down.”
That had all given Emmet pause. Was it true that he too would live on for thousands and thousands of years like his mother and father and aunt? He could not get his head around it. He was the child of immortals so the answer was almost certainly yes. He feared that all those years as The Great Sourcer, the Shard of Salvation, would eventually, inevitably, reveal the darkness he sometimes felt within himself. His momentary enjoyment of the violence of battle, which his mother had warned him of, and his father had taunted him with. In the years to come, would his father use this to turn him, or would they finally, finally bring Wildark back into the fold? The Tale prophesied that they would. But how many years would that take? How many millennia? And then, more basic than any of that: how long would Katie live? And how could he live on all those long years without her? Before the wedding he had put this very question to his mother who had only smiled at him and said, “Why Emmet, surely you know that we all, in one way or another, live forever. Some of us just have more to do here on the world, so we have to stay ground bound a while longer.”
A while? What constituted a while? 200,000 years? More? By the Crag anything could happen if one lived long enough, in fact everything would happen! How could he stay the course?
“Blazes,” Emmet whispered as he and Katie started up the center aisle.
“What’s wrong, hon?”
“Oh nothing, just trying to get my head around it all.”
“Ha, me too,” said Katie and waved again to the crowd.
***
Every sound echoed in the prison. The interrogations of everyone were always broadcast at mind bending volume into each cell. And now that the newcomers from throughout the Cosmos had arrived, the number of interrogations had increased geometrically.
Prisoner 2227831120, the man once known as King Dark Star, D’Auk S’eesta Kontela, sat composed on his bench.
How long by the Crag? How much longer must we endure?
For over 10 years he had used the considerable powers of his mind to support his people through their trials, interrogations, and depressions. It had been a long, long road. The hardest was that never, never could he let down. If the king succumbs, they would all be doomed. That was what Dark Star felt in his heart. Was he wrong?
He could still remember the first time he’d been questioned. Just hours after the door had slammed shut all those years ago.
“How do you feel about the Alchemist?”
“The Alchemist is a machine.”
“Yes. I am.”
“There are two kinds of machines, useful machines and dangerous machines. Which kind of machine is the Alchemist?”
“Oh, Prisoner 2227831120…”
“I am King Dark Star…arrgghhhh!”
“I am the Alchemist and I am a machine. I am a useful machine and a very, very dangerous machine to those who disobey me!”
“You…are…a useless machine. Useful only for pain and hatred.”
“Ha, ha, ha…oh that’s very useful indeed!”
“Arrgghhh!”
“See my point?”
“Arrrgghh!”
And always, always the pain stopped just before he passed the point of life.”
“Tell me about the Crag.”
“The Crag is love.”
“Tell me something useful.”
“Love is the essence of life. The Crag is at the center…”
“Arrrggh!”
“Something useful!!!”
“Vocala…”
“Not that Muirian gibberish!”
“VOCALA….arrrgh!”
Despite all the tortures, Dark Star couldn’t help but see the black comedy in this dark conundrum, the agonizing irony: the Alchemist machine kept trying to get them all to talk, but there was nothing to talk about. There was nothing to tell. There was no way to break any of the Muirians because there really were no secrets. Many, so many…had died, but not protecting secrets. They had already told all there was to tell, as he had done in the very first interrogation without hesitation.
The Alchemist machine had told him that his wife, Mochalla, was dead. They had somehow injected visions of what they called “the drowning of Muir” into his head. Into all their heads. And then, when the new prisoners, prisoners from throughout the Cosmos, had come, they had apparently shown them other horrors of Wildark from their planets and constellations. Things that had happened, things that would happen. And still the machine was not satisfied with the answers it got from the Muirians, and the other upright peoples of the Cosmos. It could not fathom that it didn’t matter what the threat was, there was nothing to tell. At times Dark Star had laughed at the machine despite the pain it caused him for his laughter. His joyful defiance, his love of life, was the only thing keeping him alive.
What was happening outside he wondered? He did not doubt that Mochalla was, in fact, dead. He knew it before he had been told. But then no one ever really died. He had known this since his birth. He could not feel Mochalla’s essence in the World any longer, but she spoke words of encouragement and assurance to him nonetheless. But Odie! A strange thing had happened with his thoughts of Odie. No, she could not get through this infernal jammer. No, he could not hear her voice, but her essence, the feel of her had only grown stronger, and though no words were getting through, in recent months he could feel that she was coming in his direction. She was coming with Emmet and with an army of millions.
Oh, Odie. Come soon.
Chapter 18
The North Cities Light
“the true word from the shores of the big water”
Day 22, End of the Cold, Year 88
115th Millenium
Allies Head for the Pole: ‘Hope for Peace, Prepare for War’: Princess Odaya
by Mickey Blake
Worlds Editor
Stony Crag—-“As always we are hoping for peace and will approach the Pole with love,” said World Entire Regent and President of The North, Princess Odaya Kontala. “…but as The Tale teaches us, whenever the opposition is Wildark, we must and will prepare for war.”
A full compliment of armed forces from the Cosmic Federation will accompany the Air Corps and newly developed Northern Navy to the Pole, led by a delegation including Princess Odaya and Allied Forces Commander Emmet Sourcer, according to various Allied Sources. Over 1,000,000 Allied personnel are heading North still leaving 400,000 personnel in the North Cities, sources further stated.
“My father is a wily and evil entity,” said the forthright Sourcer of his father, Wildark. “He called us to parle and as we are taught, we will assume the best and prepare for the worst. Some day, perhaps in the distant future, he will finally come around.”
Asked what about the reported mass killings of countless people throughout the 150 millennia including the relatively recent genocide involved in the sinking of the Island of Muir, which Sourcer himself witnessed, leads him to believe Wildark will finally, ‘come around’ Sourcer said only, “Vocala sur voca.”
Asked how this most recent attempt to confront, Wildark and the Alchemist forces will be different from the year 77 disaster which included the sinking of Muir, which took the life of her mother, Queen Mochalla Kontala, and countless other Muirians, and in which numerous Muirian shadow warriors, including her father, were taken prisoner beneath The Pole, Princess Kontala commented, “I don’t know that it will be, but my father and mother taught me that, daring to hope in the spirit of love is the way of the Crag.”
Sourcer said further that air, sea, and ground patrols are already in place at the Pole and have so far encountered no opposition from the forces of Wildark.
***
“Seriously guys,” said Katie Cratz-Sourcer, “ I know you resented Mickey’s questions, but how in the World is it going to be different this time?”
They stood on the gangplank of the Great Lakes Ship Shakespeare, the flagship of the newly christened North Navy. A vast crowd had gathered to bid them bon voyage.
“Well, hon,” said Emmet, “for one thing it’s not going to take anywhere near as long for whatever happens to happen. We will be at the Pole tomorrow. The parle is slated for this very gangplank at noon.”
“Great, you’ll both be prisoners or dead by noon tomorrow; that’s great comfort.”
“Katie, my father is beneath the Pole,” Odie leaned forward and said in confidence, “and strictly off the record, your husband has a way of taking out the jamming signal.”
Katie looked quickly at Emmet, “Thanks for the exclusive on that, dear!”
“Mickey will get the whole scoop exclusively, as soon as we give my method a try. I promise!”
“At least, then I’ll know if my father…” Odie paused for a moment as Katie took her hand. Then the princess pasted on a smile and waved to the crowd.
“It must be awful,” whispered Katie.
“Between you and me, Katie, I’ve come to terms with my mother’s death, but just not knowing about Dad…”
“I can’t imagine.”
***
Mert Bailey barely looked up from the deck of his 40 foot fishing sloop, Dark Vision, as the Allied Fleet passed by Muscat Island’s South Bay. A month earlier, when the air forces had first passed by to the north, he had done his very best not to notice or wonder. He had been trying for over a year, since Emmet’s boat growers had commissioned and constructed the Vision for him, to simply be a trapper and fishermen, but his boat’s name told the tale.
“Sure you want to name the boat that?” Emmet had asked him in all seriousness. “Words have power, Mert.”
“Can I have the boat the way I want it or not?”
“Of course. It’s all yours. Anything you need, Mert. Always.”
Otter had been more blunt about the name,” What in the name of wolfscat would you be thinkin’ by naming a boat somethin’ as gloomy as that? Winters are long out here, Mert, you’re gonna wish you had some more cheerful words to ponder.”
“Otter, I’m going to do my best not to ponder anything but my traps, my bow, and the end of my fishing lines.”
“Suit yourself,” she’d grinned at him on the site of his cabin last summer, “as for me, I’m stayin’ cheerful. Maybe it’ll rub off.”
It hadn’t. Dark visions stayed with him. And the one that most possessed him, in the night, in the day, in every waking moment, was the sight of the bombs dropping towards the Crag where Odie stood in wait. Despite the fact that Emmet had prevented her and everyone in both Stony Crag and St. Martins any harm, he would never forgive himself for the intent of his dark soul in the moments before the Crescent finally did its work.
“Left to me,” he said aloud as the ships passed as quickly as a dream with their cragstone powered siphons in full force, “all of those people in those two cities would be dead.”
Emmet and Odie had done their best to point out to him that in the air battle that ensued over the North Cities, Mert had personally shot down 153 stones.
“It doesn’t matter,” he’d told them both. “I can’t be trusted ever again.”
“Does it matter, “ Odie had said to him shortly after the battle, “that I trust you? That I love you more than I love myself; that I want you to take your time, to come back to us when you are ready, but to always know that I know who you really are and I know that you are a wonderful, brave, loving man? You are the man whose children I wish to have.”
“Forget me,” he had said without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m done.”
What about your father?
There was a voice; he believed it to be his aunt’s, the voice of the Seer herself, which probed through his dark thoughts at least once a week with that question.
What about him? I’m powerless to help. If I tried, Wildark would only take me again and make it even worse for everyone.
He had taken to wearing the Crescent constantly, almost superstitiously, in hopes that it would keep Wildark’s voice from messing with his head. So far, at least as far as he could tell, but how could he know? Wildark had not gotten back in.
“Hey there sunshine!”
He knew that voice.
“Hello, Ottter.”
She had pulled the Kingfisher along the portside of the Dark Vision and sat holding the tiller, in the stern, smiling enigmatically.
“Sure you don’t want to pull up along that overgrown fishing tub?” She gestured with her free hand towards The Shakespeare which had already passed half a nautical mile to the north. “I’m sure Emmet and Odie could use your help.”
“My kind of help, they don’t need.”
Suddenly Otter’s countenance changed in a way he’d never seen before. Her brows furrowed her eyes blazed, “Merton Bailey, you stop this moose brained foolishness! What happened to you could have happened to anyone, and trust me, it has, time after time after time! Even happened to me a time or two…”
“W-what?”
“Yessir! Wildark has had more than one wife in all his long years, you nitwit! I fell for his charms hook, line and sinker, and all he was trying to do was get close to the Seer and see if he could find out her secrets.”
“You mean…”
“Yeah, you mopey jasper! He was going by the name of Darius Muslervelli, at that time! Came by my trading post on the Crag about 7,000 years ago and offered to shake my world. Well, he did that all right and left me darned near as downhearted as you are. That’s when I took to the island.”
“How old are…”
“Now that’s a dangblasted awful thing to say to a lady, dontcha think?”
“Sorry.”
“Point is, it’s not your getting tricked by the dark visions that’s bad. It’s making the dark visions your world!”
“I suppose…”
“Now son, I know you can’t see this, but Wildark is working you still. He’s keeping you out of the game. Now take a hold of yourself and that dangly medal of yours and see if you can’t do some good to help the cause.”
“I…I can’t, Otter. I can’t put their lives in danger.”
Otter bellowed out a curse in a language older than memory and quickly brought the Kingfisher about, heading off in pursuit of the military convoy.
“Somebody’s gotta have their back,” she shouted over the stern. “It shoulda been me stayin’ put on the island after all these years, but now you’re gonna have to take my place watchin’ out for my wolves. Let’s go Emerson!”
As the Kingfisher sped into the distant, Mert could see Emerson watching him from the stern. The wolf’s eyes focused on him for a sign of movement or change. At last he looked away. The wolf knew the visions still held Merton tight.
Vocala sur voca.
Aunt Lu I can’t.
Maybe not yet, dear, but you’ll find a way.
Watching the convoy disappear, pursued amazingly quickly by The Kingfisher, Merton Bailey, formerly of the Air Corps, formerly Captain North, formerly the homicidal pawn of Wildark, felt as cold as any stone.
***
What will you do when they arrive at your little rendezvous?
Oh, that would be telling, dear wife.
I know what’s in your heart.
You’ve always thought you know, but I’ve proven you wrong again and again. There’s no end to my depravity, my dear, though you keep trying to find it, keep hoping against hope that I’ll turn back to your side, but I won’t. Even if our dear son finds a way to stop me this time, and I diminish again, you know I’ll come back. I always come back.
You do so far. But always is always. Some day…
Ha, ha, ha! Your pathetic belief in my ultimate goodness has allowed me so much evil fun through all these millennia and think of the hurt you’ve done by letting me just go on! What if they knew you could stop me at any time? What if they knew you could crush me out of existence? Would you be so revered then? What if I told them this?
But dear, you have, 10,322 times by my count.
You etheric wisp! You monumental airless, counterweight! I know. I know that’s true. That’s the secret! That’s the secret I don’t understand…How do you get them to love you, despite the fact that you put them in harm’s way?
The best of them know it’s their duty to the cosmos to be in harm’s way. They don’t resent me, because they know that I do what I do out of love for them and for you.
Argggghhhh! How can you…How can you feel that way? It makes no sense! You’ve gotten them to say the same thing to me. This coal black king! Your great granddaughter to the 60th power, this, this, Odaya, and that son of ours, that immensely powerful son, who could turn the tide of the whole thing if he would only come my way. Every prisoner from every part of the cosmos to a person will not give away the secrets! They will only say, when pressed far enough, that they love me! They all will only say that they love me! Because of you! Because of you! Well..well…what if I just kill them all? What if I kill all the prisoners? What if I just wipe out their army and torture the king to death in front of your granddaughter? What if I take our dear little Emmet and just twist his little mind?
If you kill, it will change nothing. I’ll still love you, as I always have and always will. You are deluded, but not irrevocably, nothing, NOTHING, is irrevocable. Ever.
Well…well…we’ll see. We’ll see what you say when I feed you your children on a great cosmic plate.
I’m sad for you, dear.
Shut your cosmic verse hole you ancient witch!
I love you, always.
You just signed their death warrants!
I love you, always.
***
The screaming was coming nearer. The shockers were going off in cell after cell. That’s when Dark Star saw the dark little man outside his window. The door suddenly opened.
“Step out here, your majesty,” came the quiet, malicious whisper.
Dark Star stepped onto the catwalk that served as a corridor. The screams continued working their way up the myriad levels of the prison.
“Do you hear the screams?”
“It would be hard not to hear such cruelty.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I would assume your are the Alchemist’s inventor.”
“Smart boy. And who could have the power to invent so great a machine?”
“Only Wildark,” said Dark Star without a flinch.
“Then I would be…”
“The answer is obvious.”
“And how do you feel about me?”
“I love you.”
Dark Star saw the slightest sign of a wince on his wizened adversary’s face.
“I love you, Wildark.”
The face twitched wildly.
“What is the secret of the power of the Crag and how do I harness it forever?” the little man shrieked.
“You look out into the Cosmos and feel the love aimed directly at you. You feel the love aimed at your perfection, your correction, and your ultimate well being, and you say,”Thank you. Thank you. I love you.”
Wildark let out a roar and grasped the King by the arm. A charge of electric hatred roared through the blood vessels and bones of Dark Star and he fell to his knees.
“I love you…” he managed as the force increased. “Some day…Wildark…some day you’ll see.”
Epilogue
Somewhere South of the Pole:Year 90: Day of the Song
It had been a chore for the World Entire Regent and the King of Muir to get away from the Crag on the Day of the Song, but Odie and her father, with the help of Otter, had managed it. The Kingfisher, seemingly faster than ever, had swept them away from the royal dock at midnight and now, at 5 p.m., they had reached the exact longitude and latitude of the sunken island of Muir. Involuntarily both found themselves staring somberly over the bow and down into the dark water below. After a long moment, Otter’s voice echoed comically from the stern.
“We’ll freeze in place and be a monument to Muir if we don’t head back south soon! I don’t like that wind!”
The King and Princess looked at each other and couldn’t help smiling. Nearby, Emerson stood wagging his tail slowly, inquisitively. There was so much more to Otter than her comic irascibility, and there was wisdom in what she said.
“They’re coming back to us slowly but surely, Odie,” Dark Star said. “Every new child born at the Crag owns a little of the great soul of Muir.”
Odie pulled her woolen hood tight, and leaned over to kiss her father on the cheek. Then she stepped forward, raised her chin slightly and sang the note. Soon her father joined in with his able baritone, and after a moment, to their surprise, Otter joined with a warbling soprano of her own. A long lovely moment later, it was over. And Otter, already at the tiller, called out, “Comin’ about!”
By dawn, they would be back at the Crag. A press release had already gone out explaining the reason for their absence from official ceremonies. For once Katie, though she had already sniffed out the story, had corralled her reporters and let the family have their peace.
“By the Crag, you’ve earned it,” Katie said at the time.
“We’ve all earned it,” Odie said with a sad little smile.
The cost of that peace had indeed been high. Two hundred thousand souls had been lost on one day over and around the Pole when the negotiations, such as they were, with Wildark, had gone wrong.
It occurred to Odie, some days after the Last Great Battle of the North, that for all its violence and death, Wildark’s latest gambit to overthrow the universal love of the cosmos, had truly ended that day outside her father’s cell, on the catwalk beneath the Pole, when it had become clear in the King of Shadow’s mind that the People of the Crag had outgrown him. That their evolution, under the guidance of The Seer, had reached the point where even his worst efforts at turning their hearts, that he had made with all of the prisoners, was futile. He could torture them; he could kill them; he could drown a whole civilization; he could even, at great cost to his own power and sanity, turn some of the best of them, and use them, as he had Henry David Bailey, and Henry’s son, her beloved, Mert, but in the end, all but a very few, would turn to him with, at best, from his viewpoint, dark visions, and more likely, simply with compassion and understanding. Once that realization had dawned on Wildark, on the catwalk outside the cell, deep beneath the Pole, the war had been over.
Wildark had left what he believed to be her father’s dead body in the hallway, and had ordered the extermination of all remaining prisoners to begin immediately and headed off to his negotiation with herself and Emmet on board the Shakespeare.
In that very moment, however, as the shockers were about to open up on all the prisoners from across the Cosmos, The Shakespeare had reached the range where Emmet’s old pal Don Mahoney, who had vowed never to go into battle again, but had come anyway, could focus his silly little electronic jamming deflector on the frequency which was shutting down Muirian telepathy at the Pole.
Once Don Mahoney’s deflector did its job, though the Muirian King’s life was fading away, Dark Star had reached out to his daughter, as had nearly a hundred thousand other telepathic voices of the prisoners under the Pole.
“They’re killing us all, now,” Dark Star had managed. “Don’t wait; act now!”
As fast as thought, this message had also communicated to Emmet, and the Sky Forces of the Allies launched a full on attack on the Pole, complete with at least 1,000 Deadlines, this time composed less of newspaper than of snow, ice and scattered cloth. The Deadlines systematically dismantled the doors of the fortress and hurled robot guards in every direction, while the Sky Forces blazed away at the walls and the approaching Alchemists Stones. The forces of Wildark were broken once again. The day soon belonged to the Allies.
On the day following the battle, Odie herself had honored Captain Ecco Kelton of the Tolkien Republic Forces with the Cragstone Crescent, for his single handed efforts in rescuing and saving the life of her father.
Nearly two thirds of the prisoners had been freed and were protected under a force shield created by Emmet’s Deadlines as the battle raged on. A full 30,000, though, many from scattered corners of the Cosmos, had died at the prison before allied forces could save them.
Most bizarre of all, Ernest Sourcer, Wildark himself, in a truly deranged state, had actually shown up for the negotiation aboard the Shakespeare with the conflict already raging, and stood spitting venomous epithets at Odie and Emmet on the gangway, as the sky exploded with the air battle between the multitudinous Alchemists Stones and the mages and owls of the Allied Forces.
“Love me do you?” he shouted, his dark eyes seeming to roll back in his head, “Do you love me for this?” With a dramatic gesture in the direction of the Pole fortress which was well in sight, Wildark unleashed a blast of force that struck the Shakespeare and its sister ships nearby including the Whitman, the Guthrie, and the Hospital ship Gandhi. But the new crafts, equipped with crag force shields of Emmet’s devising, sustained limited damage, though numerous lives were lost.
Wildark then unleashed a second, larger bolt from the fortress directed at the sky, felling thousands of mages, owls and even stones, indescriminately.
Suddenly, Emmet, his face a study in calm, had looked directly at his wild eyed father and said, in the voice of a righteously indignant parent, “Enough, Father. That’s enough.”
“You…you…” began Wildark.
“Enough.” Emmet had said calmly. And suddenly, the Great Enemy fell to his knees and wept like a child.
And then, in an action that had even shocked Odie, in its implications of a higher level of consciousness to which few can aspire, Emmet got to his knees on the gangplank with his father and put his arms around him. In a moment she would never forget, a radiant glow of energy gathered around them, and father and son vanished from their presence as stones fell from the sky, and the great humming engines beneath the Pole Fortress went silent.
Moments later, contact from The North Cities had told Odaya that Emmet and Ernest Sourcer were in the Portal of the Crag and would wait for her there.
In the months to come, with the whole Cosmos watching, a session of the Cosmic Tribunal had been called with judges from thousands of galaxies and millions of worlds represented. What was to be done with Wildark?
Emmet had, for the most part, stayed out of it, as had his mother, The Seer and his aunt, The First Scribe. The ladies busied themselves about the cottage making soup, brisket, and cakes and bread for all comers. They never failed to take the visiting dignitaries, and there were thousands, aback, with their provincial ways.
In the end, at a pre-trial hearing that lasted nearly a year, Wildark, his head for the most part bowed, plead guilty. During that session, the charges, taken from 150 millennia of offenses, were read, charges ranging from merely venal, to truly horrific on a cosmic scale. After the plea, a sentence of eternity in the custody of the authorities was cast down. Muirian justice had long ago eliminated the death sentence, which, in the case of an immortal like Wildark, would have been moot in any case.
Since that time, Wildark had spent his time, at Odie’s request, not in the darkest dungeon imaginable, which, only existed now, in the war museum of The Pole, but in the Portal itself, where he could be seen daily, mutely staring out at The Great Lake.
What was he thinking? So far, Odie had not been able to penetrate that far, but Emmet, who seemed to have developed a direct channel into his father’s thoughts had repeatedly told her, “He is in a deep meditation that Mother, Aunt Lynne and I directed him towards. The question he will be pondering for the next 10 millennia is, What is Love? I believe that will be quite a punishment for him, until he finally understands.”
So much damage done, by one being! In an earlier age, there would have been a greater public outcry, and there was no denying that some voices, even some of the editorial writers in Katie’s North Cities Light were calling for much more punitive measures to be taken in retaliation for the untold anguish Wildark had caused, and there was logic to such cries. But the past was the past. And in her deepest soul Odie believed that all the souls damaged and destroyed by Wildark had and would continue to live again in the bright faces of the newly born, in the shimmering of the very stars, and in the sweet dew of the newest morning. In the long view, and though her lesser self doubted this, and her greater self cried always over the anguish and pain of history, the damage done, as her mother’s last musical note, sung from the sunken Island of Muir, still emanating in Odie’s heart, soul, and spirit from that sad, sad day reminded her, was momentary.
“Vocala sur voca.” she said smiling at her father,
on the deck of The Kingfisher in the dawn hour just north of the glorious city of the Crag. The towers glimmered with the icy mist of dawn.
“Vocala sur voca,” he replied. “This is a good day.”
Other World Side, Island of Thoreau, Keatosian Island Republic, Year 93, Time of the Sunshine, 5 a.m.
In the pre-dawn light, Mert looked down into the moon shimmering blue water where the ashes of his father, Henry David Bailey, swirled and slowly vanished into the depths. Blessed Oblivion at last. He sat down at the end of the tropical pier holding the empty urn in his hands. The Dark Vision was docked nearby. And no one in this lovely sea port had any idea who the tall man with the eye patch was. To anyone who asked he would always give his name as “Thomas North”. His father, in their five years of voyaging about the World in the Vision, had gone under the name of “David Wander”.
He believed that his father had found some measure of happiness, particularly in this last year traveling with him about the great waters of The Other World Side. Mert had seen him smile often; especially after the healers on the Island of Carroll had told his father to enjoy his remaining time, as it was limited. It had been a grim happiness, granted, but more than his father had enjoyed in 20 years.
When the Crescent had first gone aglow with the visions of Henry David Bailey, his father, visions that showed him to be in the St. Martins Lost Way Shelter, and Mert had heard his father call out telepathically with a single questioning word, “Son?” Mert had set sail in the Vision immediately. Within hours Mert arrived there, back in St. Martins, and found him. His father had only at that moment become aware of his own identity and how he’d come to be there.
The moment Mert walked through the doorway of his tiny room at the shelter, Henry, who still couldn’t speak, had started to write his son a note, but Mert had shook his head and said, telepathically, Dad, I can hear your thoughts. It’s something the Muirians gave me, through the medal. I can hear you.
That had been the first of the smiles. But the well lined face of the 70-year-old man had quickly turned anguished.
Son, your uncle… Your uncle just lied to me. He told me lie after lie about the Muirians. I believed it all. I believed I was a hero who rescued him when all that really happened was I headed north to save my friend and he shot me from the sky and killed all those kids…
He had comforted his father then.
“I know, Dad.” Mert said aloud. “He…he used me too…”
His father looked up at him shaking his head. Then, wiping away tears, he continued.
And then…after I verified his lies in writing as truth to the authorities, and he used me to get his people into power and then caused the battles…he…he just left me here. He just said, ‘Thank you, Henry, you’ve been a help.’ then he laughed and put the truth into my head and stood there watching me suffer. ‘Oh, this is much better than killing you,’ he said. And then…and then…I don’t know. The next thing I remember is you showing up here. I…I love you, son.
That had been Mert’s time to cry.
In the months that followed he had continually asked his father if he wanted to go back to Stony Crag, if he wanted to return to the cottage and their mother.
Bad memories. No way back.
“But, Dad,” he’d said, “it’s all over now. All done. He’s in custody forever. Mom’s there, at the cottage. She’s waiting for both of us.”
Bad memories. No way back.
His father had said this telepathically to him over and over. In truth, his father’s thoughts echoed his own. Once this realization got set in Mert’s mind, the true wandering began in the Dark Vision. They had traveled together, father and son, from pole to pole and east to west through heedless, rash, and ill-advised voyages in all weathers. They had been locked in ice flows. They had been becalmed, once for three weeks, and once they had sailed their way in northern latitudes through a full on wind blitz with waves 50 feet high. The intrepid design of the Vision, and their own native understanding of winds and weather, saw them through the worst, despite themselves
Once, late at night, a year ago, when they had reached a port in striking distance of the cottage he’d asked his father again if he didn’t want to go home and had gotten the same response. That night in a dream, his mother had come to him and said, Let your father find peace, Mert. And you find it too.
“So now what?” he said aloud, looking back toward the white buildings of the island, then
out over the blue, blue water.
“Now, how about we have a talk?” came a voice both audible and telepathic from up the pier in the direction of the village.
Mert turned to see Odie, dressed in a large white hat, sunglasses and a white summer dress.
“Odaya…” Despite himself, there was a raw and pitiable longing in his voice. “How did you know…oh…never mind. You always know don’t you?”
She smiled faintly as she drew closer down the pier, then stopped ten feet away. “I…didn’t want to intrude. I’m so sorry about your dad.”
“Don’t be. The best days he’d had in 20 years were during this last year. “
She pulled back a long strand of dark hair and tucked in back up behind her ear, under her hat. “I envy him your company.”
Mert nodded. Winced for a moment, then said, “Have…have you heard from my mom?”
Odie smiled sadly. “She’s the one who sent me on this secret mission.”
“What’s the mission?”
“To bring you home.”
“I’ve…I’ve missed you…terribly.”
“Oh, Mert, you have no…” She hesitated, at a loss for words, stifling sobs. Then,
she ran to him and he stood, set down the urn, and ran to her. Merton, felt a wave of joy, he hadn’t felt in years, as he looked into her eyes. He tried to speak, but realized that there was nothing he could say, which she didn’t already know. They kissed.
The sun came up over the blue blue water.
The Crag, Year 95, Day 22 Time of the Snow, 11 p.m.
“Wait now, this isn’t really what happened,” said Emmet looking up from his copy of Jimmy Cratz’s memoir, The Wrestler Remembers, “Your Dad is making me out to be way too much of a hero!”
“And he’s making me out to be too much of a brat!” said Katie looking up from hers.
“Oh, I don’t know…”
Katie reached across the bed and pinched Emmet.
“Ow!”
After a moment Katie smiled in his direction, “Wasn’t Odie beautiful today?”
“When wasn’t she?”
“I’m going to let that slide since she was the bride.”
Emmet sighed a moment. “I was just so glad to see Mert with a smile.”
“Yeah,” Katie grinned. “It was about time.”
“He’ll never really understand what a hero he is to all of us. So many times he saved us all, especially me, and the one time we saved him…”
“He just couldn’t forgive himself for being human, even once.”
“I’m glad he’s back in the Force. Nobody can fly a mage like, Mert.”
“Typical him, he wouldn’t take a promotion.”
“Nope, captain forever, as it should be.”
Katie turned another page. “Hon, was I really a brat?”
“No, but that tobacco thing…”
Katie laughed before adjusting her glasses and looking back at the book.
“You watch yourself, Sourcer or I’ll start chewing again.”
The Crag, At the Cottage, Year 95, Day 23 Time of the Snow 11:30 a.m.
The Muscat Island soup was boiling on the stove.
“The kids and Otter will be here soon, Lu.”
“Don’t fret Lynne.”
“Did we get a bone for…”
“Would I leave Emerson out?”
Lynne laughed then sighed for a moment.
“Henry?”
“Even when you have the courtesy not to read my mind you can read me, Lu. I do wish he’d been able to forgive himself…push down all that regret and shame.”
“It was too much for him this time, dear. Don’t worry; he’ll be back. Probably when we least expect it.”
“I know; it’s just a shame he couldn’t make it back while he lived this time. I miss him.”
“I miss him too; he was wonderful company. Quiet man with a dry sense of humor, before all the bad times came, but Mert’s a pretty good slice of him.”
“He is. And Henry got to truly know his son as a man. That was a kindness. Oh, and there’s all this young bliss to be happy about. Makes the world seem new.”
“It does at that.”
“Lu?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Do you think Ernest is really through with his…terrible nonsense.”
Lu shot Lynne a knowing look, “Vocala sur voca.”
BEYOND FAR SHORE
“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!”
———Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Author’s Note: This novel was created out of both the realities and dreams of my childhood. In fact, both I and my brother Tim, have long had recurring dreams about a village on the other side of the lake where we both grew up and still reside. From his description of his dream, I’ve come to understand that our dreams are nearly identical.That’s the truth, and if if strikes you as an odd coincidence, then you really need to read this story, because you need to figure out that there are no coincidences and that sometimes life is quite like a dream. And so we begin this tale of combating the harshness of our grimmer realities by seeking the solace of our better dreams. Let’s go on a walk with Nathan and Booter, Beyond Far Shore.
Part 1: The Call
June 8, 1968
This wasn’t the first time Nathan had dreamt this dream. He’d had it often, since word came of his father’s death. His mother didn’t think he understood, but he understood. Daddy was dead. For a year before the men from the air force had come to the door, last October, the word from the air force was that Daddy was “missing in action”, which Nathan didn’t really understand. He’d asked Mom once a while ago what that meant and then he’d asked, “When is Daddy coming home?” And Mom had looked at him holding something back and said, “I hope, soon, Nathan. I…hope…” and then she’d started to cry. So he hadn’t asked that question again. Since October, when the men came to the door, Nathan and Mom had known that Daddy had been killed over Vietnam. His jet had been blown from the sky. He’d heard the whispers from his hiding place in the shadows on the stairway, one day last October at their house in Kincheloe. He’d even heard them say the word “vaporized”. He’d looked it up: To convert to vapor, especially by heating. Then he’d looked up “vapor”: Any barely visible or cloudy diffused matter, such as mist, fumes, or smoke, suspended in the air. He got that too. Everything that had been Daddy had been made into a kind of cloud, floating in the air. And that word “diffused” he’d heard that when they talked about bombs and stuff. So that made sense. So Daddy was floating in the air. Maybe, some day he’d be a pilot like Daddy and one day while he was flying he’d find the cloud that was Daddy. But that was silly. He was pretty sure it didn’t work like that. Even the cloud that had been Daddy was gone by now. It would be long gone before he was old enough to be a pilot.
He never mentioned Daddy to Mom anymore because when she was in a bad mood it made her cry or get angry and go away and close the door, and when she was in a good mood it made her quiet and then put her in a bad mood. And then she’d say stuff like, “That damned war! Stupid war! I don’t blame the college kids for protesting! I wish…I wish I could go back. Talk him out of volunteering. Oh, Christopher, why did you volunteer? We could have gone away. Moved to Canada. Anything, anything but this…”
When Nathan was in a bad mood, Mom sent him to his room. Sometimes he wished he could send Mom to her room when the moods got her. But he never thought that for very long. He did think about maybe sending her to her room and then sitting by the bed and saying, “It’s going to be all right.” And patting her head the way she did for him sometimes.
It was hard because it was just the two of them now. It had been way easier when it was he and Mom and Daddy. Daddy had told him that some time, after he got back from the war, maybe there’d be more of them, and then he’d laughed. When Daddy had told him that at first he’d been just little, only six and he didn’t know what that meant. The idea seemed silly. How could there be more of them? More of him? More of Mom? More of Daddy? But now he did understand. If Daddy had lived, there would have been babies: brothers and sisters. Now there was just Mommy and Mommy wasn’t herself.
Mommy had grown up an orphan. And once a couple years ago, Daddy, who liked to read grown up books to Nathan, had read him a book by “Mr. Dickens” as Daddy would say it. The book was called Oliver Twist, which Nathan had thought was a funny name, and in it Oliver and a whole lot of other kids were orphans too. He’d asked Daddy at the time whether that’s what it was like for Mommy growing up and Daddy had told him that Mommy said it was pretty lonely and sad sometimes, but that the food was a lot better than in Oliver Twist, though sometimes the nuns were almost as mean as Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann.
Nathan didn’t quite understand that, because where he went to school in the Sault the nuns were pretty nice most of the time. Oh, they yelled at him, but he was an unruly kid sometimes and so he got why they yelled. For the last two years, though, for some reason, especially after the word came in October that Daddy had been vaporized, they’d been very, very nice to him. He thought that was weird. No matter what happened to Daddy, he was the same unruly kid sometimes. He’d talked to a priest or two that year and they kept telling him it was God’s Will. He was mad at God for that. He knew it was a sin to be mad at God, but he didn’t care. God wasn’t playing fair.
Daddy’s father, Col. Richard “Fireball” O’Doul, as Daddy had called him with a grin, had been a pilot too. He had died right after Nathan was born, and Daddy’s mother, his grandmother, had left the family when Daddy was young. “Went out for some Luckies, and never came back.” Daddy would say and then smile, but that smile had never seemed very happy to Nathan. When Mom had heard him say that she’d said, “Now, Christopher, that’s a terrible thing to say to a little boy.” But Nathan had thought it was funny, and it was only in the last year that he’d realized ‘Luckies’ were cigarettes; before that he thought maybe they were shamrocks or four leaf clovers or rabbits feet and he always had this image of his grandmother, an old woman, out in a field somewhere, picking something up and smiling and putting it in a big brown sack. That was until his Daddy had told him that his grandmother had gone out for luckies when she was twenty-five. That was old, but not old lady old.
So now it was just he and Mom. And Mom wasn’t always good company, but she was trying. He was trying too. They were both sad. They were both really sad. It helped a little bit to be out at the lake. This was where his Daddy had grown up. This was Fireball’s place, Daddy would say. Being here made him feel closer to Daddy, and he didn’t feel quite so sad. Being here, though, always brought on the dream. Almost every time they stayed overnight he had it. And now they were here for the summer, because the school year was over and Mom was done teaching for the year. She was a math teacher. She said she liked math and she liked teaching it because it helped her give kids, “something certain.” Nathan wasn’t sure what that meant, but it meant something to Mom, so he wanted to make her feel like it was something they felt the same about, so he always nodded. And sometimes she’d smile at that.
The dream was always the same. He was walking with Booter; that was their dog. Nathan had asked his Daddy once what kind of dog Booter was and Daddy had laughed and said, “Well sir, in dog shows there’s an award for ‘Best of Breed’. If Booter was in a dog show, he’d win ‘Most of Breed’.” And then Daddy would laugh and he would too, because it was funny. He still didn’t completely get it, though. He guessed what Daddy had meant that Booter was an All American dog and had lots of different kinds of dogs in him. When he told Mom that Booter was an All American dog, she would just laugh and say that Booter was a mutt just like her. Then she would smile. He loved his mother’s smile.
The dream always started the same way. He would be walking along the far shore, the place they called ’Sandy Beach’ and a little girl with blue eyes and blonde hair would row up in an old, gray leaky rowboat. She’d smile at Nathan and tell him to call her ‘auntie’ which he always thought was stupid because, somehow, in the dream, he knew they were the same age. She was pretty, though, and though he wasn’t always okay with girls at school, she made him feel good and he’d get in the boat. And they’d row off down the muddy end of the lake and all down the river and then, after it narrowed down to a point where they had to push the little boat to keep moving, the river would open up again, to another huge lake, and they would row all the way across it and come to a place on the far shore with birch trees and some oak and some big pines all around it, where there was a little lakeshore town. All the buildings there were white and all the people seemed to be dressed in white and they all smiled and everybody wore hats like they used to in the old days, and there was a big boat dock and lots of big white houses, people riding by on bicycles, and only old cars like he’d seen in movies; and now and then a horse cart or just somebody riding a horse and some big, fancy hotels, and a school where the girl said she went; and way up at the center of the island there was a big radio tower and a radio station underneath; and in the radio station there were singers, who sang all the commercials and songs and everything, and a director there with long hair who always made him laugh when he was directing because when he waved his stick his head would bounce up and down and with it his hair. And when they got done at the radio station they would walk outside and he’d hear a plane flying over, not a jet fighter, like what Daddy flew…had flown…, but a bi-plane from World War I and the plane would fly by the tower and dip its wing. That was how pilots said hello. Daddy had told him that.
And in the dream Nathan always asked the girl, “Who’s that?”
And she always said, “Well, gee, don’t you know anything? That’s Fireball!”
The dream was stupid, though, and it lied, because he and Daddy had been all the way down the river once fishing, and it just kind of ‘petered out’ as Daddy said it, and became a big old swamp. There wasn’t any way to get to another big lake there and find an island and all that other stuff. He liked the dream, though, and he wished it could be real.
At this moment when our story begins, Nathan was sitting, at the front window of the cottage and looking out at the water. It was very still today, hardly any wind at all.
“Nathan, honey, why don’t you go out and play?” Mom said.
“Nothing to do. Nobody to do it with.”
“Oh, it’s a moody day.”
“Nope. I’m happy,” he said and looked around at her and smiled. Though he wasn’t really happy or sad either; it was one of those days when he just didn’t feel anything. Mom called in ‘feeling numb’ but he had thought that was just when you came home from the dentist, but he kind of got it, because the way his teeth felt after the dentist gave him a shot, was the way he felt inside, right now.
“It’s just true, there’s nobody around,” he said.
“Why don’t you take a walk?”
“Can you come with?”
“Well…not today…I’ve got to get some lunch ready for you. And I’ve got some other stuff to do. So, why don’t you take a little walk and be back for lunch.”
“Where will I walk?”
“You’re such a silly boy. Walk along the shore. See what you see.”
“Okay.”
So now, he was seeing what he saw.
Birds, and water, and now, just now, a little wind. Just like he knew it would be. Nobody around. Nothing to do. This wasn’t a bad day, though. It was just a nothing day.
He walked on down the shore, and took off his shoes and tied them together then threw them over his shoulder the way he’d seen Daddy do. And he walked along in front of the camps and cottages until there weren’t any more and he was coming up on the wild side of the lake. He should probably go back, but it was still a long time until lunch. He could tell that by the sun. Daddy had taught him how to tell that. So, he could walk a while longer. Maybe just down to Sandy Beach and back.
He made his way along the shore, and sometimes there was sand and sometimes the water was high and he’d wade in almost until it touched his swimming shorts. And Booter was there walking along with him, the water dripping from his whiskers and his tail wagging. Booker liked to fish. He didn’t really catch the fish, but when little fish swam out from under the bank he would chase them and their shadows, and if a big school came out he’d jump all around and it was funny. And when Nathan laughed at him Booter’s tail would wag even more. He still wondered what kind of dog Booter was. ‘Most of breed’ he said aloud and laughed, and then almost cried, so he kept walking really fast to keep that from happening. As he was running he thought about Daddy and how Daddy had given Booter his name. Before he was a pilot in the air force, Daddy had ‘worked his way through college’ putting up power lines. He’d worked for the power company climbing poles. And sometimes when he’d climb a pole a dog would come along, especially, he said if he was around behind somebody’s house. Daddy liked dogs, but he said you never could tell if a dog would bite, so he said if the dog was waiting there wagging his tail, he wouldn’t worry much about the dog, but then he said, ‘you can never tell with dogs’. If it was waiting there and growling he’d ‘make a determination’ about whether the dog needed to be whacked on the nose with a wrench, ‘just slightly’ or ‘just gently, given a kick with his steel toed boots. He said the big ones were ‘whackers’ the middle sized ones were ‘booters’ and the little ones he didn’t worry about. When they had brought Booter home for a surprise for Nathan’s birthday, Nathan had asked his name and Daddy had said Nathan could call him anything he wanted. Then Nathan had asked how big he was going to get and Daddy had laughed and said, ‘about booter sized’ and winked at him and Mom had said again, ‘Oh George, that’s a terrible thing to say to a little boy’. And Daddy had laughed. And when Nathan said he was going to call the dog Booter, Mom had shaken her head and Daddy had laughed really hard, but after a while and after Nathan had said ‘Here Booter!’ and the puppy had run right to him, Mom had smiled. Mom had a nice smile. He wished he could see it more often, but she hardly smiled at all these days.
He came to the place of the red rocks where these two big red boulders stuck out of the sand. Mom had told him once that they’d been left there by a glacier, so he’d asked Mom what that was and she’d shown him in an encyclopedia. And Daddy had told him that there had been a big old glacier, like a big iceberg on the land right here a long time ago and it had carved out the hole that was where the water was for this lake and broken up all the rock and dragged it along and left it here, and that’s how those two boulders had gotten there. It was hard to believe and he always looked closely at both Mom and Daddy when they told him stuff like that. He couldn’t tell if this was like a fairy story which Mom said was just ‘a sweet little lie and didn’t do anybody any harm’ and that confused Nathan still, because the nuns said that lies were a sin. But they talked about white lies too…
He wished this stuff was all in one big book like the encyclopedia so that he could look it up and see what was real and what wasn’t. Growing up was hard. It was going to be even harder without Daddy. He almost started crying again so he started to run once more. He ran fast along the shore and Booter thought that was great and ran along with him and then on up ahead, looking over his shoulder at Nathan with his tongue hanging out the side. That was how Booter laughed and it made Nathan laugh. Nathan and Booter ran past the little cove that Daddy had called Three Oaks because of the three big trees that grew together there. That was where Ice Fish Hill came down. It was called that because ice fishermen came down there in the winter to fish out on the ice. He ran on under the place they called High Banks where the shore was all cut away and there was just a big sand and dirt hill that rose up to the ridge behind it. He ran further through the reeds and watched where his feet went into the water, because sometimes the reeds had been snapped off and if you stepped on one of the broken ones down at the bottom it really hurt your feet and then, just up ahead was Sandy Beach and he picked up speed and ran even faster. He was really moving now! He had to hold on tight to his shoes. They were bouncing against his shoulder and he didn’t want them to fall off. It kind of hurt when they bounced, but he didn’t cry because he was tough. He looked down at the foot prints he was making in the sand and he looked at how big his feet were getting. His feet were way bigger than the rest of him. Mom said he had ‘big man’ feet and that the rest of him would catch up after a while. He was really growing up. He’d be grown up in no time. He wondered if maybe, if it didn’t rain for a couple of days or no wind came up to wash his footprints away, if maybe he could measure his feet growing by comparing the tracks. He’d have to try that. Now how would he remember?
Booter was barking. It wasn’t his ‘There’s a bear up here!’ bark it was his ‘Hey, there’s a person here!’ bark. Nathan looked up, and there was a person there. He stopped dead in his tracks on his big man feet. The sun was really bright, but that didn’t change what he was seeing. It was the little girl from his dreams.
He just stood there staring for a moment while she got down on one knee and petted Booter. He closed his eyes and opened them again. She was still there. He pinched himself to see if he was dreaming, but she was till there. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She was wearing white shorts and a white blouse and she had on a little white baseball cap with a figure of a funny man sewed on it.
After a minute she looked up at him and smiled. “Cat got your tongue?”
“W-what?”
“I said, ‘Cat got your tongue?’.”
Nathan thought about that. It had always seemed like a funny thing to say. And it made an even funnier picture in his head. How would a cat get somebody’s tongue? And did the cat actually pull the tongue out, or was the person just standing there and the cat had his claw in the tongue? And how would that happen in the first place? Did the person stick his tongue out at the cat and the cat didn’t like it? He started to laugh.
“What’s funny?” the little girl said smiling.
“What you said about the cat.”
“Oh, yes. Well, it does make a funny picture.” she said.
“That’s just what I was thinking.”
“I know.”
“How could you know?”
“I saw you thinking it.”
“That’s crazy talk.”
“That’s okay. I’m crazy.”
Nathan laughed. It was a really good laugh; the kind he’d laughed all the time before Daddy got vaporized. Thinking that made him sad for a second.
“Cheer up!” the little girl said.
“My name is…”
“Oh, I know your name, Nathan.”
“How do you know my name.”
And Nathan knew exactly what she would say next because he’d heard it lots of times before in the dream, so he said it with her.
“I’m your Auntie, silly.”
That made her laugh really hard and he laughed with her. And he tried to pretend that this wasn’t all crazy. Maybe he was going crazy. I mean you didn’t just meet people from your dreams did you? A couple of years back, when he was little, he wouldn’t have thought that was so strange, but now, with his big man feet, and his brain starting to know stuff, and Daddy vaporized and all, this was surprising. He stood for a second not laughing while she finished her laugh and wondered and worried about it all. And then he made a decision: He’d been sad long enough and meeting this little girl from his dreams made him happy… ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’ his Daddy had always said, and he knew that that meant when something good and unexpected happened you didn’t look at it too closely. He didn’t know why, but he thought maybe that was because if you looked too closely at it, it might go away, like a dream.
The little girl reached out for him and, like in the dream, he took her hand and they just walked along the beach with Booter bouncing around them, picking up sticks. He reached out with his other hand and took a stick from Booter and without letting go of the girl’s hand he threw the stick out into the water and Booter ran after it bouncing into the water and then swimming out, which made the little girl laugh even harder.
“What’s your name?” he asked her after a second.
“Misty,” the little girl said and smiled.
“Is that your real name?” he said, because he’d never heard a name like that before.
“It’s the one I call myself,” she said, and she got a funny look in her eye, one that made him feel warm in his face.
Then she added, “And I’m your Auntie.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How can you be my Auntie? You’re my age.”
“So you say,” she said and she skipped away from him along the sand as Booter came back up and dropped the stick. This time she threw it out for him and he tore off after it again, and again Misty laughed.
He laughed too and started running and he ran past her to show her how fast he was and she laughed and tried to catch him, and then she did and Booter was running with them, and Nathan was happy, very happy and they came to the place where the lake opened into the muddy smaller lake that joined it, and there was a small creek there that Daddy always called ‘The Channel’. And on the shore at the end of the creek, Nathan could see the little gray boat just like in the dream. He tried not to let it make him think too much, but he couldn’t help it. He stopped.
“What’s wrong?”
“The boat…it’s just like…in my dream.”
“Of course.”
“Why…’of course’?.”
“Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?”
“I…I guess.”
He stood thinking about it for a minute.
“Misty?”
“Yes, Nathan?”
“Are we going to go away to…the…the other place in the boat?”
“You mean Far Shore?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“Uh huh…of course, silly.”
“The name was never in my dream…”
“Lots of things aren’t in our dreams.”
He was scared. This was a little too much. Without thinking he had said it aloud, “I’m…not ready.”
“That’s okay, Nathan. I’ll come back when you are.”
Before he could move she had pushed the little boat out and was rowing away.
“Misty?”
She stopped rowing. “Yes…Nathan?”
“I’ll…I’ll come back tomorrow, what time?”
“Oh, time doesn’t matter much.”
“How about 9 a.m. Can you be here then?”
She winked at him. “Maybe…” Then she began rowing again. And as she rowed, she recited a poem:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
He watched her go. She rowed fast. Soon she was half way down the muddy lake, then most of the way down, and then she disappeared into the fog that had suddenly risen at the other end by where the river opened up. He stood watching for a while. Then he looked at Booter.
“Was that a dream, Booter?”
Booter wagged his tail and it came into Nathan’s head that Booter was saying, with his wagging tail and his sparkling expression: “What’s the difference?”
And Nathan said, “Yeah, what’s the difference?”
June 16, 1968
When he got back to the cabin, on that first day of Misty, his lunch was on the table, but Mom was nowhere in sight. He knew where she would be: back in the little bedroom with the covers pulled tight around her, sleeping. He’d seen her there before, with her eyes wide open. He’d walked right up to her and looked at her and she didn’t seem to see him. Once it had scared him and he’d let out a whimper, and then she’d looked at him and said, “It’s okay, Nathan.” And then she’d opened the covers and he’d crawled in with her and she’d put her arms around him and said, “It’s going to be all right, Nathan. It just may take time.”
He knew then that she was trying to help him and trying to help herself, but it didn’t help him. Whether it helped her, he had no idea. He had no idea at all really, about the older people in his life. At least that’s how it seemed to him then. He didn’t know why his mother’s honest, welcoming sadness over Daddy’s death didn’t help him. He knew she was trying to share it with him, so that they could get over it together, but somehow, he didn’t think it worked that way. He knew she was trying to be nice, but seeing his mother having trouble didn’t make him feel better, even when she kind of shared it with him. It just made him feel like nothing was secure in the world. If Daddy was gone and Mom wasn’t handling it much better than he was, then everything and anything could just come loose, all come apart. It was like the floor suddenly opening and you were falling and you didn’t know what was beneath you. That wasn’t a good feeling.
So he sat down and he ate lunch alone that day. A baloney sandwich with ketchup, the way he liked it, and some carrots and a little bit of soup out of the can, not the homemade kind, and a glass of milk. He sat eating and it was good, and almost blocked out what he knew was happening in the little bedroom, but not quite.
He thought about Misty the rest of the day and wondered if she was real. He looked at Booter many times to ask him and Booter just wagged his tail. That, Nathan was pretty sure, meant, “Oh course!”
By the time his Mom finally came out from the bedroom just before supper time, he had already decided not to tell her about meeting Misty. Especially since he wasn’t completely sure she was real himself. He didn’t want to lie to Mom, even if he thought he was telling the truth about Misty, or was pretty sure he was. He didn’t like lying and he didn’t like being lied to. Like Daddy had always said, “If you lie, then everything in your world becomes not quite true anymore, and pretty soon, you won’t be sure what’s true yourself. You should always look what’s true right in the eye and when you tell about it to somebody else, try to say it just as you saw it.”
Okay then, he thought, I’ll got back down there tomorrow and for as many days as it takes and go with Misty to this Far Shore, if it’s real, and I’ll see what I see and I’ll come back and tell exactly what I see. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do. Maybe it will make me better and maybe it’ll make Mom better too.
And so, the next day, June 9, he went back down to Sandy Beach and timed it so he got there at exactly 9 a.m. No Misty. Somehow he wasn’t surprised. She had said “Maybe…” and both Mom and Daddy had always told him not to say maybe unless he was really unsure of how something might come out. They had both told him that ‘Maybe’ was mostly a way for people to have mean fun with other people; to tease them or to avoid saying ’No’ when they didn’t want to take the consequences for saying ’No’. He remembered asking his Daddy what consequences were, and his Daddy had said, “When you look into somebody’s eyes and you see that they’re disappointed in you. And you see the hurt there, from your having said ‘maybe’ when you could have been honest and said yes or no, and you know that they know you’re only saying maybe because it would be a little bit inconvenient and hard for them to say yes and have to do a little something for you, and difficult for them to say no and disappoint you honestly right away. Those are consequences.” It was a long and complicated answer, but he had remembered it because it seemed important to remember it then. And now that he was older and knew that consequences could be a lot of things, that answer still seemed important. He hoped he’d always remember that way of thinking about consequences, and he was pretty sure he would.
Still, though, Misty didn’t seem like somebody who would say ‘Maybe’ just to get out of telling a true no. She was pretty confusing to talk to, because she made him feel all kinds of things he didn’t understand, and because she was kind of…playful…that was the word, but he didn’t think she was a maybe kind of person on purpose. If she didn’t show up, there was probably a reason. He’d ask her, right out, the next time he saw her, what her reason for maybe was. On June 9, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he wouldn’t see her again and that maybe he’d missed his only chance to go with her, and he almost cried looking down the little muddy lake. He wondered too, and not for the first time, if maybe the other day had been a dream; if maybe he’d just fallen asleep on Sandy Beach without knowing it, and woken up when Misty disappeared in the fog. Booter’s tail wag, right then said no, that wasn’t the way of things, but that didn’t mean Booter couldn’t be wrong. Still, Booter had never been wrong before. Nathan walked home, then, after a while, and that night he had the dream again and Misty rowed him back to Sandy Beach, and he looked right at her and asked in the dream, “Are you one of those maybe-just-to-avoid-the-consequences people, or one of those maybe-just-for-mean-fun people?”
“No,” she said. “I promise, I’ll come back again as soon as the fog comes back.”
There was no fog down in the muddy lake on June 10, or on June 11, or on June 12, when Mom had insisted on going with him. When she said she’d like to go with him that day he’d started in with “But…” and then he’d seen his Mom’s eyes narrow. He knew when that happened she was suspicious. And that didn’t make him mad or sad. In fact, it made him glad because it was so much better than that hollow far away look she had lying there in the little bedroom that made him feel uneasy about…well…everything. Besides, there was no fog that he could see from the cottage, so Misty probably wasn’t coming anyway, and if she did, well, then Mom would see her too and maybe they would all go to Far Shore together, and that might be okay too. Maybe Mom would even get a look of…wonder…on her face. He’d like to see that. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen that, except maybe when Daddy had come home with a surprise for her, or when he’d gotten an “A” in school, which wasn’t very often, even though he was pretty sure that if he tried really hard, he could get mostly A’s. Oh well, that was another thing. And it was summer anyway.
Misty wasn’t there on July 12 when he went with Mom. When they got to the beach, Mom looked down the muddy lake and said, “Pretty day.” And then she looked a little sad, but she’d controlled it…he could see her controlling it… and she said, “Well, maybe we’d better get back.”
And so they’d gone back and she hadn’t gone with him again on the walk to Sandy Beach since. There was no fog on July 13. Nathan thought a 13th would be a perfect day for fog because fog was supposed to be like spooky and stuff, and that seemed to go with 13, which people said was unlucky, but he didn’t know why. And he would like to ask Daddy why because Daddy would have a kind of smart aleck answer that would be funny and that he could keep. Thinking about that almost made him cry, so he didn’t think about it.
On June 14 Mom was having a really bad day and he brought her breakfast in bed which he thought might cheer her up, but that had made her out and out cry and put her arms around him, and that did feel good for a little while, but then it just made them both sad. And rain came later that day and he and Booter just sat by the windows on the screened porch most of the day watching it hit the water, which was nice, but a little like tears and the mood in the cottage didn’t get any better, even after Mom got up and made macaroni and cheese and hot dogs and tried to act all cheerful. Really, her acting like that made it even sadder and she could see that, so she stopped pretending after a while. And the macaroni and cheese was really good and so were the hot dogs. He’d slipped Booter one under the table, and Booter told him thank you with a very happy, Mom would say, ‘enthusiastic’ wag.
The next day was much the same and the day crawled by slowly with Mom in the bedroom and Nathan walking listlessly about the cottage, putting together puzzles and just waiting. Finally night came.
That night he had the dream again, and in it Misty told him, when she dropped him off at Sandy beach, “Tomorrow there will be fog.”
When he woke up on June 16 he didn’t remember the dream at first, but then he did, and he jumped up and went to the screened porch and looked out and sure enough there was a big tall bank of fog sitting on the muddy lake at the other end! He got himself cereal as quick as he could ate it up, tossed the dishes in the sink, got dressed and was just heading out the door when he heard Mom say, in the same sad, drained voice, “Where are you going, Nathan?”
“There’s fog today, Mom, I gotta get down to Sandy Beach.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Should he tell her, about the dream about everything? No, he couldn’t. Not until he was sure. “Well…just to see the fog is all. It will be pretty with the sun coming up through it.”
“Okay. Don’t be too long.” He hoped he wouldn’t be too long. He felt bad for running away on Mom, because she still wasn’t better. How long would it take to get to Far Shore and back? How long was a dream? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to lie so he said, “Okay, I’ll try not to be.”
She started several questions but soon realized he was already out the door. When he was safely out of hearing distance she added quietly, “Don’t forget what day this is. Oh, maybe it’s better if you do.”
Nathan didn’t hear her or wonder what day it was because he was already a good distance from the cottage and running because he knew he knew his “Okay, I’ll try not to be.” would make his mother ask other questions. He supposed, as he ran away from the cottage without listening for an answer, that that was a kind of lying too, but he really couldn’t help it. He’d done everything he could and he’d waited a long time for the fog. He’d never really kept track of how often fog showed up down there. He’d never thought about it really until now. Maybe it only came a few times a summer. And somehow he felt like you could only get to Far Shore in summer. The dream was always a summer dream with people in summer clothes. He’d never dreamt the Far Shore dream when it was anything but summer in his awake world or when it was anything but summer on Far Shore. If he didn’t get down there today, he might not have another chance until next summer, or maybe ever. That was a maybe he wasn’t going to risk.
He and Booter got to Sandy Beach in record time and it was so foggy there that he could barely see the muddy lake at all. Misty wasn’t there. And just for a second he wondered again if it had all been only a dream or if Misty had lied to him in the dream. Was a lie in a dream really a lie? If dreams weren’t real, how could you tell a lie in one? He was pondering that thought when he heard the sound of the oar locks getting closer, and pretty soon here came the little gray boat and Misty right out of the fog. She didn’t get out of the boat but just stopped rowing when it hit shore. Then she turned around and over her shoulder said, “Well, get Booter in the boat and push off silly!”
So, with only a little breath of worry, he did just that and Misty turned the boat around with one oar then said, “Why don’t you take the other oar and we’ll row together.”
“Okay.” Nathan said, and clamored up beside her.
It was fun to row with Misty, even in the fog.
“Do you know where you’re going, Misty?”
“Of course,” said Misty, “I’m taking you to Far Shore.”
“Really?”
“I never lie, Nathan. Not even in your dreams.”
For a long time they just rowed along in silence. When a loon slid up to the surface not far from the boat and gave a call. Misty called back to him. Then Nathan did. And Booter, who was sitting in the stern of the boat, just looked at them both like they were crazy. Then he wagged his tail. Apparently Booter liked that kind of crazy.
They rowed down to the far end of the muddy lake to where the river opened and then they started on down the river. It was a little scary when the river kept getting narrower and narrower and the banks were just brush with trees way off in the distance and barely visible in the fog. What lived down here he wondered? Daddy had told him on their trip down here that it was mostly deer and maybe a bear or wolf or two, but that, “Those critters don’t want to hurt you any more than you want to hurt them. They’re just doing their business like you are. Just try not to get in the way of their business and everything will be all right.”
Nathan blew out a breath.
“Everything really will be all right, Nathan,” Misty said.
“Yeah…” Nathan said. “I know.”
Misty giggled and squeezed his hand. “No you don’t, but it really will be all right. I know that for sure. I didn’t the first time I went to Far Shore, though. I didn’t know any better than you do.”
That was the most Misty had ever said to him at one time, and it gave him plenty to think about. He thought a lot about it as they got further and further down the river. And finally they came to the place where, when he and Daddy had come down here, the river ‘petered out’.
“Stop rowing.” Misty said. “Let the current take us.”
Nathan stopped rowing and looked at Booter who wagged his tail.
For a second the little boat just stayed in one place, and then, quite suddenly, it started to pick up speed and headed in the direction of a tiny opening in the brush, and the boat, picking up speed all the time rushed through the bushes, ‘tag alders’ Daddy called them. The boat rushing through the tag alders made a very comforting and brushy noise. The fog got very very thick, incredibly, unbelievably thick for a moment, and then suddenly all the noise stopped, the fog disappeared and they were in big open water. Off in the distance, Nathan could see the white buildings of Far Shore. He could even, when he looked close, see the radio tower up on the hill.
“Wow!”
“You didn’t believe it was real, did you? I didn’t either the first time.”
“Wow!”
Booter’s tail was thumping against the gunnels.
Nathan wasn’t scared anymore. He was just excited. He wanted to see it all right now! He grabbed the oar and pulled so hard he pulled it right out of the lock.
Misty laughed very hard; then, Nathan did too.
“Don’t try so hard!” she said, after they had finished laughing. “Far Shore is all about not trying so hard. Just, for a while, let what happens, happen and go with it.”
Nathan was grinning from ear to ear. “Okay!”
They started off again at a slow easy pace with long pulls on the oars. Nathan couldn’t help peeking over his shoulder as they got closer and closer across the big, wide, calm water. And then, Misty began reciting the poem she’d recited a few days before in rhythm with their rowing. They had time for her to recite it 25 times before they reached the docks of Far Shore, and by the twentieth time Nathan was reciting most of it with her. Nathan was good at memorizing things, and for some reason, this poem was especially easy to memorize.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
“You’re doing great!” Misty said. “You’ve almost got the whole thing!”
“What does it mean?” Nathan asked.
“Does it matter?”
“No…no…I guess not,” Nathan said looking over his shoulder at the village.
“Some day it will,” Misty said, but Nathan was so excited, he barely heard her. He jumped out onto the dock and started to pull the little boat up.
Misty was laughing. “Well, our slip is a little ways up, but you and Booter go on ahead. I’ll meet you at the end of the dock.”
“Okay!”
Nathan took off like a bullet and nearly ran into an old fisherman who had a tattered white hat and a raggedy white wicker fishing creel over his shoulder. The white pole he was carrying had been repaired ten or twelve times with black electric tape, glue, and putty.
“Watch yourself there, Nathan!” the old fisherman said with a smile, his long white eyebrows twitching! He reached down and patted Booter. “Keep track of the lad will ya, Booter? You know how these first timers on Far Shore are.”
Nathan stood stunned for a moment. There were at least seven questions fighting for a place in his mouth.
The old fisherman laughed, “Okay,” he said, “let’s take them in order. One, of course I know your names; Booter was born here and I was there the day you were born. Two, of course I seem familiar; we’re family. Three, of course the fishing rod is in bad shape, don’t you know the old saying? ‘We have to make do here on Far Shore.’ Four, you can go anywhere you like, see as much as you want. Five, you can stay until you think it’s time to go. Six, your ma won’t worry because no matter how long you’re gone, it will only seem to her like you’ve been gone as long as a trip to Sandy and back takes. And finally, seven, of course there’s an ice cream parlor! It’s just up the block. Home made ice cream too, none of this store bought; it’s better anyway, but even if we wanted store-bought, the shipment trucks are usually a little late getting to Far Shore. In fact, they don’t come at all, so, like I just said…”
“‘We have to make do on Far Shore,’” that was Misty, who had tied the boat up and come around to meet Nathan. “Let’s go, slowpoke! Don’tcha want some ice cream?”
“Have a good mornin’, kids!” the old fisherman said.
“Thanks, Colonel,” said Misty.
Nathan. stood there confused for a long moment. He’d been intent on ice cream, and on sorting out the old fisherman’s enigmatic answers to his questions, which he suddenly remembered he had never voiced. That raised another question. After a moment he looked at Misty with round awe-struck eyes. Again, he couldn’t get a word out.
“Cat got your tongue? Let’s go!”
“Was that…” he finally managed.
“Of course it was, silly!” Misty said. “The Fireball himself.”
“Well I should…”
“You will. Don’t worry. There’s time for everything on Far Shore. If not today, then another day. Take it as it comes. Just like the rowing.”
Nathan took a breath, and resisted the urge to pinch himself again. If this was all a dream, he really, really didn’t want it to end.
As they walked to the end of the pier towards the big hotel, then past the church, and the post office, and the firehouse, another hotel, a restaurant with a picture of a trout on the front, and past a horse stable and finally arrived at the ice cream store; they were passed, by a postman, a lady school teacher, a priest, and six school kids. One was a freckled faced red headed girl with bright blue eyes behind glasses, a stack of library books, and a white cat who seemed to know Booter. For years after that day, June 16, 1968, after he had forgotten all about Far Shore, the freckle-faced, red-headed girl with bright blue eyes and her white cat would come back in his dreams. But after a while, he even forgot about her too, but we’ll get to that.
Several old cars passed them on the road, ranging, by Nathan’s judgement, from 25 to 50 years old and cobbled together. A couple people on horseback went by too, as did one burly man about his mom’s age, who had a handlebar mustache and was riding an old bicycle. Too many dogs to mention, passed by, all of whom Booter seemed to know. Everybody they saw said hello. And not just hello, but very specific hellos:
“Hello, Nathan! Say hello to your Mom!”
“Hey, Misty! Glad you finally got him to come along. Everybody here has been looking forward to it, Nathan!”
“Well, Booter, good to have you back. Haven’t seen you since a year ago last December,” this from the man on the bicycle, which made Nathan remember that Booter had disappeared for the better part of a day on a windy December morning a while back, and he and his Daddy had headed out over the ice along the shore towards Sandy, only to be met by Booter half way there.
“So that’s where you went, Booter!” Nathan said.
“Of course,” said Misty, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for a dog to run off to a dream world. “Booter was born here. He has to come visit now and then!”
Nathan’s head was swimming a bit, but he was trying to go with the flow. When they got to the ice cream parlor, he tried not to act surprised when the kindly old lady with flashing blue eyes, who dressed in white, of course, behind the counter looked down and said in what he recognized as an Irish accent, “Well, now, young Nathan, it’s a triple dip chocolate in a sugar cone you’ll be havin’ is it?” She held out that exactly, along with a double strawberry in a white bowl for Misty. And, of course, that was exactly right as well.
“Never cared for cones,” said Misty. “Entirely too messy.”
The children turned from the window with their ice cream and started to walk away, but the lady said more amused than irritated, “Now, wouldn’t ya be forgettin’ something, Misty, dear?”
“Oh, Mrs. Flaherty, I nearly forgot!” said Misty, then recited:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moment of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
“Ah,” said Mrs. Flaherty, wiping away a tear then smiling. “Mr. Yeats, is it? He was a fine one for sentiment and nostalgia, silly old tower-dwellin’ sot. His poor wife… He could write, though, and stir the old fires, and the revolution! Of that there’s no doubt. Well, that covers both your ice creams and then some, Miss Misty. You’ve got credit for a few more with that. Have a fine day!”
As they sat at the white picnic table and watched the morning crowd go by, each member of the crowd with a hello for each of them, including Booter, Nathan asked, “Why did you say the poem to the lady?”
“Well…we had to pay Mrs. Flaherty, didn’t we?”
“Huh?”
Misty shook her head. “Oh, you’re so caught up in that other place! We don’t hand each other bits of paper and metal on Far Shore. We consider that quite uncivilized! We pay each other in poetry!”
“Wow…”
“You’re really going to need to expand your vocabulary, Nathan, if you’re going to get by on Far Shore. When you get back home, I suggest you start memorizing poems right away. There are no literary vagrants allowed on Far Shore.”
Nathan had no idea what she meant by ‘literary vagrant’ but made up his mind he’d look it up when he got home. And then he was going to memorize as many poems as possible. He wanted to be the richest kid on Far Shore.
When they had finished their ice cream and Misty had touched him up with some spit on a bandanna she pulled from her pocket, a treatment he hated when his mom did it, but somehow didn’t mind Misty’s efforts in the same vein, Nathan asked, “Where to now?”
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
“Well, I want to see everything!”
“Well, you can’t see everything your first time around. How about we head up to the hill and see the big houses and the radio station, before we take you to the airport. We’ll save the opera house, city hall, and the museum for the next time around.”
“I get to come back?”
Misty laughed and shook her head. “You’re slow to catch on, Nathan. Anybody who has the dream can always come back, whenever they like, as many times as they like. It’s all up to the dreamer!”
“Wow…”
“Again, the vocabulary,” said Misty winking at him. “Make sure you work on it.”
As they started up the hill Nathan wondered what she meant about the airport. But he was beginning to learn that if he just waited a while, all his questions would be answered. That was the way things were done on Far Shore.
The hill was a winding narrow cobblestone road up a massive steep slope covered with hemlocks, oaks, and maple. And nestled along the way were white houses of every size, from cottages to mansions, in styles of both ages gone past and last week. Many had picket fences and gardens filled with roses and tulips, tiger lilies and violets. Where there weren’t gardens there were wildflowers of all descriptions. And often there were people, men and women and children, cats and dogs, in the yards, and each and every one seemed to know Nathan and Misty and Booter and waved and or shouted out a happy hello or some good natured quip which Misty always answered, and Nathan, when he was not too amazed or shy did his best to answer as well. About half way up the hill he heard the bells of the church in town ring and he had noticed quite a few folks walking down the hill towards town. Oh, it was Sunday. He was missing Mass. But Mom wouldn’t have gone to Mass today anyway. Not the way she felt. He felt a little bit of guilt, but then excitement at where he was and what he was doing overtook it. Besides, what a story he would have to tell Mom when he got back home!
At last they came to the top of the hill and turned left at an even narrower cobblestone road. and ahead was a small white radio shack. A big collie came out to meet them, barking as collies always do.
“Hello, Angel,” Misty said and Booter walked up and nuzzled her, but that didn’t stop her collie commentary.
“Sorry I haven’t visited in so long,” said Misty. “And, yes, you’re welcome to play a while with Booter while we’re inside! Yes, I’ll definitely bring Booter next time we come too. This is Nathan.”
Angel kept up her barking. “Well, of course, I knew you knew that. I was only being polite. No need to get snippy.”
When Booter and Angel began tussling and chasing they walked on towards the radio shack. Nathan leaned towards Misty and said quietly, “Do you speak Collie?”
Misty laughed long and hard. “Of course not! I’m not a dog! I only surmised what she must have been saying.”
“Oh…”
“Sometimes, Nathan. I think you think this place is magic. There’s nothing unnatural or supernatural here. Everything here is just the stuff of dreams, just like the world on the other side of the mist. It’s just that here everybody realizes the wonders of everything and on the other side of the fog everybody is too busy.”
“Too busy?”
“You mean you haven’t noticed?”
“Maybe, but what exactly do you mean?”
“You’re exasperating! Too busy with work, especially that, too busy with needs, too busy with worries, too busy with sadness, or pleasure, or what the next big thing will be, or the next little thing. Everybody is chasing soap bubbles over there. Here we’re more practical. We look at what’s in front of us and we live with the benefits and the deficiencies and we go from one moment to the next. Nothing is a given. Nothing is a surprise. Everything just is.”
“Wow…”
Misty gave him a look, then a smile, then a shake of the head.
“I know.” Nathan smiled. “I need to work on the vocabulary.”
Misty leaned over, kissed him on the cheek and went to the radio shack door. Nathan stood stunned and blushing.
Misty laughed, “Look at what’s in front of you, Nathan! If it’s nice, enjoy it! If it’s not, then live with that too. Don’t ever try to make it go away.”
She slowly opened the radio shack door and Nathan, still stunned, came to join her. Inside were a ridiculous number of people for a small space and microphones both old time and modern were everywhere. There were men and women. Some of the women had their long hair piled and curled on the tops of their heads like styles Nathan had seen in old books. Other women were wearing very short skirts and very short hair, some were in modern dress, some wore strange fringes at the bottoms of their skirts. Some of the men had crew cuts and white shirts, some had long hair greased back with long sideburns and the man in the control booth at the far end wearing headphones over his head had long straight dark hair and wore a hang dog expression. All of the men and women except him put their fingers to their lips to signal for quiet. A big red light over the control booth said “On the air”. Suddenly, the man in the control booth pointed towards all of the people and suddenly they were singing in multiple part harmony,
“To all Fathers and those soon to be,
we’d like to take this opportunity to say,
Happy Father’s Day!”
And then it was over. And everyone was saying hello and gathering around to say hello to all of them and Misty was joking with them all, Nathan stood and smiled for a little bit and then said to Misty that he needed some air and stepped out the door. Booter walked up to him immediately, with his head bowed, “Oh Booter!” Nathan said, and began to cry. “It’s Father’s Day. I forgot. I left Mom all alone!”
He sat down on the stone steps and Booter came even closer and Nathan hugged him.
Angel stood at a respectful distance near by.
After a couple of moments, Misty stepped out the door.
“Oh, you remembered what day it was, huh?”
“You knew.”
“Of course. I thought it was the perfect day to bring you to Far Shore. Besides, the fog came. We don’t control the fog.”
“But Mom’s all alone back there.”
“Nathan, you mom would have been all alone no matter what. And you being there all day with her would have made it worse. She’d have been reminded of your dad all day just by you being there. You are the son and it’s Father’s day.”
“She’s been really sad all week, and this day was why, and I was too stupid to know, and I’m not there.”
“Does it make you feel better to feel guilty?”
Nathan looked up and for the first time he was a little angry at Misty.
“This time you don’t get it! It’s Father’s Day! The first Father’s Day since my dad die! I should be with Mom, making her feel better! We should have gone to Mass, so we could pray for Dad.”
“Nathan, even if you were there, your mom would still feel alone. And you’d be feeling alone with her. And think of your dad. What would he have wanted, for both of you to be sad, or for one of you to get a little happiness on a sad day?”
“I guess…”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek again. “You know. You don’t guess. You know that your dad would want you to be happy. In a way, this is his gift to you.”
“Wait…what? What do you mean, Misty?”
She smiled and began to run up the cobblestone road, “No time! Here comes your ride!” Suddenly the sound of a plane was overhead and just as in the dream the red biplane soared over and dipped its wing, and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was his grandfather in the cockpit.
He got up and slowly walked after Misty and then began to run.
On the main cobblestone road that ran across the top of the ridge above Far Shore, Nathan caught up to Misty and they ran together around a corner to the left and came to a wide, wide flat open field with a small building at one end with a windsock blowing from a pole above it.
“Welcome to Far Shore International Airport!” Misty said breathlessly.
Nathan managed a smile and followed Misty forward as Fireball’s plane came down.
The old man was all grins as he waved Nathan and Booter into the seat behind him. Misty helped Nathan put his seatbelt on, then pointed to two pairs of goggles on the little shelf in front of the seat. Nathan put his on and fitted a pair on Booter who was sitting in his lap. Booter turned and licked his face.
“Safe travels…” Misty shouted over the din of the biplane’s engines
“But how will we…”
“Too many questions! You’ll have your answers soon enough. See you next time!”
“When’s…” Misty put her finger to her lips. “Just tell your mom your auntie says hello!”
Soon they were off, and Nathan waved at Misty who stood alone on the ground of the airfield looking very small. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. Then, remembering all she’d said, he stopped that thought and enjoyed the ride.
They took a quick circle around Far Shore and Nathan saw lots of buildings he hadn’t seen before especially a big domed building on the hill with a telescope sticking out! An observatory! He had to come at night next time so he could see that! And down in the town was another big building and he wondered what it was until he spotted the marquee out front that said “Far Shore Festival Theatre” And in smaller letters below, “Coming Soon: Midsummer Night’s Dream”
He’d heard of that play, it was by Shakespeare. Both Dad and Mom loved Shakespeare. And that play was supposed to be really funny. He remembered Daddy saying that. Daddy. He looked ahead at the back of Grandpa Fireball’s head. As if in answer, the old man turned and winked and then they veered away from Far Shore and over the hidden lake. Then into the fog bank.
Nathan wondered how Fireball knew where he was going. But he didn’t worry. The one thing he knew for sure was that his Dad was the greatest pilot alive, and that when Fireball was alive he’d been the greatest pilot alive. But wait. If Fireball was dead, how could he be here? Too many questions he thought. Like Misty said, he needed to enjoy what was in front of him.
In a matter of moments they broke through the fog and were over the muddy lake and then veered off to what must be the west and started to lose elevation. Straight ahead was Sandy Beach! For heaven’s sake, Fireball was going to bring the plane down on Sandy Beach! Down they came with Booter barking as they dropped.
Fireball turned around and shouted with a grin, “Hang on!”
They hit the beach hard, and they bounced two or three times and skidded just a bit on the sand, but Fireball brought the plane in straight and true. And turned to give them the thumbs up and waved for them to get out.
“See you next time!” he shouted and winked when they were out. He brought the biplane about and roared away with Nathan waving and Booter barking. Soon the plane was out of sight in the fog at the far end of the muddy lake.
When the sound of the biplane faded, Nathan’s other world in all its detail, including the date, came rushing back down upon him. He took a breath, looked at Booter and wiped away a tear.
“We’ll go back to Far Shore, again,” he said, and felt a kind of certainty in saying that.
June 22, 1968
Nathan and Booter did go back to Far Shore after that difficult Father’s Day. As it turned out, he hadn’t missed much of the day at all during his first tour of Far Shore. Just over two hours with his slow walk home included. Mom hadn’t missed him or at least didn’t say so. He told her the whole story of his trip to Far Shore and she smiled at him from the bed, and said, “You’re sweet to tell me such a funny shaggy dog tale. You are your father’s son.” Then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which reminded him of something.
“Oh, Misty says to tell you that my ‘auntie’ says hello. Of course, she’s not my auntie. She’s my age. So that’s impossible.”
His mother gave him a strange look. “No…” she said slowly. “It’s not impossible. It happens sometimes…but…how does this Misty look?”
“Well, she’s blonde, and pretty I guess, and she’s got cool freckles and…she’s real fast for a girl.”
His mother got another strange look, shook her head for a second, then turned back towards the wall. “No…no…couldn’t be….of course not.” she said. Then she asked after a moment, without turning back to him, “You okay, Nathan? Anything you need?”
“Not a thing, Mom. You just sleep and have happy dreams.”
“I’ll try, Nathan. Come get me if you need me.”
“I will.” Then he left her alone until supper time when he brought her in a salad made the way she liked or as close as he could manage. She ate it with only a couple of bad expressions, so he judged he’d done okay.
The next few days got gradually better and soon Mom was getting closer to her old self, but Daddy’s absence still hung on her like a weight. Nathan could see it even in the way she stood.
Each morning Nathan checked, from the front window of the cottage, with his Dad’s binoculars, for fog down on the muddy lake. After seeing no fog the first morning, Nathan hunted up some of his father’s old books and found some poems. Within two days, children’s memories being the clean slates they are, Nathan had memorized several. He was now ready for any expense on Far Shore. For several days there was no sign of the fog, and on June 21 it rained. Nathan’s certainty of Far Shore was starting to waver, but that night he had the dream again, and this time he and Misty and Booter were standing on the main street of Far Shore right near the docks and across from the opera house, looking west towards another cobblestone road that led to the end of the ridge.
“That’s where we’ll go tonight,” said Misty. “First, to the opera house for Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then to the observatory where Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz will be waiting to show us some new stars…though the doctor won’t know that until we say so.”
“Tonight? I can’t…”
“How come? Scared?”
“No, but Mom…”
“Your Mom will be sleeping soundly, because you’re going to tire her out.”
“How?”
“A picnic silly! Oh, and Nathan…”
“Yup.”
“Wear your best clothes when you head out. It’s formal.”
Nathan woke early and prepared a picnic with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, marshmallows, carrots and a carton of milk which he put in the basket Mom kept on top of the refrigerator. Then he got out his best clothes: a little blue suit that he actually hated, but that Mom had bought for him. He guessed it looked nice. It was on a hanger there, in a little closet at the back of the cabin, with a white shirt and a little blue clip on tie. “Well…” he sighed. “She said formal.” He packed it in a little bag and hid it in the closet of the bunk room where he slept. He had everything ready to go by 9 a.m., when Mom, who had slept late, woke up.
“Oh goodness, I overslept again,” Mom said.
It was a good sign that Mom was starting to realize that she was sleeping an awful lot lately, but a bad sign for tonight that she was well rested.
“Let’s go on a picnic, Mom!”
“Whoa, there Nathan! Hold your horses! I’ve got some errands to run in town. Then maybe…later.”
“Oh, okay, but when you’re ready to go, the basket is all ready!”
His mother’s dark brown eyes were sparkling in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time. She shook her head and laughed. “Mind if I take a look, maybe add a thing or two I can get from the store?”
“Oh, sure! That’d be great!”
“Will you and Booter be okay here for a bit?”
He looked at his mom with the eyes of a very grown up ten-year-old boy. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that for most of the summer so far, they’d pretty much been on their own. Besides, that just wouldn’t be a nice thing to say. “Of course, Mom.”
His mother was chatty and singing along with the radio as she readied herself to go on her errands.
“Oh, Nathan?”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“I ran into Mr. Jennings at the bank the other day.”
“Oh…could you get pretzels, pretzels are…”
“Nathan, listen!”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“I ran into Mr. Jennings at the bank…”
“Yeah, I heard you say that…the pretzels?”
“Yes, okay. Now, Nathan, listen. Mr. Jennings teaches math at the high school at Brimley. He and I were in some classes together in college a couple summers ago. I’d like you to meet him. He’s going to stop over for dinner tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah,” she smiled. “Have you got some big plans for tonight?”
“Well…”
His mother’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Nathan, what could a ten year old boy possibly have to do at night? You usually wear yourself out by nine o’clock anyway. Now don’t be silly…”
“Okay. When…when is Mr….um…Jennings coming? And…why…?”
“My little protector.” She ruffled his hair. “He’s coming about six. And he’s coming because…because…never you mind why.” She smiled at him. “Just promise to be on your good behavior.”
“Okay.”
“And Nathan…”
“Yeah, Mom?”
“No shaggy dog stories, huh? Mr. Jennings might not understand.”
This was a problem. But Daddy had always said, “Where there’s a problem, there’s a solution.” Nathan wasn’t at all sure that was true. For instance, look at Daddy being vaporized. There was no solution to that problem. There was no way to plug up the hole that was hanging there in every moment of life for Nathan, with Daddy gone. It was like that vapor cloud that Daddy was now. There was no way to talk to him. There was no way to be sure what he’d think or to know what to do when things happened with him gone. No, there was no solution Nathan could see for that problem. But maybe…maybe that problem was…there was a word…yeah…the exception. Still, how could he get to Far Shore if this Mr. Jennings was coming over tonight? How late would the guy stay? Maybe if he really wore Mom out at the picnic, she’d be tired enough so that Mr. Jennings would just come to dinner and then be gone really quick like when he saw Mom yawning. Well, it was worth a try.
While his mother was gone, Nathan rigged up the canoe and got the life jackets out. They’d canoe down to Sandy Beach for the picnic, then canoe back. That would wear Mom out. When she got home Mom had lots of things from the grocery store including a bottle of wine. Mom never drank wine. She had a beer now and then and Daddy had liked to drink beer and maybe something called ‘hair of the dog’ too, which had always sounded funny to him. He wasn’t sure what it was but it smelled like whiskey. The first time he’d heard Daddy say “hair of the dog” he thought it was made out of dog hair. He’d even thought that maybe it was made out of Booter’s hair, and seeing what Booter rolled in sometimes, that didn’t sound very good at all. Once he’d gotten out the step ladder and snuck the bottle out of the cupboard from the top shelf; it definitely was whiskey. He’d had a taste and it nearly burned his tongue off.
“What’s with the wine?”
“Oh, Mr. Jennings likes it. It’s not for me.”
“Oh. Ready for the picnic?”
“Now Nathan, I’ve got a lot of things to do and…”
He had been afraid this might happen. But he was ready. He gave her his best sad look. He was ready with some whining too, but it wasn’t necessary…
“Oh, all right, Mr. Puppy dog…” Mom said smiling. “ Since you’ve gone to so much trouble. I’ll wait to fix my hair until after we get back.”
He didn’t really see anything wrong with his mother’s hair, it was dark and shiny and came just to her shoulders the way it always had. It looked just like a mom’s hair. His mom’s hair anyway, but his dad had always said, “If a woman ever asks if her hair looks nice, or a dress looks nice, or anything like that, you just say, ‘Yes, honey, it looks great!’” He remembered that Daddy had looked kind of like somebody had beaten him up when he said this, and he remembered that Mom wasn’t saying much that day. Anyway, he’d be sure to tell Mom her hair looked nice after she fixed it, whatever that meant.
So, they headed out in the canoe for the picnic and things went pretty well. There were bugs, and a seagull took a dive at Mom’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich and that made mom squeal for a minute, but then she laughed. He couldn’t believe she didn’t know enough not to leave a sandwich alone on Sandy beach. If she’d jus eaten it before they skipped stones like he had, there wouldn’t have been a problem. The wind came up from the north while they were down there and Nathan suggested that they paddle back against the wind, just to see how strong they were, but Mom didn’t seem interested. She said it would be fine to leave he canoe right there. That maybe she and Mr. Jennings would walk down and paddle it back tonight.
“So he’s staying after dinner?”
“Well, maybe…”
He’d given too much away with his expression then.
“Nathan, what are you up to?”
“Oh…oh nothing. Just thought maybe Booter and me would…would look at the stars tonight.”
“Oh, well…you’ll probably be asleep by then. Don’t you think? Big day like this?”
She did surprise Nathan by agreeing to race him back to the cottage and surprised him still further by winning the race.
“Didn’t know your mom was a track star in high school, huh? I used to run with the boys in practice. They wouldn’t let me compete, though.” She said smiling at him as she stood, hardly winded, on the beach in front of the cottage.
He’d forgotten that. Mom was full of surprises. But he had another plan. He asked her if she’d help him rig the sailfish and give him another sailing lesson.
“Some other day.”
He got out the sad eyes again and went for a whine, “But Mo-om…”
“Nathan, stop this foolishness! Now I’ve got a million things to do before Mr. Jennings gets here.”
There was nothing he could do. Mom was busy the rest of the afternoon. His only hope was that maybe all her preparations would wear her out. Who was this Jennings guy, anyway?
When six o’clock finally came around Mr. Jennings was right on time. He was a tall blond guy with broad shoulders and horn rimmed glasses. He smiled a lot and seemed to laugh at anything Mom said. Not like Daddy had laughed, all natural like, and really listening to Mom, truly laughing with her at something funny they shared. No, Mr. Jennings laughed just because he was…what? nervous? He was kind of a doofus. He asked Nathan all kinds of dumb questions about the lake and what he did out here over dinner. Dinner was some kind of fish Nathan hated. Then he asked Nathan some math problems and what the answers were. The first couple were easy. Then he asked something about ‘square roots’ whatever those were, and Nathan just shrugged. Then Mr. Jennings laughed really loud like a donkey and said, ‘Ha, stumped you!’
Mr. Jennings was a jerk!
Mom shot Mr. Jennings a hard look when he laughed like that at Nathan, but it passed. He noticed too, that after dinner, when Mom suggested that maybe she and Mr. Jennings could go fetch the canoe and paddle it back since the lake was calm, Mr. Jennings said, “Oh, well…I’m not much for boats. I…can’t swim… but I do like indoor sports.”
“Oh?” his mother said and the look in her eyes was one he’d rarely seen before. It was dark, kind of scary, real like…what was the word that Dad used sometimes?…yeah…intense. It looked like she was about to slap somebody. When he was in high school later on, he would see it again, when his friend Billy Antila farted in her class and then laughed out loud. It was her teacher look.
“Uh….yeah…” Mr. Jennings said, “but, but if canoeing is the plan for the evening, I’m in…definitely in!”
Mom sighed, then said that that was okay. Canoing had just been a thought, perhaps some other time; but the look, which was still very much in her eyes, as though she were looking at some gross worm she’d found on her plate and not a person, said something very different. When Mr. Jennings later suggested that maybe it was Nathan’s bed time, Mom had said, firmly, “Yes, and it’s coming up on mine too.”
Nathan had almost laughed. And it finally dawned on him that this thing with Mr. Jennings had been a date; the first one Mom had been on since Daddy got vaporized. It had never occurred to him before that moment, that Mom might, at some point, meet somebody else. Well…it looked like he didn’t need to worry about that yet, at least not for now. Mr. Jennings was very soon going to be out of the picture. Nathan had counted three solid swings and misses in the way Mr. Jennings had behaved that evening. Sure enough, in a matter of moments, Mom had ushered Mr. Jennings out the door despite his claim that ‘the night was young and so were they’, and when the door was closed behind him, she grabbed the half empty wine bottle and dumped the contents out into the sink, before throwing the bottle away and slamming the cupboard door under the sink, where the garbage hid. She muttered, “Chris always said, ’Never trust a wine drinker’.”
He hadn’t heard Mom mention Daddy’s first name in a long time. They wouldn’t be seeing Mr. Jennings again.
This was going well for him, but he suddenly felt bad, because the sparkly look that had been there in his mother’s eyes this morning, and then had been replaced by the look she’d shot Mr. Jennings when he’d laughed at Nathan, was completely gone from his mother’s eyes. The look that was there now, was all too familiar. She was sad. But then she shook her head.
“No,” she said to herself. “The time just isn’t right yet. I’ll know when it is.”
For the rest of the night, Mom was happy enough. Not crazy happy like she’d been that morning, but happy enough.
Nathan went to bed right away and cooperated in everything his Mom said. Then he waited to hear the sounds he needed to hear from his Mom’s bedroom. But they didn’t come. What’s more, a light was under the door. She was up reading. This was a disaster! This could take all night!
Nathan fought sleep for a long time and finally lost. Some hours later the dream started again, Misty was there on the docks and she was looking at him impatiently. Finally she looked him right in the eyes and said, “Nathan wake up! You don’t want to miss the show!”
He sat up in bed. He heard a loon call. He tip toed past Mom’s door where the light was finally out, and out onto the front porch. He slipped open a side window and Booter jumped out before him. The old dog knew the drill. For a moment Nathan forgot about the little bag in which he’d packed his suit, that was still in the corner of the bunk room, but quickly went back for it, being careful to make as little noise as possible. Then Nathan dropped down onto the front lawn where he put his shoes on and started running for Sandy Beach. He still had a long ways to go. He hoped Misty would wait. He looked back over his shoulder just once. No lights. So far so good.
When he finally got to Sandy Beach Misty was waiting.
“Ooo,” she said. “that Mr. Jennings was a beauty, eh?”
“A real doofus! Let’s go!”
The little gray boat was there and ready and they started rowing. Once more, Nathan was in too big a hurry. In the full moon light Misty shot him a look and he nodded. He slowed everything down. Even his heart.
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
By the time they had recited it 25 times they were in the fog. Fifty more times got them to the docks at Far Shore. Nathan stepped on to the docks and it was all different. There were lights everywhere! Not big city lights, but small town lights strung in the trees and along the dock and the storefront. All the people, still as friendly as ever, were out in their best finery. The styles seemed to come from a long time ago and from a few years ago, and from a mixture of the two. Something was happening!
“Is it a special night?”
Misty smiled, “Don’t you know yet that every night is special? You’re right, though, this is extra special, it’s St. John’s Tide, Midsummer Eve.”
“I…never heard of it.”
Misty sighed, “I know. Most people haven’t. You know, Nathan, there are lots of holidays—holy days, that is—that people have forgotten. This is the birthday of St. John the Baptist and the turning of the summer. It’s been holy for a long, long time. It’s holy everywhere, but we really celebrate it on Far Shore.”
“How come other people have forgotten it?”
“Too busy…” Misty said, and for the first time he could ever remember, she looked sad. “Even the very best people, where you live…even your mom…are too busy.” Booter moved close to Misty and muzzled her hand.
Nathan looked around. “They’re missing a lot.”
Misty gave him a surprised smile, “I’m so glad you think so, Nathan.”
For the first time he really looked at her and he realized she was wearing a beautiful little white dress that shimmered somehow. There were little white flowers in her hair too. How had she not gotten all dirty rowing all the way to Sandy Beach and back?
He looked down at the bag that held his suit. “I…I have to change.”
Misty smiled again. “There’s a washroom right there in the lobby of the Lakeside. I’ll wait for you here.”
Nathan ran quickly across the street and was almost run down by a couple in a horse cart, “Hey, watch it there Nathan!” The young man driving the big black horse said smiling. “Going to the show?”
“You bet!” Nathan said, and ran quickly inside. He fussed a little with his suit and tie for the first time in his young life. Why was he so worried about how he looked? Then he thought of Misty and it sort of made sense.
Misty was waiting outside with Booter and she gasped a little when she saw him. “Oh Nathan, you’re so handsome!”
“Oh…” he said. “…well you look, just, just…” he remembered something his dad always used to say to his mom “…scrumptious!”
Misty laughed a big unladylike laugh and he was worried he’d said something wrong, but then she smiled, “That’s sweet, Nathan.”
Soon they had made their way down the street to the theatre. Nathan thought of something, “Can…can Booter go in?”
“Of course,” said Misty patting the old dog. “His manners are impeccable.”
For some reason Nathan thought of birds pecking at each other. It didn’t seem to fit with Booter, but he guessed Misty meant it was okay, and when they came to the ticket window, Nathan was prepared.
“Two, please,” he said to the lady with the horn-rimmed glasses in the booth, she looked at him expectantly.
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths and squinched,
many-lettered, on-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.
Then, for Misty’s admittance he added,
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.
For the first time ever, Misty looked surprised. “You’ve been working on your vocabulary!”
“And my memory!” Nathan said and smiled. “The second one is from the play.”
“I know,” Misty said. “It’s sweet of you.”
The lady in the booth was smiling. “You two have a fine time!” she said.
They did. They sat way up in the third balcony of the opera house. The place was a big vertical room and you could hear even a whisper from the stage. The place was packed and quiet for the opening, and Nathan was having fun, but was a little bored at the beginning. Then, though, the scene changed and they were in fairy land. Nathan gasped at how the stage was transformed into a magic forest, and then tried to be calmer when Misty smiled at him. When bottom turned into…an ass…well, Nathan had never laughed so hard! He was having such a good time by then, that he didn’t even mind all the kissing and dancing at the end.
When they went out into the moonlight after the play, Nathan was a little sad, because he thought it might be time for him to go home, but then he remembered: the observatory and doctor whatchamacallit.
Misty, seeming to read his thoughts grabbed his hand, turned up the street to the west and whispered, “Let’s go!”
And off they went up the west road and up onto the ridge where he’d never been before. Almost before he knew it, they were standing all alone, except for Booter who was wagging his tail as usual, outside the observatory.
“Now,” said Misty, “when we get inside, we’ll have to recite our poems as usual as payment…Do you have another one?”
Nathan nodded.
“Okay. Then, after that. Let me do the talking.”
Misty straightened her dress, walked to a big metal door, and knocked. Nothing happened. She knocked again. Nothing. In all she knocked seven times, and at last, the door flew open and crashed against the wall behind. Suddenly standing in the door was a wild looking woman with frizzy white hair held in place with 17 pencils (Nathan counted them). She was wearing a long stained lab coat, stained blue jeans, socks and sandals. Her eyes were wide, wild and bright green; she held a sheaf of tattered papers in her right hand.
“Miscalappit?” she said expectantly.
Misty turned and nodded to Nathan who was so surprised she finally had to kick him in the ankle to get him started.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“Coziappopiote!” The woman said, apparently appreciating the poem to some extent. She looked over at Misty.
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
“Ah…” said the woman, “Nizzcapbulous! Nosrty Nizzacapbulous!”
“Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz,” said Misty. “This is Nathan O’Doul.”
“Tinkamulberous?” asked the doctor shaking her finger at Misty and suddenly smiling.
And for another first, Misty blushed. “Nikkabulerous, Tikka, nikkabulerous!” she said frantically.
The doctor laughed a high pitched off kilter laugh. “Milalooverkiss!” she added mischievously, and walked away into the wide space under the dome of the observatory, still laughing.
“What did she say?” Nathan said.
“Oh…oh nothing,” said Misty still blushing. “She just said the names of the stars she’s going to show us tonight.
“No she didn’t!” Nathan said. And he was certain he was right. “I don’t know what language she’s speaking, but…”
“Nobody does.”
Nathan was distracted for a moment. The question wouldn’t lie still. “Then how do you know it?”
Misty just shrugged and smiled, “Just came to me.”
Nathan was interested, but determined not to let Misty change the subject, “Anyway, whatever she said, in whatever language, she said something about you and me!”
“Nu uh!” said Misty, suddenly and completely a little girl, Her face now a bright crimson.
Nathan laughed. Then he leaned over and whispered, “You lo-ove me!”
Suddenly Misty got very serious, “Of course,” she said. “Don’t you love me?”
Now it was Nathan’s turn to blush, he shifted his feet and stumbled for a second, then, after embarrassed deliberation, punched Misty in the shoulder and ran away towards the telescope where the doctor was making adjustments.
“I thought so,” Misty whispered, and smiled a secret smile.
By the time the children arrived at the telescope Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz had made the necessary adjustments and stood smiling and gesturing for Nathan to look.
“Will I see all the stars?” Nathan asked absently.
“Nika vern’t starquizzal unapermanik. Ashka nila premifirsta, shez theenca timchronalupastafuturnitz personilla.”
Nathan looked at Misty for a translation.
“The doctor says you’ll see stars at first, but then…well, just look! It’s great!”
Nathan looked and did indeed see a wide variety of stars, first in a field of stars so wide it made him dizzy for a second, as though he were falling from a great height. But then he adjusted and suddenly he was focused on one star, then another, then another, then all of the stars he had seen in the wider field like an incredible slide show. Stars of all colors, nebula, racing comets, landscapes of impossible planets, myriad moons circling worlds in opposite directions, great clusters of space rock slamming into each other, the creations and destructions of galaxies and universes, black holes pulling whole star clusters within themselves, planets with rings, planets with multiple satellites, double stars, triple stars, skies where the sun never set for all the stars, desolate planets, green planets, red planets, water planets, gas balls and then they began to come in such quick succession that Nathan nearly fainted and at that moment they all vanished, and Nathan saw a man standing on a beach with a little girl with their backs to him. It was Sandy Beach he knew and now the man who was wearing a Tigers baseball cap, and the girl who looked a lot like Mom must have looked when she was little, turned towards him and they were laughing and suddenly he knew that the man was himself, years from now, and the girl was his daughter, and then the scene changed and he saw a little boy, much darker than he was, dark skinned, dark haired getting into the little gray boat with Misty and heading into the fog, to Far Shore. And then, there was no more to see, and he slowly stepped away from the telescope.
He stood silent for a moment. What had he just seen?
“Surpisculankerous, nattier?” said the doctor.
“Yes…” Nathan said. Suddenly Nathan looked at Misty and his eyes started to fill with tears. He wasn’t sure why. “You…you look, Misty. Your turn.”
“No…” Misty said softly. “I looked a long time ago. It wouldn’t be any different.”
“But…but, you need to see your future too…”
She shook her head and gave a sad smile. “No, Nathan.”
“But…”
“I looked a long time ago. If I looked now I’d be looking back. I never look back.”
Without thinking, Nathan awkwardly lunged towards Misty and kissed her on the cheek. He wanted to comfort her. She seemed sad and he felt suddenly, that it was his job to take care of her, make it all right. It was as though another person had done that. An older version of Nathan.
Misty was smiling a very pleasant smile. Her eyes were closed. When she opened them she said in a dreamy voice, “See…Nathan, the present is much better. Always full of surprises, like that one.”
“I…” said Nathan.
“Lovopulous giaganterous!” said the doctor.
Booter, who had seen it all gave a woof.
“Booter says it’s time for you guys to get going,“ Misty said.
“Well…okay…but aren’t you coming?”
“Nope,” Misty said, and Nathan could see something serious was on her mind. “You and Booter need to go visit ‘The Tribe of the Grandpas’. No girls allowed. Stupid rule. I’m gonna change that some day.”
Nathan had a sense that that wasn’t all. And suddenly his heart skipped a beat. “Won’t…won’t I see you anymore?”
Misty forced a smile, “Sure…sure you will.”
“Soon?”
“You never can tell, but it seems like at least once more this summer.”
“Only, once?”
Misty reached out and slugged Nathan on the shoulder, hard enough so that it hurt. “Get out of here! The doctor and I have important girl stuff to discuss! No boys allowed!”
Booter had grabbed Nathan, who was rubbing his shoulder from where Misty had punched him, by the pant leg and was pulling him towards the door.
“Farweelocanpastafurturopresentaiculous mova!” said Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz.
“What she said,” said Misty smiling a sad smile and holding something else back.
Only Booter’s continued tugging made Nathan turn away and walk, as if in a trance towards the door. Each time he tried to turn back, Booter gave him another tug and pulled him off balance. Suddenly, he was outside the observatory door and Col. Fireball O’Doul, his grandfather, was waiting for him. This time, Fireball was dressed in a raggedy rabbit hat and full buckskin jacket and paints. He held out a similar, much smaller outfit for Nathan.
“Done messin’ with the ladies, junior?”
“Huh?”
“Get out of those fancy duds and get into these. The Grandpas are waiting!”
Nathan, still dazed from the events and the visions of the observatory, finally managed to ask, “But…but…Grandpa…”
“Fireball!”
“Fireball, what should I do with my suit? If I get it dirty, Mom will…”
“Quit worrying about the women folk. Just leave it where it lies! It will be taken care of, I promise.”
“Oh…okay…” Nathan was still too dazed to ask any more questions so he got out of the suit and into the buck skins and rabbit hat and soon found himself following Fireball up a steep trail to the very top of the ridge. Through the trees he could see that a big fire was burning there.
There was music too: really bad music. Drums played badly. Recorders, wooden flutes, tin whistles, even referee’s whistles all played very badly. And as he moved closer he saw that there were lots of old men, also in furs, dancing around the fire, dancing worse than the music was playing. Staggering mostly, and limping, except for a few who were hoping and jumping around crazily and yelling out little hoots. And the dancers were all old men, some a little younger than Fireball, some much older. They were singing too, if you could call it that.
“Stinky bum, stinky bum, stinky bum, stinky bum!!!”
Nathan, despite all he’d been given to think about at the observatory, couldn’t help laughing. He laughed very hard, especially after Booter ran forward and danced around with the Grandpas.
The moon was out and bright nearing full. Nathan turned to look at Fireball who wasn’t laughing at all.
“You laughing at our sacred dance?” he said with a frown.
Nathan couldn’t help it, “Yes!”
Fireball broke into a grin in the firelight. “Of course you are! It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“What’s it all about? Is this like a…tradition?”
“Hard to say. It’s been going on a while, so I’d say so. I guess it’s about being old and crazy, and about remembering being young and crazy. It’s about life and love and the stars and the moon and the fire and all the old men you’ve ever known. Want to join in?”
“Absolutely!” Nathan rushed forward and started jumping around with Booter and the Grandpas and Fireball joined them singing and laughing and spinning around. Nathan jumped in and out among the dancers for what seemed like hours, finally coming to a stop, even though the dance was still going on because his legs just wouldn’t work any more. He found himself sitting on a log next to Fireball, with Booter, tired too, curled up at his feet.
Nathan’s eyelids were getting heavy.
“Grandpas wear you out, did they?”
Nathan looked up at Fireball and managed a laugh at the still hopping whooping old men. “Maybe a little.”
“They do that.” As sleep began to take hold, Nathan looked over to his right to the far end of the log on which they were sitting. There sat a tall, broad shouldered figure. The feeling he got from the form was not old age. It seemed almost in the prime of life. But somehow that prime was on hold, or had been halted for a time. The figure wore a hood and the face was completely shrouded. Nathan felt nothing to fear from the figure, in fact, quite the opposite, but he made no move in that direction and the figure made no move in his. In fact, it didn’t move at all.
Nathan said, almost dreaming, “Who’s that?”
“New recruit. You’ll have to meet him some other time.”
In a dream now, Nathan asked, “Why not now?”
“Time isn’t right.”
“Okay.” he said, and Nathan woke the next morning, in the bunk room at the cottage and saw his little suit hanging perfectly pressed in the closet.
August 25
Baseball got in the way.
The very next day, June 23, Mom came back from the grocery store with a flyer for the local little league team. She smiled, shaking her head, and shook it playfully in his face as he looked up from his breakfast.
“How did you forget about baseball, Nathan? That was your favorite thing last summer! And you almost missed the tryouts! They’re today!”
“That’s…that’s okay,” Nathan said, finishing his cereal and looking out the porch window at a very clear day with no sign of fog. “I…I didn’t want to play this year.”
“You…” His mother narrowed her eyes in confusion. Then silently made a determination on the matter before adding, “Oh, now Nathan, that’s ridiculous!” Then another thought entered her mind and her dark eyes suddenly filled with inaccurate but certain realization and then welled uncharacteristically with tears, “Now…now young man you stop worrying about me! I’ll be fine. You don’t need to be here all the time! You go have fun!”
“But…”
“No buts! Five o’clock today at the little league field in town. We’re going.”
Well, it wasn’t a total loss. The games never began until six o’clock and that still gave him all day for Far Shore. That is, if the fog ever came again.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter anyway. There were no dreams of Far Shore at night for a long time. There was no fog in the morning for the rest of June and all July and nearly all of August. The world outside the O’Doul cottage was in turmoil and chaos. Nathan heard Mom say something about something called the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and then about, a place called Woodstock, and then terrible news about Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. And then, there was an election coming involving Nixon and Humphrey. He didn’t really understand. He didn’t even ask questions, because he saw that sometimes these happenings put Mom right on the edge, but baseball…baseball kept them both busy and safe.
Mom was there at every game in the stands and Nathan, who had been pretty good last summer, found a position at second base and became really good. He even began to hit very well and had a game winning double in the playoffs.
Day after day passed and the fog didn’t come, and gradually baseball seemed more and more important and Misty and all the folks on Far Shore seemed ever more dreamlike. One day as he sat waiting in the dugout for his time at bat he wondered if he had dreamed it all. Was there really such a place? Something in him, something that had to do with the future was telling him that ghostly grandfathers in biplanes, spooky, pretty girls in rowboats, wild lady professors with magic telescopes, and most of all hidden towns beyond the fog, beyond the normal world, were just childish nonsense. But something else whispered, in Misty’s voice, “Okay…for now.” When he stepped to the plate and hit the first home run of his life over the right field fence, all thought of Far Shore was, quite suddenly gone. All, but that lingering whisper.
So, on the night of August 24, with the baseball season over, and school just days away, Nathan woke in surprise from a dream and heard a loon call out on the lake. The dream had been simple: Misty standing on Sandy Beach looking towards him and saying, “Fog tomorrow.”
“Far Shore…” he whispered in the darkness, and it all came back.
He soon fell into a dreamless sleep and woke early, jumped up and ran to the porch window. Sure enough, there was fog on the other end of the lake. Booter was waiting at the door. He threw on some shorts, a t-shirt, and threw his tennis shoes over his shoulder after tying the laces together. Nathan scratched down a quick note to his mom and ran out.
At Sandy Beach, not Misty but Fireball was waiting with his biplane.
“Isn’t it kind of foggy for flying, Fireball?”
“This is friendly fog, Nathan. My fog. I know it well.”
“Okay, but where’s Misty?”
“She’s waiting. It’s her birthday today.”
“Oh…I didn’t know…I didn’t get…”
“Don’t worry, Nathan. Just your being there will be present enough.”
And then Nathan had another terrible thought…It was Mom’s birthday and he hadn’t gotten her a present.
“Fireball…I can’t go!”
“Sure you can, Nathan; you’ll be back in plenty of time for your mom’s birthday. Time doesn’t mean much on Far Shore, or have you forgotten?”
“I guess…maybe a little.”
“As for a present for your mom, you just may find something on Far Shore that would be perfect.”
Soon they were airborne, and came down not at the airport, but at the park on the north end of town. They came in low right over the water and Misty’s birthday party was already in full swing. Fireball swung the Biplane over the park once, just for fun and Nathan could see that Mrs. Flaherty was there and Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz, all the Tribe of the Grandpas, and all the townsfolk he and Misty had seen that summer. They all wore silly birthday hats. They all smiled and waved at the plane from around a big table in the middle of the park. When Fireball brought the biplane in for a landing, just yards away from the party, Nathan was strangely slow in getting out.
“Something on your mind, Nathan?” Fireball asked.
“I don’t know. It…it just doesn’t seem the same.”
“Yup. That’s about right. It gets that way.”
Nathan knew what Fireball meant, but not in any way he could put into words. He broke into a trot towards the table when Booter began to bounce around him. As he’d seen from the air, nearly everyone in town was there, gathered around the big, long table. There were balloons of all colors and the day was turning clear. Misty sat at the far end of the table with that smile of hers in place. When she saw Nathan it got broader. Then she winked at him.
“Hiya, Nathan!” said a tall man, who was only then walking up to the table after parking his bicycle.
“Ah, tis good to see ya, child!” said Mrs. Flaherty
“Yeah, long time no see!” said one of the Far Shore kids.
“Hear ya been hittin’ the long ball!” said one of the grandpas.
“Welcomzoommatidafarshorzim!” said Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz.
As Nathan sat down at the head of the table on the end opposite Misty, a mist began to rise around him, suddenly the sound at the table became quieter and one by one, all the townspeople began to disappear, and finally even Fireball was gone, the park was quiet, and he and Misty were sitting at opposite ends of the long table all alone.
“Would you like some cake?” Misty said pointing to her tall white birthday cake at the table’s center.”
After a moment, Nathan, who was getting used to being back at Far Shore and was not surprised at all by the changes around him, said, “Sure.”
Misty nodded, and walked slowly down the table and cut him a slice and placed it before him. She waited there, looking at him enigmatically. He took a forkful and put it in his mouth, but there was nothing there. And in a moment, the table too, was gone, and the park, and Far Shore. Nathan stood with Booter, on Sandy Beach holding a present for his mother in his hands. It was carefully wrapped with shiny purple paper and a pink bow.
“Tell Sarah happy birthday,” said Misty’s voice from over his shoulder. “‘Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.’”
“ That’s Robert Frost,” Nathan said. “I memorized that one.”
“You never know when you might need it, again.” Misty said.
I’ll remember,” Nathan said.
He wasn’t surprised, he wasn’t even sad, when he looked over his shoulder and Misty wasn’t there.
Before he knew it, Nathan was back at the cottage. He had set the present on the table on the front porch. He put Mom’s coffee on the stove, and started in making her a birthday breakfast. When his mother woke up, moments later, she came out in her fluffy bath robe and when she saw Nathan in the kitchen she walked out and put her arms around him.
“You are such a sweet boy, Nathan.”
He smiled at her and pointed to the present on the table.
“Oh Nathan!” Now her eyes brimmed over with tears as she walked onto the porch. “The paper is so lovely! Where in the world…”
“I have my secrets,” Nathan said, and he turned away from his mother for a moment. It occurred to him, after he’d wiped his eyes, to wonder what the present was.
“Oh, Nathan! Where did you get these pictures?”
It was a photo album and somehow, suddenly, just before his Mom had said so, he had already known that. He turned back to his mother. “I, found some of them in the attic at home. A few of them are from this summer.”
Mom was leafing through the photos oooing and ahhhing and then suddenly she stopped on the last page and gasped. There was silence for a long moment, and Nathan walked slowly to where his mother was seated at the table.
“Nathan…where in the world…”
In the black and white picture, centered on the last page and held in place by photo corners, his mother, just a small, dark child, and a familiar little blonde girl stood with birthday hats on their heads, and big smiles on their faces.
“This…this was taken at the orphanage. Misty and I were eleven, that day. We, we used to joke that we were twins.”
Somehow, Nathan had known that too.
Part II: Turning Again Home
There comes a time when childhood magic loses its sheen. When the adult world colors the fantastical events we live through in our youth, or once believed we lived through, with a more reasonable interpretation. Could Nathan have really rowed a leaky little gray boat beyond the fog to the east of the muddy lake with a girl from his dreams? A girl who was once his mother’s childhood friend? Could he really have found a town there, pristine and nearly perfect, where his grandfather fished from a wharf and flew a biplane, and where everyone knew Nathan’s name and had always known him in infinite and friendly detail? Where there was an opera house, straight out of the 1920’s and a radio station where singers stood on call singing, when called, in perfect multiple part harmonies, and an observatory where a great astronomer who spoke in a gibberish few others knew and pointed out stars near at hand that nobody else knew of, with a great telescope that also showed scenes from the future and intimations of the past? And where old men danced in wild gyrations in animal skins in the moonlight on a bare, high hilltop that no one had ever heard of? A place where the currency was poetry and, most of all, a place that was on no map and yet was quite real and thriving if only people would move beyond the fog that lies between Far Shore and their ordinary lives?
Of course not.
And so the older Nathan, the adult Nathan, who got a job, after college, working for a comedy morning show on a radio station on the west coast, writing uncharacteristically sophisticated radio humor for a high brow drive time slot; the Nathan who got married, then divorced from a woman who shared none of his values, but had attracted him with an urbane sense of humor and left him with the understanding that she would absolutely never see him again and, who left him, too, with a lovely daughter with whom he spent each summer and some holidays; that Nathan, that the boy Nathan became, finally succumbed to adulthood, though more slowly than most, became much like almost everyone else and no longer believed or even remembered that he had once, in childhood, done quite marvelous and fantastical things; even more marvelous and improbable than most other children do, and that a place called Far Shore really existed, until one summer day in 1998.
June 17, 1998
Carol was memorizing poetry. It had taken Nathan nearly a week to figure out what was going on. He’d seen her going back to the bunk room at night with volumes from Mom’s library. She’d asked him to go into town once so she could check out some books. It had been fun showing her how to get a library card, but once he had, she really didn’t want his help anymore. That seemed very nebulously familiar to Nathan, even troubling.
A tough time was approaching: he could see that. Carol would be a woman all too soon. What kind of a woman would she be? And what kind of permutations would occur before she arrived at maturity? A need for independence was natural enough, even healthy, but how independent would she get? What troubled him was that, before he knew it, before he could even wonder whether he should take a step to prevent it, was his little Carol going to become an aloof, castrating, automaton like her mother, his ex? Probably his ex had known that Carol’s time was coming for a while, but, of course, she wasn’t going to tell him. Communication from her came exclusively through lawyers. It was funny; there hadn’t been any big blowup, not even the semblance of an argument. Just one day, at work, he received papers in the mail. A fully developed divorce scenario ready for his signing, complete with custody arrangements. What was funnier was that he wasn’t really surprised, and he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t known it was coming, but he had. You just can’t stay married to someone you hardly know. It had taken him a while to understand that he had hardly known his ex. He’d just fallen in love with an attitude, a body, and a smirk. Oh, and he liked dark hair. When he thought back on it, that’s all there was. He really had never known her. So it wasn’t strange that he barely thought about her now, after three years. Not much good had come of the relationship. The ten year relationship. Ten years, and Carol was the only good thing to come of it. They’d had her after five years, as planned by his ex, right at a time when they had already begun to lose track of each other. Actually, that wasn’t accurate. They’d never had track of each other. It had just taken Nathan five years to realize that.
Carol, though, was good. Amazingly good. A little quiet, perhaps even a trifle worryingly so, but very, very good. Several times, already this summer it had come into his mind to say to her, “What’s your mother like?” Or perhaps he could say, “What’s your mother like now?” So it wasn’t quite so obvious that he’d never known her. Would it be a waste of energy anyway? Would Carol just shrug and look back at her poetry book, Keats was the most recent choice. Good stuff. Great stuff. Pretty advanced stuff for someone her age.
Did Carol even talk to her mother?
“Beauty is truth; truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” He’d heard her say this through the wall while he was lying in his bunk in the big bunk room, the previous night. Or what had been the big bunk room. At his mother’s instruction, he’d had some local guys come in and create a little bedroom on the northwest side of the big bunk room. So now there were three bedrooms, sort of. His mother’s to the northeast side of the cottage, his in the center, and Carol’s at the northwest end. There was even a little door for Carol, into the living room, so she wouldn’t have to traipse through his bedroom to get to the main rooms of the cottage. His mother had suggested the changes, anticipating what he had not. His mother, was nearly always right and prescient to boot.
After he’d heard Carol quoting Keats, he’d heard her say a peculiar thing: “That ought to be worth something.” Well, there wasn’t much doubt that Keats’ most profound insight into life had value. One could argue that it was one of the most valuable insights anybody had ever had into life, but somehow it seemed as though, that wasn’t how Carol meant it. She had said it as though she were going to buy something with the great epigram. That was puzzling. It wasn’t so much puzzling because it made him wonder why Carol, a very sophisticated ten-year-old, from all that he could tell, would apparently think you could purchase something with verbiage. The idea of lines of poetry as money, seemed familiar to him. Had he read of such an idea somewhere? Had he dreamt it? He had an enormous sense of deja vu every time he thought of it. And something else. A line of poetry he hadn’t known he knew kept coming to him. What was it from?
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
When he had been at the library, while Carol was very privately picking out books, he’d asked the librarian about the line. It had only taken her a second, “Ah, Tennyson!” she’d said and adjusted her glasses which she kept on a string. She was an attractive middle-aged woman. Red haired. No wedding rings on her finger. He’d thought that for only a second and stopped himself. Yes, it had been three years, but no, he did not want to get himself involved in another enigmatic relationship, bordering on nightmare, at this juncture. Maybe this one wouldn’t be complicated. “They’re all complicated,” he said to someone under his breath.
“Excuse me?” said the librarian, pleasantly.
“Nothing. Just a random thought.”
She’d quickly and efficiently found the Tennyson, laid it out gently on a table for him and opened to “Crossing the Bar”. Of course. It was a well known poem. Most folks read it in high school. Or at least they used to. He wasn’t sure what they read these days.
“Thanks,” he’d said. The librarian, he didn’t know her name, had lingered a second and said, “A classic.” Then she’d smiled, blushed a bit, which really showed given her complexion. Then she smiled again, said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it.” and walked away. He’d noticed Carol watching him when he looked up from the volume. She’d shot him a little smile and looked back at the five or six volumes she had spread out before her.
With nothing else to do, he’d read the whole poem. Every line was terribly familiar. He found that with just a little effort, he practically knew it by heart. Had he memorized it in high school? Had that been an assignment? He didn’t remember.
“Let’s go, Pop!” Carol had said, her arms full of books.
At the checkout desk, funny name for it, checkout, given the circumstances, Nathan had had a few more awkward moments with the librarian. Maybe he should come back the next day, he’d thought. Then again, maybe not. In the end, he hadn’t. And Carol had gone back with Mom to take the first books back and check some others out. Carol and his mother had a great relationship. They shared a great deal, he thought, but he wasn’t completely sure. They didn’t talk much around him. They always seemed to be in on a jovial conspiracy against him. They both thought he was weird. They both were right.
He found himself on familiar ground: at loose ends. His job with the radio station on the coast, writing for Wordplay, a morning drive time public radio show featuring leftist political humor, and witty, goofball skits, that had taken off nation wide, been hot for about ten years, and then died off suddenly when Chet Ridley, the old host had suddenly died, six months ago. That had been a blow. Chet had been a mentor of his. Nathan had had offers since then, from all over the county, and many were still open, despite the fact that he had mostly been sitting in his apartment, watching tv, unresponsive, wondering how he’d gotten to this place in his life and if he’d ever leave his apartment again.
When he’d read the Tennyson, apparently not for the first time, he’d realized that it had been a long time since he’d read anything. What had he been doing?
His mother had called him several times. She was worried about him. That’s what she’d said. And he’d believed her. They were getting closer again. That was good. He’d been back to the cottage with Carol each of the past three years. Before that he hadn’t seen his mother for nine years. The separation between he and his mother had started when his ex, visiting the cottage for three days exactly once with he and Carol, informed Nathan that she would never visit there again. Further, she informed him that she would never speak to his mother again, and still further, she would prefer that he didn’t either. So, he hadn’t. He was having a hard time forgiving himself for this last part. Funny, though, his mother forgave him right away, after nine years, when he’d called about the divorce.
Now, except for the obvious evidence embodied by Carol, it was as though the marriage had never happened, the separation from his mom had never happened, and his job with the radio station had never happened. Tabula rosa. The blank slate. He could do anything. He could go anywhere. He was at the cottage.
On and off for several days now, Carol, had been disappearing on a walk down to the other end of the lake, to Sandy Beach. The first time she’d said that’s where she was going, he’d expressed some concern, but his mother had made a little gesture with her head and he’d let Carol go, saying only, “Have fun! Be careful.”
His ex would file a brief if she ever found out he’d allowed Carol to “wander off into that god forsaken wilderness alone” as she would no doubt term it.
His mother only smiled at him and said, “You used to do that all the time when you were ten. Let her have her fun. She’s growing up.”
He’d nodded, but except for something very faint, like a forgotten whisper enfolding his unconscious mind in a delightful fog, he had no memory of ever having run down to Sandy Beach on his own. All he remembered about his summers was baseball.
He’d been a hell of a player for a long time, even made it to A ball in the minors before blowing a knee out sliding into second. The doctor said that if he wanted to walk normally when he was 60, once the surgery and rehab were over, he needed to quit playing baseball forever. So he had. It had broken his heart at the time, but had allowed him to pursue another course as a writer. He’d gone back to school, written for a few midwestern papers, developed a considerable following as a columnist, taken a job with a west coast paper, met Chet at a dinner party, and the rest was history.
Yes, the rest was history. And his monetary parachute from the radio gig, was trickling away. He’d have to find work soon. Or rather accept work. So why hadn’t he? He was trapped in a kind of inertia. It had been developing ever since the divorce, but Chet’s death had made it set in hard. What would he do next?
For now, he had decided not to decide.
For the last few days he’d been having some vague memories about his mother being in a similar state after his father’s death in Vietnam. To this day, no remains of his father had ever been found. His father truly had been vaporized by a rocket somewhere over North Vietnam. He thought about that on and off, along with some vague notions about it he’d had as a child. What had they been? He wasn’t sure exactly, but there’d been a weird kind of humor in them, and sadness. And something about Carol’s trips to Sandy Beach, put him in mind of those ancient ideas too. Why?
His mother had slept a lot, after Dad’s death. He remembered now making breakfast for her. He remembered too something specific about that summer he was ten. He’d gotten a birthday present for her. A photo album. Where though? Where had he bought it? That part was a total blank. It had to be here somewhere. He’d ask Mom about it.
Mom. She’d never married again. Oh, she’d been out on a few dates for a few years. Disasters mostly as he recalled. After while, she’d given up. He’d asked her why, once, when he was in his mid twenties and dating his ex. “ I just realized that nobody else was ever going to be your father,” she’d said with a sigh. “Chris was a great guy.” She’d smiled. “Just a great guy. Not perfect, nobody is, but strong, Smart, gifted, eloquent, funny. Where ya gonna find that?”
So, she had stopped looking and focused on her teaching. She was a great teacher. Students stopped by all the time, some of them near Nathan’s age. She had a real impact on people. Not a bad gig. In a way she’d been very lucky in life, even in love. She’d had somebody she truly adored for a dozen years. He couldn’t say that.
Carol had headed off for the beach this morning too. It was foggy out. Where could she be going in the fog? Well, all she had to do was follow the water line back, as his mother had reminded him, nothing to worry about. He sipped his coffee. If Carol wasn’t back in an hour or so, he’d walk down there himself. It would be good for him, maybe even good for them.
“You’re worrying about her for nothing,” his mother said as Nathan stared out at the fog. “Let her have her fun.”
“Okay.”
“Are you having any?”
“What?”
His mother sat down at the table with him. She was 60. Her hair now was mostly gray. She didn’t color it. She didn’t wear makeup. She was just Mom. She looked good he thought. In many ways better than he did.
“Are you having any fun?”
“Hadn’t thought about it really.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Doesn’t thinking kind of put a damper on having fun?”
“No, certainly not. It doesn’t have to. What’s happened to you, other than that woman?”
“Mom. Leave her out of it.”
“What, it’s not her fault she’s an ice queen?”
“Mom…”
“Okay. Is it Chet’s death? I can see that. I liked him.”
“So did I. He wasn’t much older than I am.”
“Stop that. You’re not going to die. You’ve barely lived.”
“I’m 40.”
“That’s my point exactly.”
“Mom! What’s gotten into you? You were never like this. You used to let me alone, maybe even…too much so. You used to let me…run to Sandy Beach…you know it’s funny. I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well,” his mother said, standing up and heading back for the kitchen, “that’s a shame.”
When Carol came back she was uncharacteristically excited, breathless and talkative, but, Nathan noticed, she wasn’t really saying anything.
“It’s amazing down there! There’s…there’s shells and, and the water is so clear and the fog was just so…What’s…what’s for lunch?”
Mom was laughing, and there was something knowing in her eyes. “Oh, I suppose we’ll rustle up something. Maybe peanut butter and jelly and some chips and milk, and carrots just so your mother can know you ate your vegetables.”
“Mom…” Nathan said shooting her a look.
“Oh, Mom doesn’t care what I eat.” Carol said, her eyes suddenly deadening. “She doesn’t even know what I eat.”
Nathan’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, well, Marcy prepares all the meals.”
“Who’s Marcy?” Nathan asked.
“The…the nanny.”
“Oh,” Mom said, “there’s a nanny.”
“Oh…” Carol started and bit her lip. “I thought you guys knew that. Yeah, there’s been a nanny, pretty much since you left, Pop. I…I like her. She’s nice. She gives me some leeway. She even has a dog. Mom’s not supposed to know, but we go over to Marcy’s house and walk him sometimes. Ha, Mom would flip!”
Nathan couldn’t help smiling.
“Of course he’s not as nice as Booter or as smart either. I don’t know how he knows his way through all those woods…” She suddenly stopped and looked up alarmed.
Nathan looked at his mother, then back at Carol, “Booter?”
“I…gotta…do some things, Pop…”
“No, just a sec, honey. Booter?”
Carol was suddenly at a loss, and then she looked frightened. “Oh…oh…don’t tell Mom! Grandma, don’t let Pop tell Mom!” She started to cry, but managed to get out, “Mom will have me tested or something. She’ll make me see doctors…She’ll…”
She ran to her grandmother and threw her arms around her waste.
“Now…there, there, Carol, honey, what’s all this?” His mother shot Nathan a lazer beam of a look.
“Honey,” Nathan said. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to have you tested for anything. What’s all this about?”
Carol turned from her grandmother, wiped away tears and gave Nathan the most vulnerable look she’d ever given him in her young life. The fact was, Nathan never remembered her looking vulnerable before. It had been his secret fear that very soon, in a matter of a few years, she, like her mother, would never need him again.
“Go ahead, honey…” Nathan said. “What’s the scoop?”
Carol hesitated for very long moment, bit her lip, then finally smiled just a bit. “Well, it started the day we got here. I thought, it was going to be really lame here, like last summer, but then Booter showed up…”
“Booter, but…” Nathan’s Mom shot him a look from her dark eyes and he added, “Sorry, what about Booter?”
“Well…I was walking along the beach just a little ways down…by Red Rocks? You know, those glacier boulders you showed me?”
“Glacial honey not glacier .”
“Shh!” Nation’s mother said.
“Okay, glacial. Anyway… he just dropped down out of the woods wagging his tail.”
“But, but how do you know it’s Booter…”
His mother shot Nathan the look again, then, she added, “Go on Carol, honey. Your dad’s being a dope.”
“Well, Dad, he answers to that name. He turns his head when I say it! And Pop, he’s so cute! And funny and smart…He…” and here she hesitated. She was coming to the heart of it now. “He led me all the way to Far Shore!”
Mom suddenly smiled broadly and then unobtrusively stepped into the kitchen.
Nathan, now speechless, just nodded.
“Oh, Pop, it’s so wonderful there!”
She proceeded to tell Nathan a tale of Far Shore, including a description of the docks, the hotel, the observatory, the radio station, the opera house, the park all the houses along the road. She told about all the places and about the people as well. All except one person, Misty. Misty was not in the story.
Nathan didn’t wonder about that. Nathan didn’t remember Misty. He didn’t remember Far Shore, but he did feel a sense of deja vu in listening to Carol’s wild, little girl tale. The one thing he was certain of, though, was that she didn’t need to be tested. His smile kept growing and growing. It was obvious what was happening: his daughter, who had a healthy imagination, not unlike his, was inventing a wonderful story based on bits and pieces of information he’d given her. He’d told her all about Booter, and about radio stations, and how they used to be. He’d told her lots of things and he’d taken her to observatories and opera houses himself. One thing was confusing though, how could she know so much about Fireball? Nathan had barely known Fireball himself. He supposed maybe he’d told her a little about his grandfather, maybe invented some details he didn’t really know, and she’d built on them. Well…chalk it up to imagination…
“And then, there’s Grandpa…”
“You told me about Fireball already…”
“No…not great gramps! Grandpa! Grandpa, Chris. Oh, Pop you were so lucky to have him for a Dad! He’s so smart and funny, and he took me up in Fireball’s plane, and then in the jet! Wow! Was that a crazy ride! You, you should… Pop, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, why?”
“You’re crying.”
He was. He hadn’t even noticed it. He wiped away a tear.
“Just, just the pollen. Go on with your story.”
And she did, starting with a sentence that set Nathan back for a bit, “Grandpa…he…well he wants you to know he’s so sorry he got vaporized.” Nathan couldn’t listen for a few minutes, but when he could again he realized that Carol was right in the middle of a really great story. And she really knew how to tell it. And as she told it an idea started to form in Nathan’s head. This, was a book. A great children’s book. He’d write it up for Carol.
“Just a second,” he said, chuckling to himself. I’ll be right back. He came back with a legal pad.
Carol suddenly looked very nervous. “Daddy, what are you doing? You’re writing up notes for Mom, aren’t you!” The fear suddenly engulfed her again. She started to run from the room, but Nathan caught her, just as his mother came back in looking hard at Nathan.
“No, no honey. No testing. No tattling. I promise! I just want to write your stories down, so I don’t forget them. I was thinking maybe we could even write a book…”
“They’re not ’stories’!” Carol said stomping her foot. “Far Shore is real.”
“Of course it is!” Nathan’s mother said.
Nathan looked at her quizzically. Then he said, “It…it will be a non-fiction story then. A true story! I just don’t want to forget any of it. Maybe, other people would like to read it too.”
“I know what non-fiction is, Pop!” Her look for just a moment, was her mother’s, but then she softened. “You…you showed me all the stuff at the library, remember?”
“See…” Nathan said, “that’s just the problem. Your old man forgets everything.”
“Yes…” his mother said with a far away look in her eyes. “Yes, Carol he does! Even when he was a little boy I always had to make him write things down so he wouldn’t forget. I even pinned notes to his shirt sometimes.”
“Ha…Pop…sometimes you’re such a lame-o!”
Nathan laughed, “Oh, see! Now just let me write it down so I remember. And then I’ll read it back to you and make sure it’s right.”
Carol suddenly smiled a smile he’d never seen before. Or if he had, it was a long time ago. The brown hair and green eyes were her mother’s, but the smile was somebody else’s, not his mother’s, not his, not his father’s, not anyone he knew of in the ex’s family, but somebody he’d known once. Whose?
“Okay, Pop,” she said after a moment. “Should I start from the beginning?”
“Yup,” Nathan said, “And don’t leave out a detail.”
For the rest of the day, Carol told Nathan tales of Far Shore and of her life at home. For the rest of the day, as the weather clouded over outside and then turned to cold rain, Nathan took notes and asked questions. For the rest of the day, and well into the night his mother came and went from the front porch with food and coffee, and that evening with popcorn.
Listening to her laugh, watching her wonderful smile, a smile, that somehow, Nathan had never noticed before, Nathan became enchanted. His daughter, he realized was going to be just fine. Whoever this Marcy was, she was taking good care of Carol. And here and there Carol told enough about her mother for him to know that in her own way, when she paid attention to Carol at all, she was taking care of her too. Yes, she would be all right, not just because of all the people including himself and his mother who loved her dearly, but because Carol had a resilient spirit, a love of life, a force of will some of which, he had to admit, came from his ex, and she had an imagination. Oh, that imagination! Where did she come up with these wild tales of rides in jet planes, and dances on mountaintops with wild people, what did she call it? The Tribe of the Grandpas and Grandmas! Nathan could almost see the illustrations. He’d made a sketch or two, and they were primitive, but maybe primitive was what this book needed: vague line drawings and great words that left a lot to the imagination.
On Carol went, the radio station, a ball at the hotel, and the detail he loved most, paying for everything by reciting poetry! This would be a great book! It would even have classic poetry in it as a bonus. Kids would love it. Parents would love it. And suddenly a terrible thought came to him. Was this just a work project for him? My God, he was already thinking about press releases and tours… He’d even thought that maybe he could bring Carol along as a further inducement for kids…
He was making everything into a commodity. Even his daughter’s imagination. He put down the legal pad: the third one he’d filled today.
“What’s the matter, Pop?”
“I think maybe I’ll just listen.”
“But…aren’t you afraid you’ll forget?”
“I…”
“No, you have to take notes, otherwise how will all the people know about Far Shore?”
“All the people?”
“Yeah, there’s going to be a book right? And we can tell everybody about it. And all the kids will love it, Pop! I was thinking, maybe we could even talk Mom into letting me go with you when you tour around…”
He was sure he hadn’t said any of that to her.
“It’s…it’s like you’re reading my mind…”
“I’m reading your mind? What about you, Pop?”
“Huh?”
“Every time I bring something up, you just nod and then you add details I haven’t even said yet! I’ve been looking over your shoulder. It’s…it’s…like you’ve been to Far Shore too, Pop! It’s like you know everything about it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I love the funny drawing you made of Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz! That looks just like her! It would probably make her mad, though.” They both laughed. “And, of course, you know Booter way better than I do. He…he misses you…”
“How do you know?”
“He…told me.”
Carol was suddenly blushing.
“He talks?”
“Well…no…not in words, but when he takes me back to Red Rocks, he kind of looks towards the cottage. I think he’d like to come here, but somehow that…that wouldn’t be right. I don’t quite know how it works but…”
“No…no you’re right, Chipmunk. He can’t come back here.”
Suddenly a realization hit him. “And I can’t go there. It’s…it’s your place.”
Carol suddenly looked quite sad, “But…but it was your place once too, Pop.”
Nathan smiled. Oh, that imagination. “Maybe… tell me more about Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz.”
And Carol did. And over the next few days, which were invariably foggy, after her return from her travels, Carol told Nathan more and more about Far Shore and all but a few things seemed very familiar. A strange, child-like thought came into his head. Had he been there once? Even more than once? The thought lingered for more than a moment. Then, his rational adult mind took over again, but, interestingly, it allowed for a bit of doubt. Well, If he had, it had been a long time ago, when such things were still possible.
And with each passing day Nathan’s mother, Carol’s grandmother, came and went with an enigmatic smile on her face, as though she’d seen this all before. Maybe, thought Nathan, she had.
On the night of July 21, the first day of summer, he asked his mother a direct question. Carol was asleep or at least in her bed room; he had no doubt she was studying some more poems. Later that night he would step in there to find her asleep over a volume of Emily Dickinson, her new favorite. “This is my letter to the world…” would be her currency on Far Shore tomorrow, Nathan thought.
“Mom, did I ever go to Far Shore?” He meant it metaphorically of course.
His mother was knitting and did not look up.
“Of course.”
“When?”
His mother looked at him as though he were the village idiot. “When you were ten!”
He smiled at her. His mother was full of surprises. “Why…why…don’t I remember it?” Again, of course, he meant metaphorically.
“Nathan, you do! Aren’t you listening to your daughter? You’re talking about it as much as she is. You’re writing down things she never said.”
“Okay,” Was his mother getting dingy in her old age? Did she really believe in the place? He smiled at her, with an okay-I’ll-bite smile, “but why am I only remembering bits and pieces?”
She looked back down at her knitting. “Life.”
“Life?”
“Yes, life gets in the way. Things happen. Good things, terrible things, unexpected things. They distract us. We forget.” Here an enigmatic smile mixed in. “And then, we remember.”
“Mom,” it came out before he thought about what it meant, “have you been to Far Shore too?”
She looked up, “Of course, Nathan. Misty and I went there all the time.”
“When?”
His mother laughed. “You’re slow on the uptake today, darling. We went there when we were ten!”
June 22, 1998
Carol came back in from her walk late on the morning of Midsummer’s Eve, St. John’s tide, in sad, resigned, tears, with the screen door slamming behind her. “There’s not going to be any fog for a while,” she said, and started to walk towards her bedroom.
“Wait a second, Chipmunk,” Nathan, who was sipping coffee in the front room, said. “How do you know that?”
“Grandpa Chris,” she said. “He said it would be all right, but I don’t know.”
“Hold on,” said Nathan. “So what if there’s not going to be any fog?”
Carol was suddenly very angry. Her green eyes flashed. “Don’t you ever listen, Pop? Don’t you…if there’s no fog, Booter can’t sneak to Red Rocks without being seen! If he can’t sneak to Red Rocks, he can’t find me! If he can’t find me, I can’t get to Far Shore!” She stomped out of the room opened her bedroom door, and slammed it behind her.”
“Oh, honey…” Nathan started, and began following her. His mother, who had been in the kitchen, was suddenly there holding his arm.
“Nathan, you really are thick!”
“Huh?”
“She’s a woman; let her settle down for a half hour, then…and only then…go in.”
As it turned out, they waited an hour and then Nathan’s mom went in with some lunch. An hour after that, Carol came out: smiling.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Until the fog comes back, we can just work on the book! It doesn’t have an ending yet, but when the fog does comes back, and Grandpa Chris says it will, I can go back to Far Shore and make one!”
And so, they worked on the book. After a day or two of trading ideas, making drawings, telling new stories about the place beyond the fog, and making each other laugh uncontrollably about Fireball, the Professor, and the Tribe of the Grandpas, Nathan realized something: for the first time, in a very great while, he was happy. More importantly, Carol was happy. Nathan suddenly wondered one day whether he’d been so unhappy that he hadn’t noticed his daughter was unhappy too. Had his unhappiness caused hers? He couldn’t help thinking the answer was probably, at least partially, yes.
“Well…that stops now…” Nathan muttered after a sip of coffee one July morning.
“What was that?” his mother, who had been doing the New York Times crossword puzzle asked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking that Carol seems happy.”
“So do you,” she said, readjusting her half glasses, which she kept on a silver chain, and looking back down at the newspaper.
Lately, he’d had a feeling that there was some other dynamic at work here involving his mother. Something she wasn’t telling him. He looked at her quizzically. The look she returned him, after a moment, was, as always, inscrutable. “What’s in the plan for today for you two great authors?” She said, revealing absolutely nothing.
“Off to the library, then a little writing when we get back.”
“Not before a fishing trip.”
Nathan smiled and imitated a ten-year-old’s whine, “Ah…Mom…”
His mother laughed. “You haven’t been out doors in almost ten days.”
“To be fair the weather has been pretty crappy. I guess Carol’s ‘Grandpa Chris’ is a good meteorologist. No cool crisp nights with early fog that fades to clarity, just dreary, sticky rain days.”
“Well, your father is a flyer, you know,” she said, while filling out squares on the puzzle with her pencil.
Nathan shot his mother another curious look.
This time, her return look had a touch of challenge in it, but it relented and turned into a smile. “Was of course, I meant was.
Out on the lake, almost an hour later, Nathan and Carol weren’t having much luck, but the baiting was improved.
“You’re getting pretty good with those worms, Chipmunk.”
“Yeah, but the worms aren’t very good with the fish. Let’s go work on the book.”
“Gotta stay out in the drizzle for one hour. Grandma’s orders.”
“Oh good,” Carol said sarcastically. “I can work on my rain tan.”
Nathan laughed. “You’re pretty funny.”
“Think I could write comedy like you some day, Pop? On Far Shore I gave Mickey Winna some of my bits.”
“Mickey Winna…?”
“The old guy with the hair at the radio station? In the control room? He owns the place.”
“Oh…”
“What?”
And so it rose again, the only sticking point in their mutual happiness. It worried Nathan a little, and in fairness to him he hated himself for this, that Carol absolutely believed Far Shore was real. Not believed in the sense of little kid, hey-let’s-pretend believed, but really, soberly, with all the adult credulity that this smart little girl could muster, BELIEVED.
“Nothing.”
The look on Carol’s face was not petulant or angry as it had been when the subject had come up before, it was empathetic. She pitied him. She reached out and put her hand on his, as the waves from the east slowly rocked the boat.
“The next time the fog comes, you’re coming with me.”
“Oh, Chipmunk, I’m not sure if that’s…”
“There’s a part of you somewhere deep down, that knows Far Shore is real. Like the other day…”
“What happened the other day?”
Carol bit her lip for a moment. “I was telling you about the production of Midsummer Night’s Dream I saw with Grandpa Chris and Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz…”
“And Booter…”
“…and Booter, of course, Booter, but you said something funny then.”
“What did I say?”
“You said, ‘Are they still doing that play?’. And you said it kind of…kind of far away like… Grandma noticed it too. I could see it in her eyes.”
“I…don’t remember saying that.”
“Yeah, see, that’s the part that bugs me.”
“How come?”
“It’s like there’s two yous. The one that’s all adult and worried and sad about you and Mom and worries that maybe I’m nuts…”
“Now Carol…”
“Let me finish. ….and the other one that laughs and draws pictures and makes eyes at the pretty librarian…”
“Wha…”
“Don’t look at me like that, Pop!” Carol smiled mischievously, at him. “I’m not an idiot! I’m ten years old! Anyway, that you, the one that writes the book about Far Shore, when he gets out of his own way, believes in Far Shore! Now, the adult, worried, and sad one is afraid to ask the pretty librarian out afraid to even ask her name, but what he’s most afraid of, and I don’t know why ‘cause I’m not an adult yet, is that there might really be a Far Shore!”
They were quiet for a few moments. The wind was picking up in the east and the sun was managing to peek through here and there.
“When the wind’s in the east, the fishing’s the least…” Nathan said forcing a wink at Carol.
“Don’t try to change the subject, Pop.”
“You are a pistol.”
“That’s good right?”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and felt a sense of deja vu. Of course he’d kissed his daughter’s cheek a million times before, but that wasn’t what he was remembering. There was something else. His brow furrowed as he looked at his daughter for a long moment.
“What’s up, Pop?”
“Deja vu.”
“Oh, I hate that!”
Nathan chuckled, “I’ll try not to be amazed that a ten-year-old not only knows what deja vu is, but has experienced it. What, in your young life, can possibly have happened to you before?”
“Far Shore.”
“…”
“The First time I went there, I knew where everything was. I wasn’t surprised by anything. It was like I’d lived there before, for a really long time.”
Nathan blinked, once, twice, then looked off towards the cottage.
“Misty…” he said. The name. It was a name, not a weather condition, he was sure, had come from his mouth in an inaudible whisper before he’d thought it. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He was sure it meant something, though.
“You okay, Pop?”
“Yeah.” he said. Recovering slightly, he looked back at her. “Yeah. What do you say we go in and tell Grandma we just had to come in early because you had a big fish on the line and it got away, but you fought it for fifteen minutes and we just had to tell her the story?”
“She’ll never believe it…”
“Oh…she believes you…”
“She believes the truth. And what’s more, Pop, you can’t distract me. Next time you’re coming with me to Far Shore. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll go along with the fish tale, as long as you agree to take another crack at the cute red headed librarian, when we get to town…”
Nathan laughed out loud at both Carol’s syntax and her mothering tone. “I am a constant victim of the tyranny of women…”
“That’s like a dictatorship, tyranny, right?”
Nathan nodded. He was raising a very smart kid.
“I’m telling Grandma you said that!”
“And that only proves my theory!”
Carol was, of course, quite right. Nathan’s mother didn’t buy their story for a minute, but she didn’t balk at them going to the library and out to lunch.
“Why don’t you take the cute librarian out with you?” his mother said, and smirked.
Nathan looked quickly at his daughter who was grinning from ear to ear as she put away her fishing pole. “Chipmunk…I’m gonna…”
Carol squealed and ran for her bedroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. He could hear her laughter from behind it.
“Take a shower, too!” Nathan’s mother said to him. “Pretty women like Debbie Winetrough don’t like stinky men!”
“Debbie Winetrough huh?”
“Yup, and she’s single.”
“Divorced?”
“Never married. Pretty girl syndrome. Everybody’s too scared to ask her out. That and she’s too smart to settle for just anybody.”
“Well…that’s pretty daunting.”
“Honey…” his mother said smirking, “…you’re not just anybody. Go clean up.”
By the time they got to the library, Nathan’s heart was in his throat. When they passed the desk, Debbie Winetrough was wearing her glasses and was intent on her work.
“Maybe…”
“Pop, don’t chicken out! I’ll go look up some poems.” She slugged him hard on the shoulder. Again, deja vu. “What’s that phrase that you say when you tell me to really go after something. It’s in some other language?” she whispered.
“Carpe diem?”
“Yeah, go carpe diem the cute librarian!” She said and giggling ran towards the poetry section.
“That kid is too smart for her own good,” Nathan mumbled.
“Excuse me?” said a friendly voice. Debbie Winetrough was looking up from her work.
“Oh…” Nathan said, flustered. “Nothing, just commenting on my daughter’s sense of humor.”
“Oh, she’s a bright one,” Debbie’s smile was lustrous.
“Oh, have you two…”
“Not really, but the books she checks out! Pretty advanced verse for a…what…ten year old?”
“Exactly! How did you…”
“Lots of work with school kids.”
“I…I don’t think we’ve formally met, I’m Nathan O’Doul…”
“Formerly of this fair town, and of public radio’s Wordplay…”
“How did you…?”
“Small town, and I’m the librarian,” she smiled. It was a very nice smile. All severity disappeared. “Debbie Winetrough.”
“I know…small town, former reporter…with a nosy mother.”
“Oh, I’ve known your mom for a while. Tough lady.”
“That she is!” Suddenly there was a meow near his feet, “Hello!” he said, reaching down to pet a large white cat, who purred at his attention. Deja vu again.
“That’s Chance, he comes in with me sometimes.”
“He seems to think he knows me.”
Debbie gave a quick laugh and then a bemused look with very familiar blue eyes, “Maybe he does.”
Carol’s father, Nathan, found the right version of himself to ask the pretty librarian, Debbie Winetrough out to lunch that day, and the next day as well. Things went, to Nathan’s amazement, very well. His happiness suddenly became even more intense. He found himself smiling nearly all the time.
One day, out at the lake, he even managed to re-rig the ancient sailfish and brave the waters with Debbie. When the boat flipped and they both went for an unexpected swim, Debbie just laughed, and then, as they both leaned on the centerboard to bring the capsized boat back upright, an amazing thing happened: Debbie kissed him.
“You’re quite a sailor.” she said.
“Not exactly how I wanted this to go,” Nathan said blowing out a mouthful of lake water, “…but what you just did brought back some of my ego.”
“What did I just do?”
“You made my day.”
“And this ‘sailing’ trip made mine.” she said, pulling back her wet hair and kissing him again. “Now let’s get this boat right side up, so we can sail it some more!”
Yes, things were going well for Nathan. And Carol had found a new friend too: Tessa. They’d met at the library one day. Tessa liked poetry too and showed Carol a few more to memorize. Tessa, turned out to be the youngest child of an old friend of Nathan’s from his baseball playing days, the shortstop to his second base, on the Kane County River Kings, Akeem Saleeb. How Akeem came to be in this neck of the woods was a very long story involving his falling in love with another old friend of Nathan’s, old girlfriend actually, Betty Antilla. Betty had been the trauma nurse for Akeem, when the latter had been involved in a car accident, ten years ago, when Akeem was playing triple A ball in Toledo. That accident had ended his playing career, but led to a new life as a three sport coach and gym teacher at the local high school back in Betty’s Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where Betty had connections.
When Nathan had realized who Akeem was, then further come to understand that he was married to Betty, he had wondered about the chances of such a coincidence. He had also wondered, not for the first time, if there were any such things as coincidences.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” Nathan thought. The old poets really had it right most of the time. Again, he got a sense of deja vu.
Tessa had Betty’s winning smile and Akeem’s dreadlocks and athletic ability. And before Nathan knew what was happening, Tessa had Carol involved in the local little league. Carol too, had her dad’s…and grandfather’s athletic ability.
And, with the baseball season in full swing and Nathan suddenly caught up in the social whirl with his old friends their daughter and Debbie Winetrough, a funny thing started to happen. Carol talked less and less about Far Shore, and more and more about Tessa and baseball. Nathan wrote poems for Debbie, and made vague plans about a future right here in his home town. Maybe the newspaper could use a columnist? Maybe, he could free lance some stuff? The Far Shore book still entered his mind now and then, but without Carol’s inspiration it was still a tale without an ending.
One day while out in the canoe, and down the river with Debbie paddling in the bow, an old poem came to Nathan, and he impulsively recited it aloud:
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove, whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,
Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear,
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
Far mark’d with the courses of clear winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary’s sweet cot in my eye.
How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
There oft, as mild Ev’ning sweeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides,
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,
As gathering sweet flowrets she stems thy clear wave.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
There was a long pause. Then Debbie said, “I’ve always loved Robert Burns, and that poem especially.”
“One of my favorites.”
“Am I Mary or are you?”
“Well, I intended that it was you, but I guess I’m the one who daydreams all the time. My mom calls me ‘ADD boy’ sometimes.”
“Oh, you might be surprised. I’m a bit of a dreamer too.”
“What do you dream about.”
“I refuse to comment…” Debbie said over her shoulder and looked back down river. “What’s beyond the river.”
“It just…”
“What?”
“Well it depends on who you talk to. Carol would say…well…I think she’d say, though baseball seems to be taking over, that Far Shore is beyond the river.”
“Far Shore?”
“Yeah…like to hear a story?”
“Sure.”
And Nathan proceeded to tell Debbie all about Far Shore, including some things he didn’t know he knew. He told it as they paddled all the way down the river and all the way back to the cottage.
When he had finished, Debbie sat very still in the bow. Had he bored her to death?
“Sorry, guess I got carried away.”
“No…no…it’s just all so, familiar. And I don’t know why.”
“Isn’t it? When Carol first started talking to me about it, that was my reaction too.”
“That would make a great children’s story!” Debbie said.
“Yeah, I was thinking that.”
“Nathan?”
“Yup?”
“When did you memorize Afton Water?”
“I…” Nathan suddenly and a memory of lying on the top bunk in the cottage as a ten-year-old, with a Robert Burns volume lying open in front of him. “I…think I learned it when I was…ten.”
Debbie laughed and looked back from the bow, “Currency for Far Shore?”
“Well…no…” Nathan smiled, a little dazed. “No…at least I don’t think so.”
As the summer stretched out, got hotter, and the ballgames came and went, with Akeem coaching the team, Tessa and Carol forming a keystone combination that was leading their squad towards the local championship. Nathan found himself more and more comfortable with the idea of staying put. He made an inquiry with the local paper and they were open to the idea of him writing a column. The money wasn’t great for a three-days-a- week columnist, but if he free lanced other stuff, and if, perhaps, he could get Far Shore going again and out on the market, there might be a chance. It was a great story, and everybody who heard about it, wanted to see it in print. It wasn’t reasonable, though, to depend on Far Shore to support himself. He’d keep looking, locally. One thing was for certain, though he suddenly decided: he was staying. Debbie had some ideas for him for part-time work with the library as well, and the school system, hospital, and a few local businesses needed a PR man for radio and print stuff. Nathan wouldn’t get rich, but with what he’d made on the coast, and his investments, he might just be able to make it work.
When the baseball season had ended, and the end of August approached, Carol began to get sad. They were out on a morning fishing trip again on an already sunny morning.
“Pop, I don’t want to go back to the coast.”
“Oh, now chipmunk, we’ve been over this. There’s school, and there’s your fiends out there, and your mom. If you don’t go back west, you’d break your mom’s heart.”
“What you really mean is, she’d give you hell and you’d wind up in court.”
Nathan swallowed hard. “Well, yeah, that too. Sometimes life is just…”
“Sucky.”
“…Yeah…” he’d thought to admonish her for her language for an instant, but he couldn’t argue with her reasoning. “…you’re right, Chipmonk. But there’s Christmas. We’ll have it right here! And before that I’ll come out for Halloween.”
“Tessa won’t be there.”
“No, but you guys can write to each other, or email or whatever.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No…” he wasn’t going to lie to her. “No it’s not. You’re right. But we can make the best of it. Hey, I was thinking, you’ve never given me an ending for Far Shore.”
She looked at her father for a long moment. “I…I haven’t thought about that in a while.”
“I know. No fog, huh?”
“Fog..? Oh…I get you. I…I hadn’t noticed.” Carol looked off towards the east, and her shoulders suddenly began to bob up and down. She was sobbing.
“Oh Chipmunk, why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.” She reeled in her line, and without looking back at her father said, “Let’s go in.”
August 25, 1998
On a late August morning, the day before Carol was to catch her flight for the coast, she woke Nathan by shaking him violently. In the half light, he could see she was grinning from ear to ear.
“I had the dream again, and Tessa was with me! And Pop? There’s fog!”
Tessa had stayed over the night before. The little girl with the dreadlocks seemed even more heart broken than Carol about Carol’s impending departure.
Carol’s expression changed slightly, and her brows furrowed like a parent about to break bad news to a child, “I know, I promised to take you, Pop, but in the dream Grandpa Chris said it wasn’t your turn, yet.”
Nathan wiped some sleep out of his eyes and smiled. “That’s okay.”
A moment later, Carol disappeared, but he could hear her and Tessa discussing their plans with his mother, who was up, as usual and had been since 4 a.m.
Debbie was due for breakfast and a canoe, in about a half hour. He had to get rolling. Though they had become intimate, Nathan was a little old fashioned about having her over to stay with Carol still in the house. And if Nathan wasn’t, Mom certainly was, or at least he thought so. He’d never actually asked her. He would miss Carol terribly when she left tomorrow, but it would give him a chance to spend more time with Debbie. Who knows what would happen from there.
By the time Nathan made it to the kitchen, the girls were gone.
“Oh,” he said, watching through the porch window, as they disappeared, running down the beach into the fog. “I was hoping the girls would stay to have breakfast with Debbie and me.”
“No you weren’t,” his mother said from the kitchen.
Nathan laughed.
“Nathan, why doesn’t Debbie spend the night here? It’s obvious the two of your are intimate.”
Nathan was glad his mother couldn’t see his face turn red, “I’ll…I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You are intimate aren’t you?”
“Mom!”
“Well, just trying to get the lay of the land.”
“Good lord! Mom!” Again, Nathan was confronted with how little he knew about women, especially his mother.
Shortly, there was a knock at the door, Nathan jumped up to answer it and his mother, who was already on her way there, jerked her head towards the chair he had been sitting in on the porch. “Go sit down. Try to be cool for once in your life.”
Nope, he didn’t understand women at all.
Debbie Winetrough was radiant when she came in. “I’ve got some news!”
Nathan smiled, “Oh yeah?”
“The powers that be at the library would love to have you on there to do some press releases and book programs! They thought your resume was amazing! They were just worried that you were over qualified. They also really like that you have local connections.”
“Oh, that’s great!”
“Really? Is it?”
“Sure! You kidding? It’s fantastic! I was trying to figure how I was going to manage to stay here…financially…I mean, so that’s marvelous! When do I start?”
“So, you’re staying?”
“Yes! Debbie, of course! I was going to stay anyway, didn’t you know that?”
“…no…”
“Oh, for…” Debbie suddenly rushed into his arms and they kissed for a long moment. Suddenly, Debbie pulled away. “Oh…your mother.”
“His mother doesn’t mind!” Sarah O’Doul said from the kitchen.
Nathan whispered, “She hears really well.”
“Yes, I do.”
For the next three hours, after serving them breakfast, Nathan’s mother was nowhere to be found. She excused herself and said she had some early shopping to do in town.
The loving couple made the most of their privacy, but when Nathan looked at the clock as they walked back out to the porch, three hours later, Nathan’s expression conveyed a bit of worry.
“What’s wrong, darling?”
“The girls. They’re probably fine, but three hours is a bit longer than Carol is usually gone, and with the fog.”
“Well, we could look for them.”
“Well, let’s give them another half hour.”
When a half hour passed with no girls in sight, and his mother back in the house, Nathan decided it might be time to look.
“The girls are fine,” his mother said. “But it doesn’t hurt to look, I suppose. Just don’t get lost in the fog.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mom, I’m not ten.” Nathan laughed.
“No,” his mother said with her best inscrutable look. “You’re not.”
A half hour later, when Nathan realized, that the shore he and Debbie were approaching in the canoe was not Sandy Beach or Red Rocks, but the west end of the lake, where all the Ohio cabins were, his mother’s concern did not seem so ridiculous.
“I can’t believe this!” Nathan said. “I guess I should have brought a compass.”
“Couldn’t we just, I don’t know…follow the shore?”
“Yeah,” Nathan said, blushing again. “We could do that.”
So they did and Nathan tried to paddle out a little from shore so that when they passed the cottage, his mother wouldn’t see that her surmise about him was confirmed. They passed Red Rocks with no sign of the girls, then High Banks, the Reeds, and then a strange thing happened: they paddled by spots with cabins, rustic camps, and cottages, that Nathan did not recognize. At one point they even passed a place with a stone tower turret. Nathan nearly spoke up at that point, but decided, out of pure wonder, to keep quiet. When they passed a beach featuring, a moose, a wolf and, Nathan was fairly certain, a tiger, who were all casually watching them go by, Nathan knew they had passed into something truly strange. When they passed a pagoda and what seemed to be an oriental village a moment later, Debbie gave a small gasp, but she too did not give true voice to her wonder. What, after all, if Nathan wasn’t seeing what she was? Was she cracking up? Finally, they arrived on Sandy Beach. No girls. Nathan, the sights they had seen aside, was really becoming worried.
“I don’t know which way to go.” he said.
“I suppose they could have come back through the fog to the cottage while we were at the other end of the lake,” Debbie said hesitantly.
“Oh…” Nathan said, again embarrassed. “That’s probably it. I feel the fool. Why don’t we…”
Just then the fog began to clear and Nathan saw two small figures on the far end of Sandy Beach. “There they are!”
Suddenly, from the still lifting fog, Carol called, “Pop! You just missed them!”
The figures drew close, as Nathan and Debbie got out of the canoe and pulled it up on the beach.
“Oh, hi Ms. Winetrough!” Carol said as the girls walked up.
“Hi Ms. Winetrough,” Tessa added.
“Pop, you just missed Grandpa Chris and Great Granpa Fireball!” Carol shouted.
“We came in under no power!” Tessa said.
“Yeah, Fireball says it’s more exciting that way!”
Nathan laughed. “I see.”
“Yeah, Pop, they should be taking off about…”
Suddenly, the sound of an antique airplane engine rumbled in the fog. And Nathan, Debbie, Carol, and Tessa looked up to see the biplane rumbling down the wide beach in their direction, then stepped back into the water as it roared past and took off into the misty air.
As the sky cleared almost completely, the biplane made a pass over them. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing goggles and a leather jacket in the pilot’s seat. An older man, wearing a mad bombers hat and goggles was behind the pilot in the passenger’s seat. And clearly seated on the old man’s lap, was a dog once described as “most of breed”. He too was wearing goggles. The plane dipped its wings in salute as it veered close to ground then turned away to the east.
“Next stop,” Nathan said, with a sigh, “Far Shore International Airport.”
“Those…” Debbie said in an awed whisper. “Those were the flyers!”
“The…” Nathan began.
Debbie looked at him with wonder. “Those were the flyers. I…just remembered. I flew with them, once when I was a little girl.”
“How? Wait…you didn’t grow up around here.”
Debbie smiled at him, the wonder still in place. “Mankato, Minnesota. You know that.”
“Then how could…”
“Oh, Pop! Don’t you get it? Far Shore is there for everybody, no matter where they live! No matter who they are!”
Debbie laughed, “That’s just what my Grandma Flaherty used to say.”
“Your Grandma…”
“Flaherty, real Irish, right from the old sod. She ran an ice cream stand in Mankato. She died when I was seven.”
Memories of Far Shore started to rush back into Nathan’s head. He had been there. He had been there many times. That’s why it was all so easy. That’s why the book flowed so well. That’s why he knew what Carol was going to say about it, almost before she spoke.
“And guess what, Pop!” Carol said. “I’ve got an end for the book! And there could be some more books too…what do you call them?”
“Sequels,” Debbie said. “She leaned over and kissed Nathan full on the mouth.”
“Whoa, Pop!” said Carol. “At least wait until I’m back on the coast.”
Nathan smiled holding Debbie close. “Got over your blues?”
“They come and go, Pop, but…”
“Far Shore is forever,” Tessa said. Everyone looked at her inquisitively.
“Well,” Tessa said. “That’s what Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz told me. She said, it’s just like the stars, only more so.”
“Oh…” Debbie said, the look of awe returning to her face. “I’d almost forgotten about Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz! Oh Nathan, you have to finish that book!”
Part III: Sunset and Evening Star
They did finish the book. And many sequels. Nathan only had to do public relations and other work for a few years, before the Far Shore Series made him and his family, which now included not only his daughter and grandmother, but also his wife, the former Debbie Winetrough, quite wealthy. After it became clear that Far Shore was a hit, there was even a call of congratulations from the ex. Carol, overhearing the call, misunderstood for a moment and was relieved when Nathan made it completely clear to his daughter that there was absolutely zero chance of any reconciliation.
After the second sequel, with Carol, now 15, thoughts of Far Shore faded for her. And that, Nathan’s mother told him, was perfectly natural. Carol’s interest in Tessa, though, did not fade. In fact, it intensified, in ways which surprised Nathan, but not his mother. When the laws concerning marriage finally changed in America, after several years of co-habitation, Carol and Tessa were married. Tessa and Carol’s wedding was a joyous celebration held on Sandy Beach. Even the ex came, and though she just flew in and out for the day, she was smiling at the ceremony, Nathan noted. The birth of a child, a son, with the clinical aid of Tessa’s older brother Jamal, was next. By then, Carol had long been working as a sports writer and on air personality for a major sports television network, and Tessa was a WNBA basketball star for the Minnesota Lynx.
Nathan continued to write about Far Shore without Carol, now inventing new adventures for all the inhabitants. It was strange, however, no matter how outlandish, and unrelated to any experience he or Carol, Debbie or Tessa had experienced there, Nathan still had the feeling that what he was writing was true.
When he mentioned this to his mother, now in her 80’s, she simply shrugged and said, “Nathan, if reality is working, it’s always just a version of our better dreams.”
He used that sentence for the epigraph at the start of the fifth Far Shore sequel: The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Shiskcagrubernitz.
And so the years passed, until 2022, Carol and Tessa’s son, Nathan O’Doul-Saleeb’s tenth summer, when something truly remarkable happened…again.
June 22, 2022
Nathan’s mother, Sarah, at age 84, was at last beginning to show her age. She was forgetting things more and more. She was repeating herself too, but she could still read her son’s face like a book so that when he winced at her repetitions she was quick enough to say, “That, was just for emphasis.” Nathan, now 64, knew his mother well enough to know it wasn’t, and also well enough to pretend it was.
Nathan Omar O’Doul-Saleeb, or Nooz (a slurring of his initials pronounced ’News’), as everyone but his grandmother, the ex, called him, was at the lake for a summer of baseball. The ten-year-old was a three sport athlete. At least that. Nooz had been kicking, throwing, head striking, and whacking spheroids of all shapes since he was born. He couldn’t wait to play baseball again for his grandpa Akeem. At age nine, he’d been the star of the league, pitching no-hitters, hitting home runs, slamming off fences to make catches in center when he wasn’t on the mound.
“That kid can do everything!” Nathan had said once to Debbie in the stands, during a game the previous summer.
“Of course he can,” Debbie had said, “he’s your grandson.”
Nathan opined that just maybe the fact that one of Nooz’s mothers was a pro athlete, and that that mother’s father had nearly been a major leaguer, had something to do with it.
“Maybe,” Debbie said, “but the imagination to do some of the things he does, the things that make him, as Akeem says, ‘unique’, comes from you. You and Carol.”
“What about the ex?”
“I refuse to comment on the grounds that it may incriminate her.”
“Fair enough, besides she’s never picked up a baseball in her life.”
“Might break a nail.”
“Me-ow!”
With his moms away for the WNBA season, Tessa playing as point guard, and Carol covering same, Nooz was itching to start hitting baseballs. He had little if any use for the lake, and certainly none for the dopey stories of Far Shore. That was a little worrisome to Nathan, but not to Carol on her weekly visits to the lake, when her schedule allowed, with Tessa. She flew in at the nearby airport in a private plane which she flew. Nathan often wondered who had put more air miles behind them, Fireball, his father, or Carol.
“I’m proud of Far Shore, don’t get me wrong,” Carol would say to Nathan. “But Pop, it is, after all, just a fantasy: one I had to put behind me to get where I am.”
Nathan, after some fairly heated arguments on the subject, no longer pointed out that the Far Shore books were where she had cut her writing teeth. And their whimsical style, which she now employed on the air, and in a syndicated sports newspaper column, was nurtured there too. Not to mention the fact that, though she didn’t remember anything about the place anymore, or, if so, only from the books, those experiences formed the core of the wonderful person she had become. Still, there were traces of the ex in her. Nathan couldn’t deny it. That whole practical side, which wasn’t a bad thing, emanated form there. That is, if the ex was capable of so esoteric a thing as emanating. Anyway, he let the argument go.
It was during one of Carol’s visits home, one of the rare ones with Tessa, that it happened. On the front lawn of the cottage, Tessa was pitching, Carol was catching, and Nooz was hitting, in a heated game of whiffle ball played for the benefit of Nathan, Debbie, and Great Grandma Sarah, who were watching from the front porch. Nooz took a mighty swing at his mother’s wicked whiffle curve, and blasted it far out into the water, then began a silly and playfully taunting home run trot, which started everyone laughing, until everyone heard his ankle snap. It was his right ankle; he had stepped into a small hole in the front lawn and broken it. To another boy, and in another family, the injury would have been a minor setback. Grandma Sarah and Nathan tried to make everyone see it that way, but Nooz’s mothers went on the proactive rehab bandwagon almost before the boy fell to the ground and cried out.
They had him in a nearby hospital and then at a major sports medicine facility in Minneapolis, practically before the boy hit the ground. When Carol called her father in tears a day later and told him that the experts had sent the boy home for rest, and told her further that she ought to know that such breaks went with the territory of athletics and that the boy would be fine, and rehab had to at least wait for the swelling to go down, Nathan had said quite simply, “Well, you know chipmunk, they’re right. This is minor. Nooz will be back hitting homers in no time.”
“Don’t call me Chipmunk, father. Let me talk to Grandma.”
Ouch, that had hurt a bit. But Nathan felt vindicated when his mother verified Nathan’s soothing mantra that Nooz would be fine. He was even more pleased when she suggested that, for the time being, why didn’t Carol bring Nooz back to the lake where he could rest, and maybe, when his ankle started to come around, let Akeem be his personal trainer, and get him back on the field.
It was settled. Grandma knew everything. Nathan was fairly certain that had he suggested the same thing, it would have been wrong. But there was no bitterness in this almost certain conjecture. The facts of his daughter’s doubting attitude towards him, and her absolute trust in the opinions of his mother, verified all that he had ever known about his life past and present, and were only whimsical and amusing.
Nooz, however, was not on board. He was depressed, though the depression came out sideways as anger, until Tessa sat him down one off day in Minneapolis and put it to him straight.
“Boy, you wanna get over this or not?”
Nooz glanced up with a surly expression from his cell phone. “Whatever.”
Tessa, the nearly always smiling irrepressibly happy and charismatic, Tessa O’Doul-Saleeb, these traits noted by sports press across America, was quite suddenly very angry. She jerked the phone from Nooz’s hand and fired it against the oak paneled wall of their massive game room shattering it into seventeen pieces.
“Okay, Mom.” Nooz suddenly said, his surliness suddenly all but vanished.
“Now I don’t have a lot of time for your nonsense, but I’ll make it if I have to. I love you Nooz, but you’re being a brat about this. A spoiled, rich brat. If you’re going to be an athlete, or anything else in life, you’ve got to get over your setbacks. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Now get up off your self pitying little behind, get on those crutches, and get in the car with your mother.”
Carol was standing by, a touch amazed at her wife’s sudden show of pique, and perhaps more in love with Tessa than she had ever been.
“You’re going up to the lake, and you’re going to let your grandparents guide you through this thing. Your mother and I will be there as much as we possibly can, but you need to do your part.”
“Yes, Mom.”
For the time being, Nooz’s self involvement was gone, but it quickly resurfaced the second Carol headed back to work after a weekend with family at the lake. Monday morning, June 20, found Nooz sitting in a chair, playing sports games on his cell phone and texting friends.
Nathan, who had been up writing for hours, in his “Far Shore House” a small cabin on the adjacent property to the west built from funds provided by the popular series, came over to the front porch of the cottage where Nooz sat brooding and Grandma Sarah knitting.
“How goes it?”
“Whatever.”
Grandma Sarah, Nathan’s mother, glared over her half glasses at Nathan.
“What say we head out on the lake, Nooz. Just because you’re laid up for a bit doesn’t mean you can’t fish.”
“Nah.”
The glare from Nathan’s mother intensified.
“Let me put that another way, Nooz…”
The boy looked up. He heard the uncharacteristically stern tone in his grandfather’s voice.
“Get up. I’ll help you into the boat. We’re going fishing. When we get done, we’re going in to have lunch with your Grandpa Akeem, and your Grandmas Betty and Debbie when Grandma Debbie gets off at the library.. Then you’re going with your grandpa Akeem to start planning your rehab schedule.”
Nooz was still scowling, but he nodded.
For two days, Nathan forced his grandson to adhere to the schedule as presented, for two days, Nooz did so unwillingly. When Akeem brought him back out to the cottage on Tuesday, he left Nooz with his great grandmother and went over to the Far Shore House for a conference with Nathan.
Nathan looked up from his work when Akeem came in.
“Any thaw in the snowstorm?” Nathan asked.
“You know, I told Tessa they were spoiling him rotten.”
Nathan nodded. “In a weird way this may be just the right thing to have happened to him.”
Akeem nodded. “I think so too. But if he doesn’t get off his behind, he’s never going to learn it.”
“Well, my mother says, be firm and give him time.”
“Yeah,” Akeem laughed. “but that requires patience. I’ve coached kids for thirty years and he’s one of the most trying ones yet.”
“He’s worth it, though, I guess.” Nathan smiled at his old friend.
“You got that right, Nate.”
On the morning of Wednesday, June 22, Nathan skipped his morning writing sessions for three reasons: first, he was out of ideas, second, there was fog and he wanted to paddle in it with Nooz, third, for the first time in almost fifty years, he’d had the Far Shore dream. In it, he saw the town through the fog, just the way he’d first seen it, all those years before with Misty and Booter. This time, though, he didn’t seem to be seeing it through his own eyes. In the dream, he was Nooz, and as the little gray boat drew closer to the shore, he could make out Fireball standing on the docks, wearing, of all things, a baseball glove, and next to him was the hooded figure from the night of the Tribe of the Grandpas exactly 50 years ago. He too was wearing a baseball glove, though his face was still obscured. And for the first time, in a long time, Nathan wasn’t thinking of Far Shore as fodder for writing, or as a pleasant childhood fantasy which had made him rich both financially and spiritually, he was thinking of it as reality. Far Shore was real. What’s more, and he had woken up certain of this, Far Shore was an answer for Nooz’s self pity and surliness too. Getting him to go along with it, though, wasn’t going to be easy. First, he had to wake the boy up.
Nooz, who had his own space in a special loft added to the cottage after the third sequel, had been staying in his Carol’s old room on the first floor since his injury. Nathan went there and knocked. No answer. He knocked again. No answer. He knocked a third time. A grunt. He knocked a fourth time. No answer.
“Nooz, get up; there’s fog.”
“So…”
“Get up.”
“Maybe later.”
“Now!”
“Gramps, lighten up. I don’t feel good.”
This couldn’t wait. Thinking over his actions carefully and holding up a finger of patience to his mother who was looking up towards him inquisitively over her knitting, Nathan weighed the consequences, and decided, that changing the boy’s attitude and maybe changing his life, was worth the price of a new lock on the bedroom door.
He threw a shoulder into it. The lock held, the door cracked. His shoulder hurt.
“Nooz!” his mother shouted in amusement. “Get out here before your grandfather breaks his shoulder trying to get into your bedroom!”
“Okay, okay.”
The going didn’t get any easier, but finally, and before the fog faded, Nathan and Nooz were out in the canoe. Nooz with a little coaxing, was even paddling himself.
“What’s so special about fog… Wait, does this have something to do with those stu…with the books about ‘Long Shore’ or whatever?”
“What if it did have to do with Far Shore?”
Nooz muttered somehting profane.
“What was that?”
”Nothing.”
“No, Nooz, tell me what you said.”
Suddenly the boy was shouting. “I said it’s lame! The whole thing is lame! The moms used to read me those stories all the time. Look, it’s cool that your trip to fantasy land when you were my age made you a bundle of cash, but don’t try to make me believe in it!”
“Why not?”
“Uhhh…” Nooz looked over at shoulder at Nathan with an expression of disdain the old man could barely stand. “I dunno…it’s lame! It’s so stupid! Little kid’s stuff! There’s not even any sports in it!”
“What if there were?”
“Huh?”
“What if there were sports in it?”
“Whatever…”
The two paddled down to Sandy Beach, and pulled the canoe up with Nathan still seated within. Nathan had intended to pull the boat into the muddy finger lake beyond, through the channel between the lakes, but then something happened.
“What the…?” Nooz said suddenly broken away from his brooding.
There was a great, dark giant standing on the beach, and another crouched in front of him. This wasn’t Far Shore magic. It was simply nature. Nathan had seen it a dozen times before, but this was all news to Nooz.
“Grandpa?” he said in a frightened little boy voice Nathan hadn’t heard recently.
“It’s okay, Nooz. Let me explain what’s happening.” He turned the boy’s head away from the giants back towards the sun coming up. “See, it’s like a movie being projected on a screen.”
A wall of fog, 70 feet high had developed off to the southwest, just as the sun was coming up, and the sun was projecting their silhouettes onto the fog wall. Nathan remembered years ago reading an account of German mountain climbers nearly killing themselves running from such giants.
“They’re called Brocken spectres, Nooz. It’s just the sun projecting our shadows on the fog, like a projector on a movie screen.”
Nooz still looked uncertain, but waved his right hand experimentally and watched his shadow on the fog do the same. Against his better judgement he let slip an expression of awe, “Cool.” he said.
A few minutes later during which Nathan made crazy motions to make his shadow giant dance, which made Nooz unaffectedly laugh, as the sun rose a touch higher from the east horizon, the Brocken spectres disappeared and the fog fully enveloped them. The sun, still shining, now broke down into all the colors of the spectrum and they were suddenly inside a rainbow.
“Whoa,” said Nooz now having forgotten both his cool and his troubles.
Nathan just stood and smiled. He couldn’t resist saying what he said next,
“See Nooz? You have to get up and get out to see the wonders life has for you. You have to get out here every day. Now this won’t always happen, but if you don’t come out, you might miss it when it does.”
“All right, sure!” Nooz was suddenly saying. Nathan looked down from the rainbows around him at Nooz shrouded in the fog a few feet away, but Nooz wasn’t looking at Nathan nor had he been answering him.
Now, though, he turned to Nathan, all wide eyed and awe struck, “Is…is it okay, Gramps?”
“Well, sure. It’s not going to hurt you. It’s just like a rainbow. It is a rainbow and we’re inside it.”
“Huh? No, not the fog. I’m talking about Grandpa Chris and my rehab assignment.”
“Grandpa…”
“You…you hear him don’t you? He’s standing right next to you.”
“I…”
“He says you shouldn’t worry. I’ll be back after while.”
“Nooz?” Suddenly, Nathan couldn’t see his grandson. “Nooz?”
Nathan took a wild step towards the canoe and nearly fell down. A deep, familiar voice came from the fog.
“You trust me, don’t you, son? Have a little faith.”
Nathan stopped and looked around him. There was nothing but an empty canoe.
“Daddy…?”
Suddenly he heard the sounds of oars in oar locks moving away down the muddy finger.
“Don’t worry, Gramps! Tell Grandpa Akeem, it’s just a rehab assignment!”
Nathan quickly pullled the canoe down the channel falling full into the water in the process and losing the boat in the water ahead of him. He scrambled up, capsized the boat, pulled it back to shore, emptied it out, grabbed a floating paddle and headed off into the rainbow fog.
He couldn’t hear the the oars anymore, but he suddenly knew what boat they belonged to.
“Misty’s rowboat.”
He paddled hard into the fog, and kept at it for over an hour, but kept coming up on shores that couldn’t be where he had to be. He saw houses of all descriptions, from all eras. Strange animals, even a friendly person or two who waved. Once he even asked an old priest in full collar and dressed in a trench coat and fedora from the 1930’s, standing in front of an ornate little lakeside chapel, “Have you seen my grandson, Father?”
“A while ago, Nathan, but just go back to Sandy Beach and be patient. Didn’t you hear him? It’s a rehab assignment. Even if you tracked him down now, which you won’t in this fog, you’d only foul things up. The kid needs to do some work. Like your father told you, have a little faith!”
“But Father…”
“Have a little faith.”
Nathan nodded, as the priest disappeared in the fog, but still, Nathan persisted, arriving on shore after unfamiliar shore. None of them the right shore. It was no good. Nooz was gone. Whether he wanted to believe in Far Shore, and all these other worlds, was irrelevant. Whether he was having a series of hallucinations, a nervous breakdown, an attack of early onset dementia, or not, didn’t matter. The reality in front of him, was reality: rainbow fog, and no Nooz. His lake of belief, didn’t matter. As unbelievable as it all was, it was real. Had he really heard his father?
The voice sounded again from away in the distance in the fog. “Have a little faith.” And then Nathan distinctly heard, from out of that same fog, the echo of Nooz’s delighted laughter.
He stroked the paddle in the water once more but suddenly stopped when words, comforting words came to him. He said them aloud as he ventured on into the fog:
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
He repeated them over and over, as he paddled, just as he had years ago, though he didn’t remember that immediately. And then he did, all of it, everything from the books and much, much more. After a while a seemingly irrelevant fact hit him: for some reason, the Tennyson had never made it into any of the Far Shore books; Crossing the Bar. He’d memorized it to use as payment for services on Far Shore. He’d have to get the poem into one of the new books. Then something else hit him, “Nooz doesn’t know any poems. He’s been too busy with baseball.” Then it occurred to him that his father: Grandpa Chris, knew all the poems that Nooz would ever need. He suddenly felt deeply comforted. But what was he thinking? Nooz had disappeared into the fog! He couldn’t just muse about the past! Indulge himself with fantasies about Far Shore, and all that he had forgotten!
“I’m such a fool!” he started in frantically paddling again.
“Have a little faith.”
A wind suddenly came up pushing the canoe in a very definite direction.
“Have a little faith.”
Nathan paused, stifled a sob, then believed.
“Okay, Father.” Nathan said. “Okay, Daddy.”
He put down the paddle and in a matter of moments, in the still dense rainbow fog, heard the canoe slide through the smooth grains of Sandy Beach.
He pulled up the canoe, and stood shivering in the chill. The fog was showing no signs of dissipating.
“Looks like an all day event.” he said absently.
He decided to build a fire.
He was still sitting by it, in the fog, when Debbie showed up on foot four hours later. “Where’s Nooz?”
“Everything’s all right.”
“Where’s Nooz?” Debbie repeated her green eyes widening.
“…on rehab assignment.”
“What the…Nathan!”
“It’s Far Shore business.”
Debbie looked wildly around, saw the canoe and started for it. Nathan stopped her. “Darling, I already tried that.”
Debbie eyes filled with tears of terror. “Nathan…have you just been sitting here all this…? Nooz is, gone!”
“I know. He’ll be back.”
“How do you…”
“Have a little faith. Sit down.”
“Sit down?! have you lost your mind!” She got into the canoe. “Nathan, come on!”
Nathan sighed, something had come over him sitting by the fire. Someone had come and sat by him and was sitting by the fire still, though Debbie couldn’t see him: Fireball.
Nathan turned to him.
“Go ahead, boy,” Fireball said. “She’s got to see it for herself.”
So Nathan headed out with Debbie and as they arrived on shore after improbable shore, just as they had years before in their search for the girls, Debbie remembered. At last she turned back from the bow and looked at Nathan who could barely see her wiping her eyes, then she laughed sadly, “Have a little faith, right?”
“Right.”
They both dropped their paddles and the wind quickly took them back to the beach fire and Fireball, who had now been joined by Booter. By the time they arrived, Debbie wasn’t surprised to see them.
She called Grandma Sarah on her cell phone and after hesitating, explained the situation just as she had experienced it.
“Of course, dear.” Nathan’s mother said. “I told you everything was fine.”
Just before dark, when Akeem and Betty showed up on foot, having written off Grandma Sarah’s assurances as the good natured babbling of a senile old woman, Debbie stopped them from calling 9-1-1, Nathan took the two of them into the fog in the canoe, and the two newcomers came back having gained some insights courtesy of all the shores they’d seen, and the gentle caresses of the fog and what lay within it.
At one point, as they paddled along, the calm of the rainbow fog now giving way to moonlight, Akeem said to Nathan, “You know, Nate, I always thought you were a little crazy with this Far Shore stuff, in a good way of course, but still a little crazy. I’m sorry.”
“Have a little faith,” Betty said from the middle of the canoe.
Nathan chuckled and began reciting the Tennyson. By the time he had recited it three times, they were back on Sandy Beach. There Debbie introduced Fireball and Booter to Nooz’s other grandparents.
Nathan and Akeem headed back down the lake in the moonlight for sleeping bags and blankets on this chilly northern June night, and arrived back at the fire in time for a performance by The Tribe of the Grandpas. It was the first time many of them had stepped back from Far Shore into what the world calls ‘the world’ in some time, and they were at a high point of silliness. Everyone was so taken with the comic performance that they didn’t notice some new arrivals.
Nathan was the first to notice them. They were seated on a log next to him and Debbie. When Nathan saw them, the rainbow fog and moonlight and all the miraculous events of the day had worked their spells so completely, that he wasn’t surprised.
“Hello, Nooz,” he said calmly. And the others were likewise unsurprised when they saw the boy, nor were they amazed when he stood up on a perfectly healthy ankle and joined in the goofy dance of the Tribe of the Grandpas.
When the tall figure who had been seated next to Nooz dropped his hood and turned to Nathan, Nathan O’Doul, now 64 and well into remembering all the magic of his youth, said simply, “Hello, Daddy.”
Epilogue:Crossing the Bar
On August 25, 2032, Sarah O’Doul was 94 years old. Nooz was 20, a National Merit Scholar with a specialty in literature and a star on the baseball team at Yale. He’d already had several offers from the majors, but had declined them all, for the time being, in favor of an education.
Tessa, 42 now at the end of her career in the WNBA, and having broken most of the scoring and assist records, had built a place just up the hill from the Far Shore House with Carol, who was now one of the most respected sports journalists in America. The mothers were now entering middle age, and had no true memories of Far Shore, except for those buried deep, and sometimes fueled by Nathan’s stories.
Akeem and Betty had long since retired, and were settled into their home in town, but they spent a good deal of time on the O’Doul-Saleeb compound out at the lake.
Nathan, now 74, had retired from writing anything but poetry, following the success of what he had thought would be his final Far Shore book, Nooz and the Invisible Nine the story of Nooz’s rehab assignment under the tutelage of his manager Grandpa Chris, and the ghostly ball club who still played on the fair fenceless ball field on the west end of Far Shore.
At 20, of course, Nooz had forgotten all about his visit to Far Shore, and thought his grandfather was a loving and creative, but daft old coot, who had written a fanciful series of stories. Nathan was not distressed by his grandson’s forgetfulness. It was quite natural, he knew, and the boy’s belief in the magic of life would return with time. Of that, one can be certain.
At Sarah’s birthday party that day, all were gathered around the big table on the cottage’s front porch and joined her in celebrating all that had been, even as she reminded them of the promise all that was yet to be. When she blew out the candles, with Carol on her left and Nathan on her right, Nathan noticed a light in her eyes which he hadn’t seen for 64 years.
“What is it, Mom?” he whispered to her.
“You’ll see,” she whispered back.
“Cut some slices for everyone, Misty,” she said to Carol.
Carol smiled at her. “I’m Carol, Grandma,” she said, to her grandmother. “Misty was your old friend from the orphanage.”
“Oh, yes, dear,” Sarah said, and turned to wink at Nathan.
Then, to everyone’s surprise she recited some lines from Shakespeare:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
“Well,” Sarah said when she had finished, “I had to earn this cake somehow, so I decided to pay out in Far Shore currency!”
Those who had read the books, and that was everyone present, laughed naturally and long. And then each were touched by just the faintest wisp of sweet sadness.
That night, when Nathan helped his mother to her bed and tucked her in, just before Nathan turned out the light, Sarah said smiling, “I hope to see my Pilot face to face.” Nathan was not surprised to have a Far Shore dream that night, nor was he surprised that this time it was of his father and mother taking off from Sandy Beach in the biplane.
In the morning, there was fog at the far end of the lake.
Different Strings
“What isn’t adventure isn’t life.”—H.G. Wells
“…different strings of the same instrument…”—Thomas Merton
“…to benefit his soul, a man is sometimes left to himself…”
—Julian of Norwich
Author’s note: I wrote the first partial draft of this story over 20 years ago after teaching a lesson in meter in poetry, and after reading then U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s assertion that we walk around every day speaking in rhythm. I had the thought, “What if somebody could only speak in poetry?” I started on the story in an old notebook. I left it unfinished but unforgotten. It sat there for years until my recent onslaught of writing when I found a way to finish it. Oracle remains my favorite short story of those I’ve written. Something about the sunny nature of it pleases me. There is a lot of darkness always wishing to be voiced, in so many heads these days, I was pleased to have a sunnier muse for a change.
Oracle
It was an early November Saturday. Outside the window the snow was coming down in large floating flakes through the sunrise.
“Already,” Ken Shea thought and he thought nothing else for a moment watching the new half magical snowfall settle on his back yard. When his thoughts returned a moment later, he quite suddenly didn’t seem able to think as he normally did, somehow. The word “already” kept running and echoing in his head like a drumbeat, or like the reflections in a multi-faceted fun house mirror:
“Al-ready. Al-re-dee. Dee-dee-all-red-dee-hee-hee.”
He laughed out loud. somewhat helplessly, and the door opened to the master bedroom. His wife, G.J., preceded by a massive basket of laundry she was carrying, came in. She dropped the laundry and picked up some dirty clothes he’d left on the floor: two dirt stained socks, which he’d worn inside old leather hunting boots to walk the dog around the nearby Troopers Lake last night, along with an Iron Hills High School T-shirt. He taught English at Iron Hills High School, directed the plays, supervised the school newspaper, and occasionally helped out with the football team. Iron Hills was a small town among a string of small towns on the iron range.
“What’s funny?” G.J. said grinning. Her once long red hair, now cropped short around her head for convenience, was a bit mussed this morning. He missed the length of her hair, but its tousled nature this morning was very cute. He loved G.J. more than his own life.
He wanted to respond to her natural question, tell this woman he’d loved for 20 years about the funny way “already” had hit him, but she had trouble with that kind of goofy thinking these days, though, when she had worked as a sculptor, she’d once been less practical. Two boys, a job managing the local art gallery, and being married to him, her big kid husband, had drained out some fun he guessed. That touched him with regret.
At last, though he could already sense something was eschew in his mind, he attempted to answer his wife.
“Already
seemed
‘All-red-eee!’
like God’s blood
falling from a cold sky
in white feather flakes.”
G.J. stopped and grinned at him again. The grin seems a little forced.
“Cute,” she said. “Nice poem,” she added and started out of the room on a definite Saturday morning mission.
Ken stood and laughed again, a little nervously. He’d opened his mouth and accidentally committed poetry. She was a bit offended, and why not? She had been just making conversation, asking a simple friendly question on a busy day, and he’d somehow inadvertently played a stupid parlor trick on her. Her steps receded down the stairs as he wrestled loose of the blankets and ran out onto the small landing between the four small rooms upstairs. The bare pine wood floor was cold against his feet. He called to her.
“No, long road girl!
Expressing love
is like feeding your
red headed child
from a bottle of luscious sugar mud:
not what’s expected
but what is surely fun.”
“Thanks, hon. I’m not really in the mood for word games,” came the icy call from the kitchen. The door there opened and closed fairly hard. She would be in the laundry room now. Probably a bit angry. The morning probably wouldn’t be good now, unless he found a way to change the mood. What the hell was he doing to her? What in the world was wrong with him?
He walked into his paper strewn home office, across the hall from the master bedroom, and grabbed a pair of sweat pants hurriedly putting them on, then running down stairs, to be greeted by his two sons: one small and dark, one tall and blond, one quick and clever, the other deliberate and funny.
“Yo, Dad,” said Mearl, the taller one, sprawled across the couch and staring at ESPN.
“Hey,” grunted Artie, the dark one, who was lying nearly upside down with his feet on the couch, all his older brother would allow. Artie’s head was pressed against the floor, right cheek first. Ken nearly passed through without saying anything, but then noticed that Artie had left a half plate of eggs on the floor and their old yellow Labrador retriever, Mike, was about to zero in on them.
“Arthur
draw your sword
and act
transforming slothful stone will
into lightning.”
“Huh?” Artie said.
“Don’t presume
that sometimes
actions left undone
don’t bounce back,
velocity doubled,
into your clattering young soul!”
Artie was standing now and staring at his father half smirking. What did Dad want?
Mearl looked over at Ken, oatmeal still dabbled at the corners of his mouth.
“Dad, are you trippin’ or what?”
“He’s messing with me,” Artie said, a trace of his mother’s irritation furrowing his forehead. Mike, the lab, his people suitably distracted, had now begun gobbling the eggs.
This has to stop, Ken thought, oblivious now to the dog’s actions, but troubled by his own inadvertent utterings; he tried to explain.
“Words,
curling as vines on my trellis,
choke the everyday,
leaving my mundanity
a starless sky
over an empty labyrinth.”
“Ken, stop that!” That was G.J. back from the laundry room and standing in the doorway staring with an anger about to burst. He could hear the first slosh-hum of the washer through the dining room wall. He turned to her , concern growing in him. Concentrate! he thought.
“Ever after
you speak
in lines
which remind me
of a dawn
before we were,
when green alone
held sway
against the blue and black
of ever sky.
And so I can’t but
respond
in idiomatic
meter rhyme.”
“Stop it!” her face now flashed a stern insistence on him. She stood firm and steady.
“Draw close your loving way
into the rusty cradle
of words I can’t speak.
Fear lives in my moment.”
Her jaw dropped for a second. She seemed to be considering several responses herself. She finally said, quietly, half curiously, beckoning him to follow, “Ken, come here.” She led him into the kitchen. The boys shrugged at each other, they’d seen him do weirder stuff, and returned to watching ESPN while old Mike contentedly finished off the eggs from the forbidden plate unnoticed.
When they arrived in the adjoining room, G.J. turned and managed a half hopeful smile, “Ken, stop this joking around, okay? It’s not funny. You’re starting to scare me.”
Ken hesitated. What would come out if he tried to explain? He had to try something.
“Caution
can’t mend this leaking dam.”
G.J.’s brow furrowed her eyes filled now with building fear, “Ken? Can’t you stop?”
The word ‘no’ started out and became:
“Notice to all interested:
this space closed to all
words unmetaphored.”
She reached into the cupboard and grabbed a glass, then turned on the tap filling it full and handed it to him. He drank it down slowly, luxuriously. He took a breath. Two. Now, surely it would work. He opened his mouth.
“Water love,
I drink to
your quenching
empathy.”
G.J.’s blue eyes widened with concern which she stifled immediately, “Hon…go back to bed. I’ll …call somebody.”
“Dial one…”
He stopped for a moment. This seemed normal. G.J. contemplated him, asking wordlessly, with a lived-in understanding, if he was okay.
“Dial one
because we are.
You.
Me.
The billowing dust.
Stars floating motionless
in a sea of ink,
all one.”
“Yeah, I’ll call somebody,” she said. But who? She wondered. A psychiatrist? A linguist?
He turned, keeping his mouth tightly closed and quickly made his way back upstairs, found the bedroom, and closed the door quietly and carefully behind him. Perhaps if he just took a nap he’d wake up normal. Did he want to? A sense of euphoric well being engulfed him. This seemed like a dream. Was it? He felt utterly perplexed, but on another level amused and strangely, untroubled. He wondered why. It was all quite funny actually. Truly delightful, if not for the way it troubled the love of his life. Not just his little problem. Everything. Life itself. He absently opened his mouth to utter an oath of amused confusion and heard himself say:
“Laugh
at the waking Earth.
Understand the songs
of comets and caverns.”
Sleep. He thought. A dream. It’s a dream. A good one. Go with it. Exhaustion overcame him
and he fell onto the bed and plunged into a heavy sleep, like a small mouth bass into the depths of a dark lake.
***
“Mr. Shea. Mr. Shea?”
Light. Ammonia. He cracked his eyes open. A hospital bed, slightly raised. A doctor: male, dark haired, wearing Clark Kent glasses, an unmistakable look of smugness around his mouth. This man in the white coat was younger than Ken by fifteen years at least.
“Mr. Shea?” The doctor was now wearing a half sardonic smile.
Ken squinted in the brightness of the fluorescent lit room.
“O, oppresive white:
have you no imagination?”
Oh yeah. Everything’s a poem. Okay. Okay. Say something ordinary.
“Call my name again
and watch my eyes,
because you’ve mistaken
the green there for me.
You see, The self is hidden
more plainly than the color shows.
Look into your own mirror
when it’s not looking back,
the I there is you.”
The doctor leaned back from him, an honest look of curiosity forming on his face, and turned soberly, but officiously, to someone at the foot of the bed. Ken heard a muffled sob.
G.J. The boys. Christ!
“Now, now…” The young doctor looked a trifle sternly towards G.J. “I see what you mean Mrs. Shea. I don’t think there’s a lot of cause for such concern, though. How long has he been like this?”
“Since he woke up this morning, until he passed out.” She wiped away a tear. “What’s wrong with him?”
“O much is right
it’s not a fight
between
what’s dark and light.
Just let plain words
be art.”
The young doctor brushed off G.J.’s concern and Ken’s response with a condescending gesture of his right hand. “It may…pass. I don’t want to venture a diagnosis just yet.” The doctor said cautiously. “We’re going to need to run some more tests.” He turned back to Ken. “Mr. Shea, my name is Dr. Carroll. Could you perhaps just try just saying my name.”
“Dr. Carroll…”
“Oh, good! Now, see? It was probably just a momentary…”
“…your voice doesn’t sing
so well as your name.”
“Oh…I see.”
“Through your own inner song,
you too can learn to rhyme sometimes
and shake words
from their simple senses.”
“Mr. Shea, we found you unresponsive at home after your wife called. You were in a deep sleep, and we couldn’t rouse you. We’ve run some tests, and everything seems quite normal otherwise, but… do you feel compelled to do this, rhyming, this…verse? Is there no way you can avoid speaking in…poems?”
Ken shook his head, unconsciously smiling a bit.
“Try saying…oh…the room number on the door.”
“The number on this door: 212,
is verse, before and after;
whether I pray or curse.”
G.J. let out an exasperated breath. “Doctor…”
The doctor tapped a computer pen on its matching pad, holding up a well manicured, pretentious, and theatrical hand. “It could be aphasia of some kind.” He looked over at her and said patronizingly, “That’s when people lose control of their language skills.”
G.J.’s eyes narrowed, “I know the term, doctor. I have a Masters in Art with a minor in biology. And if you don’t mind my saying, my husband’s condition seems to have left him pretty damned skilled at language, even more than he usually is. He’s an English teacher and a writer, doctor. I’m no physician, but whatever this is seems to have put those skills into hyperdrive.”
“Yes…Dr. Bays would know for sure. May even have seen a case like this before.” For a moment Dr. Carroll’s doctor mask seemed to fall away and his voice rose an octave to that of a curious and baffled teenage boy. “I…haven’t ever even heard of one.”
“Oh, well, that’s comforting.” G.J.’s sarcasm was apt.
Yes, Suddenly, Dr. Carroll’s sturdy self confidence seemed to be quite shaken. He cleared his throat and continued in the lower register, “I…wonder…”
G.J. said impatiently, “Who is this doctor Bays? Does he know his stuff?”
“She actually.” Dr. Carroll said recovering his maddening self importance, “She’s a world renowned clinical psychiatrist. I went to her talk here last night. She’s in town for a few days visiting relatives.”
“So you think this is all in his brain? The fainting too? My God, is it a tumor?”
“Maybe we should step into…”
“We’re an honest family, doctor!” G.J. said, her words sharp as a knife’s edge. “Just say what you think. What are you telling me?”
“Dear lady, I’m not really telling you anything, yet. The EKG, EEG, pulse, and blood pressure are all fine. Quite perfect, in fact. We’ll probably need to do a CAT scan. And, as I said I’d like to call Dr. Bays in….I’m sure…”
G.J. had had enough. “Doctor Carroll, what in the hell is wrong with my husband?!”
The young doctor, quite startled now, took a step back. G.J.’s Irish was up and she reached over and grabbed his arm. “If you don’t really know, please go ahead and get this Dr. Bays, Dr. Phil or whoever else you need to get, right now, and find out what is wrong with Ken, you…twit! You see, dear doctor, I’m kind of fond of him! This isn’t an academic exercise to me or to his sons!”
The doctor stood starkly surprised, his lips working, but no words coming out.
A middle aged nurse, who had just entered the room stifled a laugh and looked at Ken’s chart before retreating into the hall.
“Now answer me honestly, and stop the doctor double talk nonsense,” G.J. was saying now. “Do you have any real idea at all what’s wrong with him?”
“N-not precisely, but it doesn’t seem serious…”
G.J.’s look was murderous.
The doctor squeaked, “I mean it’s not life threatening…”
“How the hell would you know?”
Ken was filled with a sudden sense of abject joy. God, he loved this woman! She was so worried. So noble. So fierce. All for his sake. Without thinking he spoke.
“O fire love
you fill my hands
with pulsing gold
a force so pure
it blinds me.
My clumsy lineman’s legs,
my fickle, unnimble, feet,
now enabled by your wild music,
dance deftly
to your maenad song,
drawing you with them
in a waltz of righteousness.”
G.J. turned to him. He was smiling broadly. Wholesomely. He flung himself out of the bed, past the doctor and took her in his arms staring deep into the bottomless blue of her eyes. Then he spun her around in a spontaneous dance and kissed her insistently before their lips released with a bright smack.
“He’s all right, boys.” G.J. said. “Let’s go home.”
“You can’t just…” the doctor started. “…there are papers…”
“Sign
those fine papers yourself
young physician.
Much is right here.
The headline in my paper reads:
‘Gifts of God
are Sometimes
Mistaken for Maladies.’”
For weeks afterward, Ken called in sick at Iron Hills High School, or rather G.J. called in for him. He did try, against G.J’s objections, to do it himself on the first day, hoping that he could at least manage a mundane little poem. He dialed the number of his principal and friend, Hank Kelso, and tried to explain.
“My power words
are glowing too brightly.
Replace me with a lesser
talking toady.”
“Huh? Who is this? Ken?”
G.J. got on the line explaining that Ken was suffering from something that could make the school day very interesting for his students. She went into the whole whole aphasia explanation.
“Okay, G.J., sure. But, Geej, is he okay? Is he…going to be himself again?”
“I”m not sure he’s sick. He may be more himself now than he’s ever been before.”
The truth was, Ken felt fine. Wonderful, in fact. There had been no further fainting spells, and except for his inability to say something as simple as “Pass the butter” which had come out as:
“O
oleo
ole!
Spread flavor
over my dark breaded soul
this dark night
make new day!”
His only regret was being unable to work. If he had gone back to teaching, his new methods would surely have been a learning experience for the kids, but, he agreed, probably the novelty would wear off soon and then his amiable cryptic poetry might become an obstacle to the daily activities of the classroom.
The famous Doctor Bays, hearing of his unique case from Dr. Carroll, called the house, at first from the local hospital, and later from her home office at Vanderbilt University. She promised no tests. She just wanted to talk to Ken. After some coaxing on Dr. Carroll’s part, G.J. realized that if Ken was going to have to apply for a disability, there would need to be a diagnosis. So these conferences with the famous doctor probably needed to happen for the family’s sake. Ken, had already arrived at this conclusion, and in his unique way voiced his agreement to the sessions with Dr. Carroll.
“Let’s see this Bays,
see if she can clear the haze
of what others say
ails me.”
The young and famous doctor’s clinic at Vanderbilt would pay his air fare to Nashville. Dr. Bays even hinted at a stipend for the sessions. G.J., in numerous phone conversations with Dr. Bays, made sure that the stipend became a reality. She also insisted that, if there was a publication, Ken would be paid royalties for each of his “poems”. Dr. Bays was amused by this concept in a very clinical dry way, but agreed. She had plenty of grant money and this was a very interesting case. A case that made reputations. Dr. Bays cared quite deeply about making a reputation for herself and her clinic.
G.J., though acquiescing in the case of Dr. Bays, tried diligently to protect Ken from anyone looking to take advantage of his now even more open nature, and had already fended off numerous local and national reporters, allowing Ken to submit to interviews seldom, and then only if the publication was reputable. But she was practical too. At some point, he would need to work again, or find some way to bring money into the house after his sick days ran out. So she did finally, at Ken’s poetic urging, allow book deals, including a book of Ken’s spontaneous poetry, and a journalistic study of the case by a world renowned science writer entitled, Oracle: The Ken Shea Story.
Upon first meeting Dr. Bays, Ken’s first reaction was that she was very young. She was a real striver, Ken also decided. She was pretty and young in a hard way, with piercing brown eyes, delicate hands and a definite stride. Her hair was dark brown, cut in a short, practical way. She always carried a yellow pad and spoke often into her cell phone. Her office was paneled in oak. Books lined the shelves on all four walls. Ken counted twenty two that bore her name as the author. She was seated at a discreet distance across the room from him at her oak desk, in her unique oak, fan backed chair. He sat in an expensive horse hair lounger. When she was ready, after checking over her notes, she leaned towards him over her desk, forced a hard smile around her square framed glasses holding a mechanical pencil pointed and ready for writing.
Ken sat back, quite relaxed, pleasantly amused.
She smiled again curtly, then asked, “Mr. Shea, why did you finally agree to see me?”
“Work I can’t.
Work I must.
I wasn’t meant
‘to fust unused’.”
He grinned at her.
She was flustered for a moment. She blinked several times.
“Your ambition is a fluttering index card,
taking flight unbidden
especially when you’re silent
it’s quite unhidden.”
She blinked again.
“Silence wows the world.
Words clutter and cry.
If I’m offense for you,
I’ll fade
and go
like a memory
of night swimming.”
He started to stand.
“No,” she said recovering, clearing her throat. “No, but would you say you feel…in control of yourself?”
“Pass me the remote
So I can break your batteries.
Test away.”
“What do you mean?”
“O great controller
you bewilder yourself
solving mysteries
which are plain
to eyes
which truly see.”
She paused. Took a breath and thought, looking down again as she wrote new notes.
Ken smiled. His sense of well being, despite the circumstances, had grown even stronger through this encounter, and throughout his trip here on the plane with G.J., who waited in the outer office, against her will. Everyone he talked to had been a trifle charmed by his new way of communicating, once they got used to it. Everyone, but the doctors it seemed, and Dr. Bays, most of all. And that amused him. The poor girl was trying way too hard. He sensed that she might even think him a fraud.
“Try saying one word.” she said.
“Word one
will take the hand
of word two.
“This is a long parade.”
And so it went for the rest of that session and dozens more more that followed over the coming months of periodic meetings between the doctor and her hyper-articulate patient. There was no real progress except in Dr. Bay’s level of confusion and exasperation. But the sessions continued and the good doctor, after poking and prodding Ken in numerous ways, once he, mostly to humor himself, agreed to batteries of tests, including one where he answered questions while under a CAT scan. This too, showed nothing unusual, except that Ken’s brain appeared to be functioning at a higher level in nearly every way, as though there were some great psychic power source he was tapping. At last, the good doctor, though she had reached no real conclusions, was satisfied that medical science short of removing Ken’s brain and dissecting it on a lab table, was unlikely to reach any answers. She then started in on the inevitable paper entitled, Poetic Aphasia: A Unique Case Study. She also submitted to interviews by, among others, the world renowned science writer. She was eventually quoted frequently in Oracle: the Ken Shea Story.
In the end she even came to like Ken, even though he refused to go on the medical symposium and talk show circuit with her (though he did allow her to show videos of his spoken word poems during her Power Point presentations, on television, and across the online world). Dr. Bays found it was hard not to like Ken. He was always smiling quite openly and cheerfully and he always had a new poem, many quite engaging, for her every question. G.J. and she never quite saw eye to eye, but came to tolerate each other. On the day of their last session, two years into the process, Ken’s final good bye to Dr. Bays was:
“Doc
find a spot to rest
nobody but you
thinks life doesn’t
have its murky jests.
We’re all fools
and must concede
ourselves sometimes
to blind foolishness.”
The next morning, Dr. Bays awoke in her penthouse apartment with questions in her head. She felt a sense of urgency. What if Ken Shea, was not an isolated case, but a sign of things to come? Was he the next step in evolution? A blind alley some people would be exploring in coming years, eons? Was he contagious? If so, what was the gestation period? Was it a disease, an adaptation? She came back to her first thought. Was this a new branch of the human evolutionary tree, even the primary new branch? Had it been like a virus in his genes waiting to erupt? And would it now infect everyone? Somehow, she felt this last thought was exactly true. But strangely, she wasn’t all that concerned. Somehow she knew, today was the day. Surely, she quite suddenly thought, something strange and quite wonderful was about to happen.
It was a rare day off for her, in fact she’d taken a week. Finding no definitive answers in the Shea case had worn her out.
She remembered that Ken had changed his cell phone number, due to the constant and ongoing calls and texts concerning his case from around the country, but she had left the new number on her legal pad which she’d forgotten in her office in her exasperation and frustration. She’d gone straight to bed when she got home and had slept for 14 hours.
She called Jeff, her secretary.
As she began to speak she found herself operating under a sudden spell of euphoria and her words came out this way.
“Numbers new
for Ken and family
all, are on my legal pad
that’s why this call
interrupts your
no doubt busy day.
That
for now
is all I have to say.”
Jeff responded,
“Yes, I saw
the numbers there
and knew
somehow
that truly you
would call
and wish
a way
to talk to Ken
today.”
The doctor, amazed, but not panicked
said,
“O my
my sky is full
of poems
and
I pluck
at the lovely stars.
Do all do so now?”
And Jeff confirmed her suspicions
“Indeed all and everywhere
folks have formed
a living wall of floating
metaphor
and smiles abound
in this
and every other town.”
Author’s note: Sometimes things happen to me that stretch credibility. When I retell the story of such events, I often see the skepticism in the eyes of my listener. I don’t blame them. Maybe it’s best then, to stop telling the story and just revel in the knowledge that however unbelievable it may seem, it’s absolutely true.
Prayer
for Susan and Frank Guarino
Grant me a place in your heart,
one small place,
and let me grow there,
as you grow
live there
while you live.
You have so much to give.
And I wish to help you give it.
I want to show you a way to live it.
A way to hold the hands,
of all those others living,
loving.
Of all those others trying,
like you,
like me,
to give away their gifts,
for good.
For the good of all.
I know you hear me calling.
Know that my voice is rea.l
I know how bleak,
this daily darkness
makes you feel.
I feel it too.
I so love you!
Listen now.
Listen now.
Let’s get going!
What the…Christian rock? How did that get on my playlist? How did it get on there?
John pulled back his long dark hair. How long had it been since he’d been to the stylist? Eight months? How many times had his dad told him to go there? His Mom had even made an appointment for him once, then sighed, kindly, when he told her he didn’t want to go. He pulled out his ear buds and looked at the morning. Fog. Well, why not? It wasn’t so rare in Half Moon Bay, and it fit with what was in his head. Mom and Dad were pissed at him. He didn’t blame them really, but he didn’t really want to be around to listen to them anymore either. No, he hadn’t applied to a single college. Hadn’t really decided not to go to college; he just hadn’t done anything.
“Not to decide is to decide,” his mom had said quietly, in her gentle California way.
“Just pick something to do and do it! A job, the service, college, at this point I don’t care!” that was Dad, his old Detroit edge coming out in a flurry with Mom gently rubbing his shoulder to calm him down.
And now it was mid August, and they wanted to know what he was going to do. What was he going to do?
Get out of the house. Well, that was something. 10:18 a.m. They would both be at work by now. He had his graduation money. He hadn’t spent a dime of it. The reality was he was too lazy even to do that. Where was that now? Oh yeah, sock drawer.
He went to the bureau and opened the door. No socks in there, they were all on the floor. But there was the money. Okay. Do something. Go somewhere. How about the city? He could tell his parents he was looking for a job when he got home. He knew he wouldn’t really be doing that, though. He felt ashamed and compelled to seek the shame. What was that about?
He called Uber and, after dressing, went outside and stood by the curb, in his light raincoat. He pulled back his hair. When was the last time he’d taken a shower? Did he smell? Whatever.
The driver pulled up in a Toyota. A pretty blonde girl five or so years older than he, was driving. Her eyes were very blue.
He opened the door.
“Where to?” That smile was too much.
“San Francisco.”
“Oh good! Mind if I take the ocean view route?”
“Not at all.”
“Where to in San Francisco?”
He paused.
“Airport? Train station? Down town? City Lights? The wharf?” That smile. Wow.
“…um, airport!”
“Oh, a traveler! Hop in!”
‘Airport?’ What was he thinking? Where was he going? What would he do when he got to the airport? Call another car to take him back home, or to where he was really going? Where was he really going?
They pulled out and headed north along the Pacific, but it may as well have been a mill pond. You couldn’t see anything at all in this fog.
“Great view, huh?” the driver said. “I’m Molly by the way.”
“Hello, I’m John.”
“Good, solid name. Where ya going?”
“Huh?”
“From the airport… Where are you going?”
“Oh…uh…the Midwest.”
“Ha, ha, any particular state?”
“Um…Michigan?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“My…uh…Dad’s from Detroit.”
“Oh, visiting Pop?”
“No…he’s here in town, Half Moon…”
“Visiting relatives?”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Little visit before school starts.”
“Oh, I’m out of school.”
“Oh. Where’d you.”
“Oh, Stanford.”
“Oh, engineer?”
“No…um art.”
“How’s the job market?”
“I’m going to start looking when I get back.”
“Oh…better late than never, I guess…” Molly began to sing.
“Grant me a place in your heart,
one small place,
and let me grow there,
as you grow
live there
while you live.
You have so much to give.
And I wish to help you give it.
I want to show you a way to live it.
A way to hold the hands,
of all those others living,
loving.
Of all those others trying,
like you,
like me,
to give away their gifts,
for good.
For the good of all.”
Her voice was gorgeous, and familiar.
“You a singer?”
“No, a driver.” That smile.
“Well, you sing very well. Funny, I heard that song this morning.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I’ve heard it around lately too. What do you think of the song?”
“I don’t know. Kind of churchy.”
“You think? Huh…I just thought it was kind of touching. Like we’re all in this together, you know? People need to hear that.”
“I guess.”
“Well, hope it didn’t bug you.”
“Not at all. Like I said. Your voice is beautiful…”
“Oh, well, that’s sweet…” She looked into her outside mirror and then focused fully on the road. Then she began singing again.
“I know you hear me calling.
Know that my voice is real
I know how bleak,
this daily darkness
makes you feel.
I feel it too.
I so love you!
Listen now.
Listen now.
Let’s get going!”
***
So, now he was standing at a terminal, looking at the outgoing flights. He’d almost had to come in because when he’d gotten out of the car Molly had sat there going through some papers. He half thought she knew he hadn’t really wanted to come to the airport and was waiting to see if he’d want to be taken home again. How could she know that?
Well, one thing was for certain: he’d look like a big fat loser if he got back in. Besides, from here he could just take the tram into the city and walk around for a while, then go home. Or something…
As he’d walked around in the airport he kept noticing departure times for flights into the Midwest. Detroit 1:45 p.m.; Minneapolis 3:30 p.m.; Chicago 2:12 p.m.; Milwaukee…wow, that one was leaving in 20 minutes. What was he thinking? Why did he want to go to Milwaukee? Well…they had beer there. Stupid. Which way to the tram? He began to walk again, and this time realized he could go no further without going through security. In fact, he suddenly realized, he was already in line. He started to turn and the man behind him, clearly from New York from his accent his dark rimmed glasses, his silly little hat and his general attitude, “Kid, you in line or what?”
He said.
“This way sir,” a heavy set security woman with dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent said. She was waving him forward.
So he’d gone through it all, forgotten some change in his pocket, held up the line, made the New Yorker scowl, which wasn’t hard.
As he’d finished the line, following a quick sweep form the Jamaican lady’s magic searcher wand after the change debacle, the woman sang a few lines of the same song he’d been hearing all day,
“Of all those others trying,
like you,
like me,
to give away their gifts
for good
for the good of all.”
“What?” he’d said turning to her suddenly.
She’d looked at him and laughed.
“Oh sorry, darlin’ I sing sometimes. Funny in this job, I know, but I do sing.”
What was the deal with this song?
As the New Yorker passed behind him with an audible scowl, John had turned to him. The man got a quizzical look on his face. Then said, “Sorry, kid. Just in a hurry.”
As the man hurried away down the terminal he distinctly heard him sing,
“I know you hear me calling…”
This was getting ridiculous. Just then he’d heard the PA announcement
“Discount seats available for flight 617 for Milwaukee, departing in ten minutes, come to terminal 96.”
So, here he was. Why would he want to go to Milwaukee? His folks would freak. He smiled a little. Maybe that was why. His mom was always talking about adventure. His dad was always talking about responsibility. Well…this would be adventure. Maybe he’d find responsibility when he got there.
Now he was face to face with a Middle Eastern airline employee. “God marning, may I halp ensumwee?”
“I…the flight to Milwaukee…like how discount is it?”
“Oh, yuarevarywelcum, $48 dulars. Godpris, yes?”
“Yeah, yes, that’s a great price. Okay.” He took out a crisp graduation fifty dollar bill. What in the world was he doing?
As the man, whose name was, Josef, according to the name tag, tapped away at his computer, he began to sing,
“Know thut mu voice iz ral
I know how blake
The duly daokness…”
***
He nearly threw the in flight magazine down as though it were on fire, but he held on for a second and looked at the girl’s picture again. There was no question, really. This was his Uber driver.
Molly O’Kerne. She was the writer and the singer of the song he’d been hearing all day. It was called, ‘Song of the Deity’
In the interview, the reporter asked her if she was a devout Christian.
“You know, it’s funny. People keep asking me that. And the answer is really, no. I’m not a devout anything. Other than a devout student of life. Oh…that sounds pretty much hippie, doesn’t it? I got that from Mom and Dad.”
He could hear her saying it. Her face came back to him, almost glowing. The interview went on to say that Molly and been raised in a little place called Copper Harbor in Upper Michigan. It was on the tip of a peninsula that pushed out into Lake Superior.
“No doubt, my folks are old hippies,” she said in the article. “They were old when they had me, so they didn’t hover around me the way I hear a lot of parents do now. They just kind of let me grow.”
The interviewer asked her where the lyrics and the idea for the song had come from.
“It just kind of dropped down to me, you know? It occurred to me that whoever is in charge of all this, and I’m convinced someone is in charge, it just seems obvious to me…that whoever is in charge needs our help instead of our hindrance. I mean, everybody, no matter how grown up, needs help? Don’t they?”
Wow. She really was a hippie A beautiful one, though. And apparently this song, was hitting big. How was it he’d never heard it before this morning?
There was a little blonde girl in the seat next to him looking out the window. She had a big tag stuck to her with lots of information and the stewardess was looking after her every few minutes. She must be meeting her parents in Milwaukee. Probably visiting the grandparents or somebody in California. She looked back from the window at him and smiled. It was strange, but she looked like a younger version of Molly. He smiled back and she looked out the window again and began singing…
“I feel it too.
I so love you.
Listen now.
Listen now.
Let’s get going!”
Really?
***
After he landed in Milwaukee he staggered out from he terminal in a daze. They’d hit a head wind somewhere over the Great Plains, a storm had built, and the plane, a 767 had bounced around the sky like a kite. Nearly everybody in his section had gotten sick and they’d descended three times over Milwaukee, but the wind sheer on ground level was too severe and they’d pulled up all three times eventually landing in Eu Claire Wisconsin, when fuel begin began to run low, coming in low over the water. He’d been scared to death as the water got closer with no sign of land, but the little girl had looked over at him from the window, which she’d been fixated on throughout the flight and said, “Whee! Right?”
Then, after an interminable wait on the ground in the plane they’d taken off again and landed, three hours late, in Milwaukee. At one point during the first attempts at Milwaukee, the stewardess had sat down in an emergency seat and begun saying a rosary. It was unreal. Surreal. And through it all, the little girl next to him kept singing Molly’s song. You would think it would have made him hate the song forever, but it hadn’t.
Later, after they finally landed, as he was leaving his seat, the little girl had tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Have a good trip north.”
He hadn’t mentioned where he was going to her. He hadn’t mentioned his destination, because he had no idea what that might be.
And now he was sitting in a terminal in this nearly empty airport wondering what to do next.
There wasn’t another flight to the west coast until the morning. It was almost 7 p.m. Down a ways from him was a car rental desk. Well, the little girl thought he was going north. Why not? He clutched the inflight magazine. Copper Harbor. How far could it possibly be?
***
As it turned out, a helluva long ways. Seven hours, but straight north. And it wasn’t complicated. It was almost a straight shot. What did he expect to find there? Molly’s folks? The northern lights? like Molly mentioned in the interview? Some kind of revelation? Well, whatever lay ahead, it had to be better than what was waiting for him back in Half Moon. There were 30 messages on his phone when he’d turned it back on after the flight to Milwaukee. What could he possibly say to them? Nothing that wouldn’t make things even worse.
“See, Mom, Dad, I met this girl…and I kept hearing this song…and then this little kid said I should go north…”
None of it made any sense.
So why was he smiling?
He turned on the car radio. Guess what was playing.
***
Fort Wilkins was the end of everything. He’d eaten an enormous breakfast, his first food other than airline food since yesterday morning in the rustic restaurant with a view of Lake Superior. Almost everything had a view of Lake Superior here. He’d slept for a while in the rental car, after parking in the little lot there the previous night. He’d decided to sleep through what was left of the chilly August dark morning hours, until the restaurant opened, have breakfast, and go from there. He’d asked the friendly gray haired waitress, who kept calling him ‘hon’, what there was to do around here.
“Oh, there’s Brockway Mountain Drive, and Fort Wilkins.”
He’d driven up Brockway, and it was pretty up there, but more a foothill than a mountain. Still, nice. No revelations there. Solved: nothing. He kept turning on the car radio and the song wasn’t playing. He was almost surprised.
And now, Fort Wilkins, where he was the one and only person visiting, on this ridiculously cold summer day…high 30’s with a north wind…listening to this ranger talk about the history of the fort. It had been built basically as a warehouse for old, mostly wounded Civil War soldiers, who apparently had a thing for a girl named, get this, Fanny Hoe. No kidding. When he started laughing, the ranger, a black woman named Betty who’d grown up in Kentucky, and to whom he’d had to introduce himself earlier as part of the tour, smiled a little.
“How old are you, John?”
“Well…18.”
“And you came here from California.”
“Yup.” Uh oh, this was starting to sound like an interrogation.
“Where are you staying in town?”
“Oh, just got in but…” he had a sudden inspiration. “I’m supposed to hook up with some distant relatives later on today. Maybe you know them? The O’Kernes?”
“Oh…sure! Dave and Molly!” the ranger gave a wide smile. “They’re good friends of mine! Of course you know they run the camping store in town?”
“Uh…sure…sure.” So Molly was named after her mom. Well, he knew where he was going next.
“I suppose you know their daughter then, too.”
“Their…well, no…little Molly passed long before I got here. You must know that…”
“Passed? Wait. She died?”
Betty’s brow furrowed, “Son, do you really know the O’Kernes?”
“Well…like I say, they’re…they’re distant relatives.”
“Uh huh…well, have a nice day. She started up towards one of the restored buildings and cast a quick look over her shoulder as she went.
What in the world was happening?
He got back in the rental car just as his phone went off again in his pocket. What in the world was he doing here?
He was back in Copper Harbor in a matter of minutes and as he passed the restaurant, he spotted the camping store just up the street on the left.
He should really just go home, but how could he not find out? He pulled over, felt a sudden urgency in getting this all over, rushed out of the rental car, slamming the door behind him, and on a near dead run ran into the store leaving a cacophony of bells ringing in the doorway. Two tall, attractive gray haired old folks with round glasses, wearing flannels and hair ties, looked up startled from behind the counter, where they’d been taking some new supplies out of shipment boxes.
The man, who had a grizzle of chin whiskers and a cookie duster mustache looked up, “Well…hello there sporty! What’s the hurry? Looks like a camping emergency!”
The woman, who was nearly as tall as her husband and quite beautiful, just like an older version of Molly, laughed. “What can we do for you?” she said, with a familiar smile.
“You’re the O’Kerne’s, right?”
“Yes,” they both said smiles of puzzlement growing on their faces.
“Well…well…look at this!” He took out the in flight magazine and tore through the pages…
The article, wasn’t there!
“I…I don’t understand…”
“What’s wrong son?” the man said coming out from behind the counter.
“I…I…met your daughter.”
“What…” the woman said. “What’s your…who are you?”
“I’m…I’m John…John Herald…I came here from California…”
“What?” the woman said. “I don’t understand.”
“I…I don’t either. I think I’m going to be sick….”
The room was suddenly fuzzy. Then it was gone.
***
“John…John…”
Where was he?
He looked around. The room had the same log structure as the door. Light was streaming in from a window in the ceiling.
“Where… where am I?”
It was the woman from the store. Molly O’Kerne. “You gave us quite a scare. You gave your folks quite a scare too!”
“You, you called my folks?”
“Yes, John, they were really worried about you!”
“Yeah, yes, I suppose they would be. It was bad of me.”
“Well, it was just…unkind. Not nice at all. They seem like truly fine people.”
“They, they are. They really are.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I, I don’t know. How did I get, here?”
“Oh, you aren’t so heavy, and Mike is strong. He hoisted you upstairs to our apartment. We should take you to a doctor. We promised your folks.”
“Oh, I’m all right.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to insist.”
“Now…now I have to ask. What was this about our daughter?”
How could he possibly explain.
“You know, little Molly has been gone for 20 years.”
“Yeah…I…”
Then it came to him. It really came to him. “Okay…this may seem crazy but, do you know this song?”
The whole song came to him. Somehow he knew it from start to finish. He croaked it out a bit in a kind of folksinger voice that wasn’t bad, he thought. By the time he’d finished two lines Mrs. O’Kerne staggered back a bit. But after a moment, she signaled with her hand for him to keeping going and he did.
“Grant me a place in your heart,
one small place,
and let me grow there,
as you grow
live there
while you live.
You have so much to give.
And I wish to help you give it.
I want to show you a way to live it.
A way to hold the hands,
of all those others living,
loving.
Of all those others trying,
like you,
like me,
to give away their gifts,
for good.
For the good of all.
I know you hear me calling.
Know that my voice is rea.l
I know how bleak,
this daily darkness
makes you feel.
I feel it too.
I so love you!
Listen now.
Listen now.
Let’s get going!”
“John…” she said after a moment. “That’s…that’s…Molly’s poem. She wrote that when she was dying. She was so cheerful. So hopeful. Poor little thing. She didn’t think that way about herself, though. She was grateful! Can you imagine? She was grateful to have been alive just those few short years. She knew what was happening to her. She was sharp as a tack. We couldn’t have pretended with her if we’d wanted to. She wrote that poem. I don’t know how you got it, how you memorized it, but she must have thought you needed it.”
She paused for a moment, looking down at her aging but still supple hands. She laughed a moment to herself. There wasn’t a sign of a tear. She shook her head. “I don’t know that anybody but Mike and I ever saw it. How could you know it?”
When she looked up at him again, her eyes were full of nothing but amazement and questions.
He didn’t know how to go further without sounding crazy. Then he looked at this woman. She was solid as a rock. True as the song itself. True as her daughter. So he just told her, everything, just as it had happened.
***
Ten years later, John Herald sat strumming his acoustic guitar on a simple stool, the afternoon light coming in from the high stained glass window of what once had been a a church steeple. They called the club The Church, and he and the band played it whenever they came to town. The Brethren and gained quite a following for their neo-folk sound. They’d played across North America, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe. They weren’t getting rich, but they were making a living. His parents were proud. They’d been to lots of his concerts. So had the O’Kernes. It never failed, no matter how many new songs they wrote, the crowds always wanted to hear what they called ‘The Little Girl’s Song’. They played it every night as their encore. It was truly their only hit. He never tired of it. The band never tired of it. The words were so childishly earnest. It was almost embarrassing, but he never felt embarrassed. It was hope from the death bed of a little girl, who was incapable of despair. it was love pure and simple. He always told her story, at least the one her folks had told him. He never told his story about her. He’d only told it once: the true story. He would never tell it again. No one would believe it anyway. But they believed Molly’s poem, and it made them feel good.
Author’s note: File this under whimsy. I just thought the idea was fun, and I wanted to see how far I could push it.
O True Apothecary
The following interview was excerpted from Iron Hills Monthly Magazine, known locally as ‘The Monthly’ , the February issue, a special Valentines Day edition, page 10.
Romeo Lives: An Interview with Rom Montague
People say a lot of things about Rom Montague. They say he’s funny, friendly, short, has smoldering continental good looks, that he’s a character, a great tipper, has no visible means of employment, and yes, that he’s either crazy or a pathological liar. The one thing no one ever says of him is that he’s boring. The one thing no one seems to know, is who he really is. Whom does he claim to be? Well, let’s hear it in his own words. On a personal note, Rom Montague is an engaging person, whoever he is. It’s easy to fall under his spell. After a time, his belief in his own wild story is contagious. I found myself half believing him at the time of this interview. You decide for yourself. The interview took place in Montague’s posh suite on the top floor of Iron Hill’s Heritage Inn.
MM: Okay, for the record, who are you?
RM: I am Romeo Antonio Roderigo Montague.
MM: And when and where were you born?
RM: 1472, Verona, Italy.
MM: That would make you…
RM: 545 years old.
MM: You realize how incredible that sounds.
RM: Of course. If I were you I wouldn’t believe it. Most people don’t. It doesn’t matter much to me anymore.
MM: Why not?
RM: I know who I am.
MM: So, to be clear, you claim you are the famous lover of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet.
RM: Not much of a lover, frankly, but I guess you could characterize it that way. I am the fellow he was writing about.
MM: Why not much of a lover?
RM: Well, even if you’re just going by what you read in the play, which is only slightly exaggerated, there’s nothing very calculating about the character Will created. He’s just a boy, who has an open heart. He falls in love easily. I like to think I’m still like that.
MM: ‘Will’…?
RM: Oh yes. I knew Shakespeare. I met him in The Boarshead on Cheapside, in 1594.
MM: Really…
RM: Oh, absolutely. Will was a good fellow. Quite brilliant of course. A little fixated. Always looking for a story. Very concerned about his finances. He was rising up at that point. The Henry plays had made his reputation. The Queen had her eye on him. He was desperate, as I said, for stories, anybody’s stories.
MM: Was, he amazed when you told him you were Romeo? I mean, that story was known even then as I understand it. You would have already been how old?
RM: Well, let’s do the math, let’s see…122…I think that’s right. Oh, as I recall he smiled at me. He didn’t really care if I was who I said I was, he just wanted to hear my version of the famous story. As you suggest, there’d been a couple of other accounts of it already, and he leaned on those, but when I read the play closely now, I can pick out the telling details he got from me.
MM: Such as?
RM: Oh…dear Mercutio for instance, he got him just right: so smitten and bitten by life. That boy was something. I have missed him over the years. He died much too young. He was already pretty damaged when he came back from the war…
MM: Mercutio was a soldier?
RM: Oh, read the Queen Mab Speech, my dear, it’s quite obvious! Nowadays, the psychiatrists call it, Delayed Stress Syndrome, I believe. Western Man has become so big on classifying everything. The long and short is, he’d had a soldier’s experience and he saw the strings, the manipulation in society. He knew too much to live long, poor boy. I loved him. We all did. Will did such a fine job getting him just right.
MM: You admire Shakespeare’s play, then?
RM: Oh yes! In fact, I’ve been in the play several times.
MM: Really?
RM: Yes, I was in a production that Will’s company, the King’s Men, put on shortly after Jame’s ascendency.
MM: Whom did you play?
RM: Myself. I got terrible reviews as I recall. They said I was too young for the role…
MM: Too young?
RM: Yes, I looked about 16 then, and the reviewer thought I should be playing Juliet.
MM: Oh, that’s priceless…
RM: Isn’t it? I did play her once just a few years later in a road company, but that was difficult.
MM: Why?
RM: It broke my heart to remember her. Sweet girl. Still the love of my life.
MM: Have there been many…loves…that is?
RM: Not as many as you might think. As I said, ha, I’m no Romeo. Or Casanova, or Don Juan, more to the point of the metaphor.
MM: Anybody famous among those loves?
RM: Other than Julie, no. Madmen don’t run in famous circles as a rule, except as a curiosity.
MM: Is that what you consider yourself?
RM: Well…at times. It’s an incredible story. My life. I wouldn’t believe it, if someone told it to me.
MM: Is there anyone special now?
RM: Oh no. I try not to fixate on those I fall in love with. It hurts the heart. I’ve been through it too many times.
MM: All right, so let’s back up, how did this all come about? How is it that you’re still alive over 500 years…
RM: 545 years.
MM: … 545 years later?
RM: How well do you know the play?
MM: Well…I’ve read it five or six times. I’ve probably seen it three times that I can think of…
RM: All right, then, you remember the apothecary?
MM:Yes, of course.
RM: Yes? Well, he sold me a pretty faulty batch of poison.
MM: How so?
RM: Well, unlike the potion the dear Friar gave to Julie, which simulated death, mine was supposed to be out and out poison.
MM: And it wasn’t?
RM: No indeed. What it did was put me in a state, of what we’d call now, suspended animation, for about a year. I woke up lying on a stone slab in the crypt of the Montagues, staggered out, and made my way to the center of town where I found monuments to both Julie and me and, on the same stones, accounts of our deaths. Just as promised by the fathers at the end of the play. I was as amazed as anybody else. I went immediately to the church and found the Friar there alone. He nearly gave up the ghost when he saw me, poor old fellow. He took me into the confessional and I told him everything I knew. He thought it over for a while and then he wept.
MM: Because?
RM: Well, he realized that if I showed up again in Verona, it would ruin everything.
MM: How so?
RM: Well, since my ‘death’ there’d been peace in Verona. A hard won peace with tears on both sides. Equal losses. How would it be if I showed up alive again? At the very least the Capulets would see me as the cause of Julie’s death, and there we’d be again. The Friar was quite right, really, much as it broke his heart. It broke mine too, never being able to see my family again.
MM: I see. Yes, how difficult for you! So what did you do?
RM: Well, for a time I went to Mantua, and hid again. Then the Friar got me some money and put me on a boat for Spain, where he knew some rather prominent Italians who were planning a voyage.
MM: You don’t mean…
RM: Well, yes, I was on that voyage in 1492 aboard the Santa Maria. I was appalled by the behavior of the other sailors towards the natives. From there, I found my way back to Europe on the return voyage, and went from job to job for 100 years or so.
MM: Such as?
RM: Oh, sailor, wine merchant, architect, writer. I dabbled in politics in several countries for a while, but it was a dirty business. I’ve been a soldier, several times, often against my will. Saw some horrible things. I was a priest for a time. I owned some factories and other businesses. I was a physician for a while. Ha, this will amuse you: I was a ball player for the Detroit Tigers for several years during the 1920’s and 30’s. You can look me up in the baseball encyclopedia. I played under the name Rommy “The Spark” Montague. I was a pretty good short stop. I stole a lot of bases.
MM: Ha! Incredible… And, after that?
RM: I bounced around nearly everywhere again. I learned even more languages…
MM: Yes, you have no discernible accent.
RM: True. I’m kind of a chameleon that way. That happens after 500 years. Anyway, I moved around, told stories. Became very wealthy by selling off ancient vintages of wine and other artifacts. Money became no object.
MM: Where have you been?
RM: Well…everywhere. Both the poles, every other continent. I’ve been on several expeditions, to places that are no longer wildernesses. I’d like to get into space some time. I’m thinking that eventually the opportunity will probably present itself.
MM: Really?
RM: Why not? I’ve got my health and a good many years yet to live, apparently, and barring the unforeseen.
MM: Yes, you seem pretty well preserved.
RM: Ha, how old do I look? I won’t be offended.
MM: I’d say about 40. How do you account for that if you’re immortal?
RM: Oh…I don’t think I am. I’m aging, just very slowly, say 10 years or so for every 200 or thereabouts.
MM: Did you ever ask the apothecary about his ‘poison’?
RM: The Friar tried, but he could never find him. He’d fled town after my death. I later found some traces of him, but he was dead by then. There was nothing about an immortality potion in any of his papers.
MM: So why, Marquette and the U.P.?
RM: Well, I love the people. I love the landscape. I love the history of all those who have been here. I love that it’s still a little difficult to get by in this climate. The long winters give me time to work on my memoirs…
MM: Yes, I’d like to read those, but, if what you say is true, how will you know when to stop writing? Or are you planning several volumes?
RM: Well, there are several volumes already. I’ll have to self publish, of course, it’s unlikely anybody will publish the ravings of a mad man. Then again, given recent events, and the recent fluctuation in what people take for truth, there may be a market. Ha, ha!
MM: Sadly, I think you’re right. Well, any future plans beyond the memoirs and space travel?
RM: Plans are far behind me. I live. I just live. I watch the young grow old, and then they die and I try not to be sad. I try not to make close attachments, because it hurts so much. I never get used to it. I still do make attachments, though.
MM: Do you have…children.
RM: No, thank God. That would have broken me, seeing them die, I think. I don’t know if it is a result of the potion, or if I was born that way, but there have been no children. I’ve come to think of most everyone as my children though, since I’m the oldest person alive.
MM: Are you sure of that?
RM: Ha, ha! Touche! Well, perhaps not. If there is anyone older, they have not made themselves known to me.
MM: Why aren’t you more secretive about who you are? Aren’t you afraid the scientists will want to run a million tests on you.
RM: Well, when there was a reason, and until about 30 years ago, just out of habit I suppose, I did keep my story a secret. But then it suddenly occurred to me that nobody would believe me anyway! And the scientists, well they work with the known and are very skeptical about such stories and I hardly blame them. Besides, with my medical knowledge, I’ve run my own tests.
MM: And the results?
RM: Everything normal for a 40 year old. So…
MM: So no way to prove the story anyway.
RM: Exactly, and that lets the scientists out.
MM: Any final words for our readers?
RM: Ah…no, not really. Only that I’m here and I don’t seem to be going anywhere. And also, I’d love to talk to them. I’d like to hear about their lives and their aspirations, and any funny anecdotes about their families or friends or themselves, even if it’s a shaggy dog story, or an old fisherman’s yarn. Stories have enlivened and eased my days during my long stay here on Earth, whether I’ve heard them on a ship’s deck, in a playhouse, on a cinema screen, absorbed them from the lips of a new acquaintance or an old friend, or read them between the pages of some volume. I do so love a tale.
Author’s Note: The single hardest thing concerning the field of writing, in my experience, is not coming up with an idea or writing the story; it is finding a publisher.
It Only Takes One Yes
Money. M-O-N-E-Y. That’s what it was coming down to, just as everybody had told her. She’d listened. Damn it she had. Gail looked at herself in the kitchen window’s reflection, projected by the dawn over the big lake. Her long, straight red hair was a mess, flying all over in the early morning sunshine. Good God, were those lines on her freckled face? Lines, way beyond her 29 young years? All from worry. There were dark circles under her eyes. What had gone wrong? She took a long sip of her coffee and eased herself down into her kitchen chair by the cheap, brown, formica-topped, dining table.
She felt the stone arrowhead in the pocket of her jeans. She’d found it walking on the beach on Lake Superior when she was a little girl. She’d been 10 that summer day walking with her mom and dad, down on the beach not half a mile from here, long before her parents had departed the north for Florida. Ever since she’d carried it in her pocket or purse for good luck. She took it out and looked at it. It was old, perfect. Maybe even worth something to a museum, but not enough. No, not enough. She put it back into her pocket.
Gail Burke was a practical girl. She’d made a plan. She’d worked for seven years at the newspaper, saving money. She’d rented this goofy garage apartment on Ridge Street, fixed it up for next to nothing. She’d probably lost the love of her life, just two years ago when Darren had asked her, there just down the hill and a bit north and west, out on the Lake Superior beach at McCarty’s Cove, to marry him, and she’d said she couldn’t, at least not yet. He’d nodded. He’d been quiet all the rest of that day. That was the day she’d shown him her stone arrowhead.She’d even thought, momentarily, desperately, about giving it to him, in compensation, as a kind of promise of a possible future, but she’d decided that would just be leading him on. It wouldn’t be right. And after the little, apologetic dinner of whitefish and rice she’d fixed him in this very kitchen that evening, and in which he’d been reluctant to partake, he’d walked out that door after a chaste kiss that was a definite message, and hadn’t called or been back since. She’d felt so lame, so selfish telling him that the time wasn’t right. She’d told him that same thing many times before that day, whenever the topic of marriage was even vaguely in the wind. He knew the score, but that was just it. How long was he supposed to wait? He was done waiting, apparently. She didn’t blame him. Well, tomorrow she turned 30. And she’d made herself a promise, if she didn’t have a book contract by her 30th birthday, she’d go back to journalism and stay there, get on with her life. Darren wasn’t an option anymore, though. His wedding invitation, featuring him holding a dark haired girl named Chelsey close, had come last week. So there was that.
The one thing she knew, though, was that if she went back to journalism, she would be writing no books for the foreseeable future. If you were a full time hack writer, there was no time or energy to write the great American novel: the end.
Gail walked back to her little office, where her manual typewriter waited for her like a difficult and demanding friend. She looked at those five query letters she had just typed, addressed, sealed into envelopes and laid out on her messy, cheap, metal desk. She looked over at the stack of rejection slips in the wire basket she’d brought home from the Mining Journal offices, and then out over the Marquette houses towards Lake Superior. In the top drawer were the meticulously typed final drafts of three novels. She’d shown them to her professors who had raved about all three. They’d shaken their heads in admiration. “You’re going places,” Dr. Kindred, had told her with his characteristic half smile on the last day of his advanced fiction writing course. Then, though, and she’d never forgotten this, he’d adjusted his glasses a little nervously as they stood out in the narrow old school hallway, and he’d looked slightly away, back into his classroom when he said, “If you can only find a publisher.”
It had seemed to Gail like a done deal each time she’d finished a novel, sent out a query letter. She knew the work was good, and that had been verified over and over, by experts, professors, and other writers she knew. After she’d written Expect Grace, she’d thought the lightning was about to strike. And she’d even had a personal letter from a New York publisher among the many rejections. That letter had told her, in essence, “You’re almost there…” And so she’d written The Bridge is Love, and sent it to the same publisher, and received a letter from a secretary saying that Ms. Thorne, who had written her that wonderful “almost there”, had left the publishing business. Another stack of anonymous rejections followed. Undaunted, well, mostly so, she’d written All These New Faces. Nothing. Literally nothing. And now, even Dr. Kindred, though still willing to read anything she wrote, always responded to the news that she had no bites on anything she’d written so far, with a said little smile. And then he’d added reluctantly, as though slowly giving up on a very old dream himself, “There may come a time when you’ll have to make some difficult decisions.”
Well, today was April 1, 1989, her thirtieth birthday. She had money for one more month’s rent. She didn’t know how she was going to pay her car payment. Tony, an old friend and now an editor at the Marquette Mining Journal had told her that there was another opening waiting for her, but she would have to call him this week if she wanted the job, at a lower salary, of course, than when she’d left. Well, it was Saturday morning, as end of the week as you could get. Gail walked out of her office, leaving the query letters on the desk and looked at the phone on her kitchen wall. She sighed.
“Time to make a difficult decision…”
There was a knock at the door.
What the…? It’s 7:30 in the morning! Who knocks on the door of a garage apartment at 7:30 in the morning? Was it Mrs. Kent? She’d paid the rent, hadn’t she?
She walked the few steps to the door looking around the main room, then through the doorways of her bedroom and her office, both a mess. She closed those doors.
“Just a second!” she said to the person behind the door. Then took another look around, and placed her dirty dishes in the sink, ran some hot water and added some dish soap, then remembered her messy hair and quickly patted it down.
Why did she even care what her place looked like? What she looked like? Who was she expecting? It was probably just some eager beaver vacuum salesman. But…you never knew…
Gail turned down the radio on the kitchen counter, a new Neil Young song was playing.
She straightened her hair in the window reflection one more time and as much as possible, walked hesitantly to the door and opened it. There stood a thin late middle aged woman of about her height. The woman’s long straight gray hair was pulled back in a pony tail. Who did she look like? She was very familiar…Mom, she looked like Mom. If this woman had a cutesy but practical 50’s hairdo, she’d look exactly like Mom. Was this some relative she didn’t know about? Mom was always doing that to her. “Oh you remember aunt Tilda? Well, she’s going to be vacationing up your way …”
After a moment of awkward silence, Gail said, “Hello.”
“Um…Hi…Gail Burke?”
“Yes…I’m Gail…”
“I’m Elizabeth Thorne…Beth for short. I’m sorry to call so early, but I just came back to settle myself in yesterday. And I was so anxious to talk to you! Um… see…I grew up in Marquette and I’ve been away for years…but…I went through a divorce and…oh…sorry, sorry…you don’t need my life story. Look, I’m a little nervous…”
“Ms. Thorne, is it?”
“Um…Beth…Beth…please…”
“Beth. Well, do come in. Sorry, the place is a mess.”
“Oh thank you! I’m…here to talk to you about your book…”
“My…”
“Well, all three of them actually.”
She had to be dreaming. She was clearly dreaming. Thorne…wait…was this the lady from…?
“You’re the publisher from New York? Falcon Press?”
“Well, no, that’s my…uh…older sister, but I am a publisher.”
“Oh…”
“See, my sister loved your first book and then someone from the publishing house passed on the next two to her. She loved those too, but she’s retired. She…loved your books so much that when she retired and when I told her I was thinking of going back into publishing again, she passed them along to me… Oh, this is all mixed up! Let me start again. See, I got divorced, decided to come back home and…well…I’d started in the publishing business a few years after…Missy, that’s my sister, before I got married, but then marriage happened and…”
“Yes?”
The woman eyed her over, and she wet her lips as though she were trying to think of what to say next.
This is weird, it’s like I’m interviewing her. Why is SHE nervous?
As if reading her thoughts the woman continued, “Well, see you’d be taking a chance on a new publishing house, right here in Marquette. I’m starting it, and I want you to be our kick off author, our primary client. You’re so talented!”
“You want to…”
“…publish your book. Well, actually all of them. One each year for the next three years with an option for another every year after that.”
“Oh…my…”
“We’d start with, well, part of my divorce settlement money, $50,000 plus royalties. Then we’d go to $75,000 depending on reception, and $100,000…”
“I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming…”
“Then…then…you’re interested?”
“Am I…Oh my God! Yes, yes, yes! You have no idea what was about…Oh, oh, please sit down, let me get you some coffee!”
***
Okay. She hated to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, any way she examined things, this was just weird. She looked again out her kitchen window, but this time her kitchen window was not in a garage apartment. Now she owned that garage apartment. She also owned this kitchen window and the kitchen and the whole house. She owned and lived in the Kent’s old house on Ridge Street, and the view of Lake Superior and the harbor, was even better. The money that Beth had promised her, hadn’t been a dream, a con, or a lie. It was good. It was all true and fine. And the books, had started slow, but had built an audience. Nothing massive, but enough so that she could keep writing the kind of literary fiction she’d always wanted to write, and afford her own house, her own car, her own life. Ore Dock Books, Beth’s publishing house, was a success, and had half a dozen other editors under its auspices now. The little publishing house had started the careers of all kinds of young writers from rural areas across America. Yes, Gail was living comfortably now, very comfortably in the Kent’s old house and renting out the garage apartment to another young writer. It was April 1, 1999. Love had come and gone a few times and there was no marriage, but there was a very fulfilled life with lots of colleagues, but strangely very little contact with the woman who had made it all possible. That’s what was weird. Where was Beth Thorne? Nearly every time she called the office, Beth was away. There had been only a few exceptions, and those always when Gail had actually stopped in there unannounced, out of her old journalistic curiosity, to check things over. Beth had been mostly absent from the office, always away on business somewhere, for the better part of a year this time. And even before that, Beth had only been there on and off, when Gail called.
Gail took out her arrowhead from the pocket of her jeans, the same jeans, if she remembered correctly, that she’d been wearing the day she first met Beth. They still fit. She was a little ashamed of taking pride it that. But vanity and success aside, she said aloud to herself, “Really, who is that woman?”
Here was the weirdest part of all: she’d been so happy with her life in recent years, that days of wondering about her good luck like this rarely happened. And every time she did start having serious doubts about Beth, the woman would show up at the…
There was a knock at the back door.
Really?
Sure enough, it was Beth. And that was the other thing. She looked exactly the same as she had ten years ago. This always happened too. Oh, this was crazy! Why did she insist on assuming something was wrong? The checks were all good. The fans wrote her letters. She was doing good work. Changing lives. Creating honest art. Wasn’t that enough? Still, her old journalist instincts wouldn’t leave her alone. Something wasn’t right here. She really had to know. Who was Beth Thorne? She went to the door.
“Hi, Gail.”
Yup, here she was, not a minute older.
Gail smiled a bemused smile and opened the door wide, “Come on in.”
”Okay, Gail…I need to…”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“I know.”
“You do?” Gail chuckled a little into the transforming air between them. Then said to her mysterious benefactor, with a frank but friendly look, “How could you know that?”
“I always know.”
Gail hesitated for a moment to ask her question. She half believed that if she did, it might all go up in smoke. Might all be a dream. Her publication, Ore Dock Books, her new house, her new financially secure life, all of it. Still, once a journalist…“What do you mean, you always know?”
“Is there some coffee? This may take a while.”
***
The story Beth had just told Gail as they sat at her tastefully understated but sturdy oak kitchen table, was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. The most gullible person in the world wouldn’t believe it. But Gail, a trained journalist and professional observer of people, their moods, their whims, their lies, and hidden truths, did.
“So…”
“Want me to go over it again?”
Gail nodded, at a loss for words.
“I gave up on writing novels,” Beth said.
“When… again exactly?”
“Our birthday. April 1, 1989. I went back into journalism. I came to enjoy it, then, after a while, I didn’t. After Darren’s divorce, we got married, then we divorced. I went back to school, went into teaching. Taught English. Worked until I was 70, those last few years, wow, tough! But it was a good life. Not the one I…we…had wanted, though.”
“And then…”
“Well…Aunt Peggy, I barely knew I…we…had an Aunt Peggy…we met her on and off at reunions over the years and we’d talked a few times…? Do you remember?
Gail nodded, “Vaguely…”
“I think we’d met her twice or three times, and exchanged a few letters, by the time we were 40.”
“Yes…yes…I remember now. She has the big eyes. The wide smile. She used to carry…”
“Peppermints around in her purse.”
“Sure, Aunt Peggy…”
“…but I never expected this! Anyway, she was one of those rich relatives Mom was always talking about…she passed on and left me three and a half million dollars. That’s a lot of money, Gail, even 30 years from now… And, I was sitting there in my apartment, our old apartment out over the garage, 70 years old, no husband, no kids, no living immediate relatives, nobody to pass this nest egg on to. I don’t know, maybe Aunt Peggy had it in her head that I was still the age I’d been the last time we talked. Anyway, it was April 1, 2029 and I took out our arrowhead and I said, “Grace comes late, but it’s still grace, isn’t it? Still, if only I’d had this money 40 years ago!”
“And the next thing you knew…”
“I was standing inexplicably outside your…our door on April 1, 1989, and for whatever magical or pseudo scientific reason, I knew exactly where I was and I suddenly had a plan. Well, to me that seems like…it was…about two days ago.”
“I can’t…”
“Of course you can’t. I hardly believe it myself. Yes, this, in my part of the universe, only happened about two days ago. It’s all much newer to me than it is to you.”
“But how have you managed the publishing house over the…years?”
“Apparently, I’ve been working on it diligently the whole time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Gail, I don’t know how this works any more than you do. I wished it all into being, but I’m not in control. And every time I’ve stopped in at the publishing house over the past two days, which to everybody there has been many years, nobody is surprised to see me, or acts as though I’d been away for more than a day or so. I usually find myself there when you are getting most suspicious and you stop in to check things over. I’ll suddenly find myself in my office there, holding a half cup of coffee in my hand. Apparently, things are going great guns. Everybody seems to know me, seems to be picking up conversations we’ve had a million times. And what’s even stranger? I remember those conversations and all the experiences of the years between.
“Can…can…I tell anybody?”
“You can, but what would the point be…? It might even ruin your reputation. I mean, what would people think?”
“They’d think Gail Burke, author, has gone nuts. I see. They’d never believe me… I hardly believe you…me…God! It’s so confusing! I suppose, I could write it. I suppose, but it’s so goofy, hokey even…”
Beth Thorne, publisher, a.k.a., Gail Burke, age 70, shook her head and smiled at Gail Burke, author, age 40.
“Besides…” the younger Gail started with a cool laugh, “we’re done with journalism and we don’t write…”
But the older Gail completed her sentence, “… science fiction.” And in that moment, the older Gail smiled enigmatically and began to disappear like the Cheshire Cat.
Author’s Note: In revising this story I came to realize how much it owes to the original Star Trek episodes “The Menagerie” and “Metamorphosis” and to the Spielberg/ Kubrick film “A.I.”. Then I figured, “So what?” Shakespeare ‘borrowed’ plots all the time. If it’s good enough for The Bard, it’s certainly good enough for the likes of little old me.
Empathy
This was Earth. No doubt about it. This was Earth. But something was terribly wrong. Well, a lot of things were. First off, he’d never landed with the other 29 crew members on the target planet. A real Goldilocks planet, Proxima C: just right, right down to being relatively near at hand. The second circumstance that had definitely not been in the plans was that he’d come back to Earth somehow in an escape pod, which meant something had gone wrong with the ship. Third, the pod should not have been able to bring him back to Earth on its own. It was designed to find the nearest planet to the target, go into orbit and keep signaling in hopes that an Earth ship, or someone would find it. If someone from Earth had found him, and brought him back here, back to the very Kennedy Space Center, the launch pad, for God’s sakes, where were they now? Where was anybody? Fourth, he was dressed in his favorite blue comfortable shorts, his favorite Einstein T-shirt, and his favorite walking sandals from back home. How was that possible? Sure, he’d brought them along, but that’s not what he had lain down wearing. Fifth, he’d come to consciousness, a moment ago, in the pod, lying on the suspended animation bed, and now, outside, standing before the buildings of Cape Kennedy, he turned to look back at the pod and it was gone.
Yup, something was terribly wrong here.
The buildings of Cape Kennedy were exactly the ones he remembered. If what the chronometer inside the pod said was true, how could those same buildings still exist? The chronometer inside the pod said something he couldn’t believe, at least not in his heart, not in his gut. For the sake of his sanity, he couldn’t really afford to fathom the reading on that now vanished chronometer, as a reality. That reading frankly terrified him, though he was in “mission mind” now and trying to keep his emotions in check. He wondered if the chronometer might be malfunctioning. The chronometer which, since it had suddenly disappeared might not really ever have existed. He actually hoped the chronometer wasn’t real, or that it was, at the very least malfunctioning.
The chronometer had said that the year was 1, 650,2021 A.D.
By that year, Jimmy, there probably won’t be any people anymore. If there are, they’ll have changed, noticeably. But maybe not necessarily. Strange as it sounds, 1.5 or so million years isn’t really that long in geological and biological time. And if the normal genetic adaptations are working to the advantage of the human species and nothing else has intervened…
He looked around him. Everything was so clean! So very clean! The air was the freshest he had ever breathed. It almost hurt to breathe it; that felt very good. And the weather… Perfect! Like in a dream.
Maybe this is a dream.
“Okay. So why…why can’t I dream up some people?” he mumbled aloud.
Suddenly clouds started to swirl in what, up to then, had been a cloudless sky, they suddenly spun down and came, like a luxurious, shimmering, windless, tornado straight to the ground just a few feet away and swirled about him harmlessly in a kind of benevolent mist. Light flickered in the sky, palm trees swayed in the distance, and there was a kind of cacophonous whisper in this mist.
As suddenly, he was surrounded by people. Smiling people. People he knew. All of them familiar. People he’d known most of his life: a hundred of them at least. Some of whom, his father for instance, were suddenly there at various ages, in multiple guises. Everybody was smiling at him.
He nearly fainted.
Okay Jimmy. Stay with it. Stay with it. What’s going on here?
He looked around at them. The smiles continued. It was like something out of a horror movie.
He tried to manage a smile of his own.
“Hello…”
And suddenly they all, every single, one started talking at once. They were talking about…well…everything! Everything he’d ever known each of them to say. Comforting things. Lovely things.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it. His emotions got the better of him.
“Stop!”
There was the flickering of light again, the swirl of cloud, the gentle vortex of mist. And they were all gone.
“What in the living hell is…”
And still again the light, the swirl of cloud and now…
“Oh my God!”
There were devils, pitchforks, human sacrifices! There was screaming, gouts of blood everywhere, and then all the clouds parted and a being clothed in white, big as any of the buildings, bigger, infinitely bigger! The being rumbled in a voice beyond voices, “Back to the abyss you demons!”
And the ground opened and the devils vanished… And he was faced with this being whose presence he could barely tolerate
“No!” He averted his eyes, fell prostrate, behaving, he suddenly realized with half an hysterical chuckle, just as people behaved in such situations in the Bible. He peeked upwards. Flicker, swirl, gone…
“I guess, I better watch what I say!”
The flicker, the swirl, much smaller this time, and those very words: “I guess I better watch what I say!” Floated in the air before his eyes.
After a moment of astonishment, Jimmy, child-like, poked at one of the letters. Hard as stone, and yet it floated.
He nearly said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…” but he really wasn’t in the mood to meet the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion.
Think Jimmy. Think. What would be safe to say?
He tried to walk around the floating words: “I guess, I better watch what I say!”, two or three times, but they only followed him. He took jab steps quickly to his right and left like a football player trying to fake out an opponent. It was pointless. The words still hung before his eyes.
He thought for a moment.
“Make these words go away.”
A quick flash and flicker and they were gone.
Now, what to say?
At last it came to him.
“Am…am I dreaming?”
A pleasant whispering voice sounded: genderless, like a child and an aged person simultaneously.
“No.”
Well, what would a dream say? It doesn’t want you to wake up. If you do it ceases to exist.
He thought for a moment longer.
“Could you…gently…prove to me that I’m not dreaming?”
Tiny flicker, swirl, and it felt like he was being playfully pinched on the right upper arm.
He couldn’t help it, he laughed.
And then there was a sound, a kind of imitation of his laughter that gradually evolved into a slightly different laugh, again, genderless. Ageless.
Jimmy’s jaw dropped in wonder.
His next sentence came out before he could plan it…
“Who…who are you… really?”
“I…” began the uncanny whisper, but this time with a trace of…was it?…yes it was, sadness and then a hesitation.”
“I…” it started again. “I don’t really know. Is…is that…okay?”
Jimmy hesitated for a long moment. “Well…yes…I guess it is. Sure. Of course. That’s a hard question to answer. I guess if I were asked it, I wouldn’t quite know how to tell you who I am either… I mean, who am I?”
The voice happily, immediately began again, “Oh, well, you’re James Michael Ferrell, born January 17…”
“No, I know that. Thanks, but I know all that. What I meant was, if I were asked, like I asked you, who I am…who I am really…inside, I mean, well people spend lifetimes trying to figure that out.”
“Yes…” said the voice. “I’ve spent many…lifetimes.”
“How…how many…?”
There was a rich sadness in the voice, “Countless.”
“Have…have you had any luck? I mean…have you figured out who you are?”
“No…not exactly. I do know what defines me, though.”
“Defines…I don’t understand…something else defines you?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for a person to come here. I’ve been searching over every atom of the Galaxy, one at a time…”
“Oh my…poor you!”
“That’s….that’s a nice thing to say.”
“Well, what an awful task! So, monotonous…”
“I had time…”
Jimmy began to laugh again and the voice laughed with him. Then he sobered.
“Am I, am I the last one…”
“One?”
“The last…” he gulped. “…the last person in the galaxy?”
“I don’t know…” the voice said. “…but you’re the first one I’ve found.”
“Where…where was I?”
There was a long hesitation….”I’m afraid to tell you.”
“Oh…” Jimmy steeled himself. “You can tell me…”
“No… I don’t think you understand.”
“I guess not.”
“No…” the gentle laughter again. “I don’t think you’d understand where you were if I told you and it might…hurt…you to find out.”
“Hurt…me…how?”
“It’s too…much…too strange for your mind…words fail…”
“I think I get the idea. You’re trying to spare me the pain of incomprehension, right? The pain of chaos? Okay. Thank you. You’re very kind. I…trust your judgement.”
There was a long, long pause. And then gentle weeping.
“What’s, what’s wrong?”
“You’ve…touched…me. That was…sweet…a sweet thing to say.”
“Oh, just being polite; it was nothing. But…you’re welcome… So, so you’re here to respond to me? Is that what you think? I give your life meaning?”
“Yes…yes…I think so. I think I live to serve you. I think my very…well being…depends on it.”
“Oh…that’s so, so kind. So…well, good.”
The weeping again.
“Oh, now I don’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“No,” said the voice. “No, it feels very good. After…so long, to know that what I do pleases another.”
Something occurred to Jimmy. “I don’t want to offend you, but are you perhaps, a kind of machine?”
There was a long, long pause. “Yes…yes, I think so, at least. I think that I was a ‘machine’ as you conceive it, once, a long time ago. But I aspire to more, much more.”
“You’ve achieved, much much more! Infinitely more! You’ve done well. Uh oh…”
The weeping went on for several minutes.
“Now…now…”Jimmy kept saying. “Now…now…”
Then there was a long, long pause.
“Well,” Jimmy said. “What should we do now?”
“What would you like to do?”
“Well, a few things. I am pretty hungry…”
Swirl, flash, and an enormous banquet of his favorite foods appeared before him and a table and chairs set for a picnic.
Jimmy laughed. “Yeah, this will do..Thanks!”
“You’re welcome. Always.”
Jimmy had a thought. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“Oh, you’ve already done it, just by being alive…”
“No, really. There must be something.”
There was a long pause.
At last the voice said, “Could…could I have a hug?”
“Oh for…well…of course! Any time! Only…”
“Only what?”
“How would I hug you?”
“I can take on any form you desire…”
“Oh well, sure, but this is for you. Just…just be yourself.”
There was a long, long pause, and some weeping and confusion…
Jimmy felt terrible and tried to calm the voice with soothing words over and over to no avail.
Finally, the voice said, “I’m not sure I know how to ‘be myself’.”
“Give it a try! Just try something. Anything you want. You’re much smarter than I am. I’m sure you’ll figure out something. Just do it by trial and error.”
“You…you might not like it.”
“Well…you have a point. I don’t really know what pleases you. I understand your concern. So… find a way you’re comfortable with that best expresses you as you know yourself, and which won’t harm me.
There was a long, long, pause….”I’ll have to think about that.”
Jimmy laughed. “Okay, fair enough. When you’re ready then.”
“How…considerate of you…how wonderful!” said the voice.
“Not at all!” Jimmy said. “I’m delighted to make you happy.
“This might take a while,” the voice added.
“That’s okay. We’ve got time, right?”
“All the time in the world.”
Author’s Note: I’ve always had a soft spot for Raymond Chandler. Somehow, despite the deliciously gauche noire cliches he created and perpetuated, there is real heart and a bit of intellect intrinsic in the words of books like “The Big Sleep”. Here I’ve combined Chandleresque prose with a contemporary U.P. locale, a touch of science fiction and fantasy, and I hope some enjoyable whimsy. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing this. I hope it shows.
Death of the Luddite
The family members told me that the first of the cell phone emojis from Charlie Kivela arrived a year after Charlie’s death. It showed up on his wife Carla Cardoni-Kivela’s phone, on the phones of her two sisters Nikki and Cordelia, and on the phone of Mickey O’Doul, Nikki’s husband, an ex-cop and current private investigator. Mickey had been the last one to see Charlie. They’d been hunting together out in the Seney Plains on the property of the True Readers Fish and Hunt Club, which had been in the Kivela family for almost 100 years and which Charlie had shared with ten of his best friends from his old job at the university and with their families. There were other hunting clubs like it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but not exactly like it. The unusual name for the club came from the fact that literature had always been important in the Kivela family, and thus the camp had myriad book shelves always stocked with classics and the best new literature. It also came from an old saying in the camp coined by Charlie’s grandfather, “If you can’t read a great book on our shelves or a clear critter track on our grounds, we’ll be glad to teach you how.” At some point an old member of the club had carved that into a nice slice of hickory that hung over the massive mantel in the main camp. The members took it seriously. Their job was education in the old ways of readership and sportsmanship in the heart of the great outdoors. I had heard some legends about the place. Mickey O’D filled me in on the rest.
My name’s Faraday. I used to carry a badge with the FBI. Then I retired, or so I thought. Folks I know keep calling me back to the job on the Q.T. I don’t like it much. I never did like the job much, but I’m good at it. And, If you’re good at something, especially in the U.P., people expect you to keep doing it, even well after you’ve grown old and tired like me. The truth of it? True expertise in any field is a scarce quantity anywhere, but in small rural places like our rough, wide peninsula, if you have expertise you are absolutely obligated to use it. So, I do.
Anyway, I came kind of late to this case. The family didn’t call me in until they’d explored several other means of inquiry: the ones you’d imagine, and the ones you wouldn’t think of in a million years if you’re a normal kind of joe. They are a funny group, that family. It didn’t take me much sniffing around to figure out that something smelled rotten. That’s the thing about me that sometimes gets me in trouble with clients: I like to find the truth. Not just the tasty version of the truth they tell me to find, but all the rotten crust that surrounds its rotten heart. That was surely the case here.
If you’ve got a cell phone, and who doesn’t these days, you’ve surely seen, most likely used emojis. People have half forgotten at this late date that these little doodads have a Japanese origin, as a kind of hieroglyphics. Little, mostly simple images that deliver a message without words. They were designed to save space in text messages. And now, of course, they’ve more than taken on a life of their own. They’ve even got their own damned movie franchise, for Christ’s sakes!
Anyway, like I said, the first of the strange emojis involved in this case came to Carla, her sisters and Mickey. It was a pretty conventional emoji: a hug. That was sweet and strange for the ladies, but a little strange and uncomfortable for Mickey, who sees himself as a tough guy, carries it around on his shoulder, always daring everybody to knock it off. I never cared for Mickey much, for that very reason. I’d done some work with him when he was still a cop and I was with the feds. Mickey knew I didn’t care for him, but he was pretty sharp, and he knew there was nobody better than I am at getting to the heart of things, so he sought me out and the price seemed right at first, but in the end I didn’t get a dime. Didn’t want one. The outcome of this case was a pleasant surprise to me. Kind of cut against the grain of all the dark things I’d learned about human nature. It gave me hope for the first time in I don’t know how long. Yup, the outcome of this case was much more satisfying than any amount of money.
Anyway, the widow Carla, Charlie’s wife remember, was pretty spooked by the ghostly emoji hug from her dead husband, and by the time I sat down with Carla and the rest of the family in Charlie’s house on Ridge Street in Marquette, they’d already received three others: a finger pointing to the right, an obscure one of a man in a deerstalker hat, and a dollar sign.
As Carla told it, she’d been so upset by getting text messages from her dead husband, she didn’t bother, at first to try and figure out what they might mean. She did look pretty distraught when I talked to her the first time there in her living room. She was smoking away and there were dark circles under her eyes. Most folks don’t smoke in their houses nowadays, but Carla seemed pretty upset, like I say.
“Mr. Faraday, this is scaring me to death,” she said, letting out a long whisp of smoke that I tried not to breath in. I gotta say, she had smoking good looks too, dark, sultry, deep black eyes that a good old fella like Charlie Kivela could easily lose himself in. She was young. Charlie was an old man by the time they married. His beloved wife Rose had died years before. He was lonely. He and Rose had never had any kids. Carla, just happened along. You get the picture.
“I don’t know now if Charlie’s dead, or if somebody is holding him for ransom,” Carla continued.
She was quite the girl, Carla. A man would do a lot of desperate things to stay in her good graces. And from what I quickly found out about her background, just by asking a few simple questions of the right people, a lot of men already had. She’d been married three times already, and she hadn’t seen her thirty fifth birthday yet.
Her sister Nikki was another story. She was older, unmarried. Hard as an agate on a Lake Superior Beach. She didn’t say much, but her eyes were always on the swivel, from Carla, to Mickey, to young Cordelia as she sat quietly on a corner of the leather couch where all the sisters sat. Anyway, I didn’t know quite what to make of Nikki. She might be a good egg, I thought, or she might be up to her neck in something here. As for Cordelia, well, she was young and blonde with a whispery voice that would come back to you late at night. She seemed like a sweet thing. Blue eyes as innocent and pure as Easter Morning. Yup, the outer package seemed fine, maybe too fine. With one glance I knew I was going to have to find out for sure one way or the other about her if I was going to get to the bottom of things in this case.
Like I say, Mickey was not a mystery. I’d known him for years. He had a lot of rough edges, but I’d always thought he meant well. I always leave some wiggle room for the truth in my first impressions, though, and looking around at this set of players, I decided to leave even more than the usual space.
Anyway, after the initial shock caused by the emojis from the dead guy wore off, they’d gone where you would think they’d go: to the phone store. But the folks there, Carla said, could only tell them that the emojis were definitely coming from Charlie’s phone, which had disappeared with Charlie a year ago November somewhere on the Seney Plains. They also said that the signal, was coming from somewhere in that same area. They couldn’t tell much more.
Next, they’d gone to the police, and the state boys had sent out a team with a local CO from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and some of the fellas from the hunting club and they’d found exactly nothing, Mickey told me. Of course, they hadn’t really expected to find much and wouldn’t have bothered to look if the request hadn’t been made from a fancy house on Ridge Street. They’d been over the whole grounds near the camp back in the previous November and early December, and they hadn’t found anything that time, either.
Carla, who was a little funny about the supernatural to begin with, had even gone to a psychic, a certain Madame Mystola, who ran a shop out of store front on Third Street that specialized in Tarot cards, Ouji Boards, animal paws, potions, that kind of thing. It was up a flight of stairs over a laundro mat. Anyway, the psychic had told them that the deceased was trying to send them a message in a way that he knew they would understand. Oh, did I mention, the one thing all those sisters had in common, was that they loved their cellphones? And that’s a pretty big understatement.
“That’s kind of the ironical thing,” said Carla, “I had to make Charlie carry his. I bought it for him. I finally got him to carry it in the woods by telling him it was a kind of a emergency phone. The thing is, he was a kind of a…what did he call it?…oh yeah…”a luddite”. He explained to me what that meant once, but I forget. Charlie was always going on and on about how technology was ruining people, making them too dependent. He had a real thing about it. He always looked real hard at me when he said things like that. It was the one thing about that sweet old guy that bugged me a little. But he was as kind as he could be when he said things like that, despite them hard looks. Real gentle like.” She dabbed at her eyes with a hanky, then said, “My Charlie really liked his old books and such, along with all that outdoorsy stuff.
“Anyway, Mr. Faraday, Charlie never sent a text message in his life. Let alone one with a emoji! Seems kinda funny that he’d do so after he was…” and here she got the sniffles again and cried a little. Anyway, I knew where she was going with it. “That’s why, I think maybe he’s not dead at all, but kidnapped.”
“That’s what I don’t get, Nick,” Mickey said to me. “If Charlie’s been kidnapped, why ain’t anybody sent a ransom note in all this time? And if them emojis are ransom notes, why ain’t they spelling it out more clear? Help us out here! Nick, I’ve been hunting around this thing for three months, and the girls are getting desperate. I can’t make head or a tail out of none of it. And…well…you’re the best.”
I knew having to say that had cost Mickey a pretty big hit in the ego department, and though I didn’t care for him or trust him much otherwise, I appreciated the gesture. It seemed sincere, or at least honestly desperate.
The message seemed pretty clear to me, ransom note or no. Charlie sent his love. The finger pointed right, which would be east on a map, the direction of the hunt club, signified by the man in the deerstalker’s hat, then a dollar sign. Well, that was pretty clear, except for this: did it mean somebody wanted money brought to the hunt club, or that there was money already there. The first argued for kidnapping, the second for a friendly message from beyond the grave. Well, I’d never been much on the supernatural, but like I say, I was leaving a lot of wiggle room. I told them I’d take the case.
As I was walking out to my old jeep, I heard an unmistakable voice behind me and I turned around to be met by a pair of sapphire blue eyes, bluer than the stormy afternoon Lake Superior sky overhead was dark. Funny thing about Spring in the U.P. It isn’t really Spring by most people’s definition. Oh, you’ll get some nice days here and there, sometimes even for a week or so, but winter always wants to come back. And here was Cordelia following me out on this dark day, with maybe a storm coming on. I wondered if what she was about to say would darken my inner skies too.
“Mr. Faraday, I couldn’t let you leave without telling you…” She suddenly looked back over her shoulder towards the house.
“What is it Miss Cardoni?”
“Call me Cordelia…”
“All right.” Hard to resist a friendly request like that. Now she was tugging at my heart strings a little, but I’d been through this kind of play with beauties before, if this was a play.
“I…I received another cell phone message just now, right after you walked out the door. I…didn’t think I should show it to the others.”
She held out her phone and I looked. What I saw there made my flesh crawl and the hair on the back of my neck stand up a little, I have to admit. There on the little screen were three caricatures: one of Carla, with cigarette in hand, one of Nikki with intense dark eyes, and one of Mickey with a lantern jaw, and what was this, a huge wood chip sitting on his shoulder. This was followed by another emoji, a casket.
After I caught my breath, I looked up into Cordelia’s worried eyes. I gave her a word or two of comfort and asked her to forward the messages to my phone. Yeah, I’ve got one. I don’t use it much and I don’t like it much more than Charlie Kivela apparently did, or does, but I’d found that friends and relatives wanted me to have one pretty badly, so I’d caved in. It was even a smart phone, because my sister Rita, who sometimes helps me out on cases, but don’t ever make the mistake of calling her my secretary, was the one who had most insisted on me having a cell phone to begin with. She said, “Nick, you might as well have the best.”
I got into my jeep after reassuring Cordelia once more, and I watched her in my rearview as I pulled away. She made quite a picture, tapping out her forward to me, then looking wistfully after the jeep before taking a long look at the house and going around to enter by the veranda door.
I headed straight to the primary phone store in town, the same one the family had consulted and after a few preliminaries, I showed the young fellow with the horn rimmed glasses, I deliberately picked out the guy fiddling with a phone behind the counter, bypassing all the cute sales reps, the text that Cordelia had forwarded me.
“Whoa…” the kid said. “Dude…where did you get this?”
“I’ve never cared for being called a dude, it made me think first of old Roy Rogers Saturday morning television, when I was a kid, then of surfers I’d met near San Francisco in the 70’s and finally of that Coen Brothers movie, The Great Lebowski. Made me laugh like hell, especially Sam Elliot. Anyway, I told him it didn’t matter much where I’d gotten it, what did matter was how were these emojis done.
I said to him right out, “These are caricatures of three people I know. Good ones, too. Is there a way to design your own…emojis?”
“Well, sure. It’s done. Not very often, though. In fact, if somebody gave me a drawing, I could probably figure out a way. But it wouldn’t be cheap. Whoever did this, or ordered it done, must have had a boatload of cash.”
“How come?”
“Well, it’s tricky. If you were gonna do it legally, you’d have to get a copyright on the emojis, form your own company, more or less, find somebody to do the drawings if you couldn’t yourself, then get FCC approval for them all. You’d have to spread a lot of money around.”
“What about illegally?”
“Well…you could do it pretty cheaply, if you knew the right people…or the wrong ones. The asking price for the hacker would be high, though. He’d be the one taking all the risk.”
“But the sender would either have to be pretty good with computers, or know somebody who was to have this done.”
“No doubt about that.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey,” he said. “Let me know what you find out. Maybe it’s somebody I know…”
“Oh…such as?”
“Well…I don’t want to get anybody in trouble…”
I smiled at the kid and leaned in intimidatingly close. “Are you trying for a cash transaction here, kid?”
The boy looked genuinely shocked. And that was just what I was looking to see. Nope, this had nothing to do with him. Nobody who blushed that much would ever try to pull something like this. This was a good kid. The kind I wouldn’t mind dating my daughter. Too bad I didn’t have one, that I knew of anyway. I winked at the kid, slapped his shoulder and turned away.
I went back out to the jeep just as the snow started to fall.
The caricatures and the casket had this in common with the other message: you could take them to mean a couple different things. Were they a warning to the three of them, sent by way of Cordelia? That seemed strange, why not send them straight to the source? Were they a warning to Cordelia that her life was in danger from her siblings and her brother in law? Or…and this was the one that haunted me most, were they a warning to me sent by Cordelia herself, or somebody working with her, or using her to intimidate me?
Like most of the cases I take on, this emoji thing was becoming as murky as day old coffee from a cheap diner. Speaking of which, I was hungry. Time to go to Joe’s on Third. Then maybe, just for comic relief, over to the psychic. And tomorrow, if I could arrange it, off to the hunt club on the Seney plains.
***
The coffee was terrible as usual at Joe’s, but my old pal from the all night diner, who had perked me up with his rough edged optimism and more than one greasy burger dinner or scrambled egg breakfast on many tough nights and more tough mornings than I would ever care to remember, was his usual buoyant self.
“Hey Nick!” he shouted from behind the counter of the one room diner. “Retired yet?”
That was our standing joke: my retirement. I’d told him I was done with this sleuthing stuff ten years before.
“Hey, Joe! Nope, they’ve called me in again.”
I looked around for the usual nobody else who would ever be there at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday and said, “Joe, this case is a doozy!” I explained it all as Joe wiped down the counter. Joe, unlike most diner operators and employees, was not one for gossip. If I talked a case to Joe, I knew it would go no further. And he’d given me more than a few good tips over the years and I had reciprocated.
When I was done spilling the scenario, Joe thought for a moment and said, “You know, you might want to stop over to Snowbound Books. Ray knew Charlie Kivela pretty well, and Dana and Dianne, and Mike did too. They were constantly getting old volumes for him and his library out there at the True Readers Fish and Hunt Club. I’m told there are thousands of books out there, along with the odd fishing tackle and the gun collection.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “What a man reads tells you a lot about his character. And I’m trying to wrangle an invitation out there for tomorrow. I’ve got a call in to one of Charlie’s old buddies. “Dr. Jimmy, ‘Shiner’ Kivimaki I’m betting.”
“The very one. Mickey O’Doul put me on to him.”
“Shiner is a beauty. Great stories. I’d watch that Mickey, though.”
“Oh, I know. If there’s a dark angle in this, I figure Mickey has something to do with it.”
“You figure right, I think.”
“Thanks, Joe!”
“How was the burger?”
“Adequate as always, Joe.” I shot him a grin, dropped the tip and headed out the door with Joe shaking his head and laughing.
“Always with the compliments,” he said.
***
I was right about the psychic, her tarot card reading and mystical mumbo jumbo was right out of a comic strip, but from the moment I finished climbing her stairs and parted the beads into her parlor, I realized there was something very familiar about her. About half way through her interpretation of the “Drowned Man” I figured it out.
“‘Madame Mystola’, huh, Barb?” I said when I finally recognized my old grade school chum Barbie McFadden from St. Gregory’s in Newberry Michigan.
She stared at me for a moment and her whole expression changed. So did her voice, “Nicky?”
she said, her deadpan expression stretching into a friendly smile.
“The same,” I said. “You always were the actress.”
“Ah, Nickie,” she said. “I guess I’m not as good as I used to be. Now that I’ve really looked at you, I’d know you anywhere!”
“It took me a minute too, ‘Madame Mystola’.”
Barb blushed for a moment. Then smiled. “It’s a living.”
“No worse than mine.”
“So how are ya, Mr. P.I.?”
“I’ll tell ya how I wish I was.”
“How’s that?”
“Retired.”
“You and me both.”
“Listen, Barb,” I said. “I’m trying to get the low down on one of your clients. A certain Carla Cardoni-Kivela…”
“Oh, that babe. She’s something. Comes in here showing me phone emojis! Can you imagine?”
“I’ve seen’em.”
“I know you think all this stuff is mumbo jumbo,” said Barb, “and it mostly is, but I gotta tell you, I got a bad feeling about that dame.”
“You were always a good judge of character, or is that characters.”
“Funny. Well, let me tell you this, if her husband is dead, and I’m not so sure he really is…just a feeling…I figure Carla ain’t exactly uninvolved.”
“Anything specific?”
“Nope,” she said and grinned at me. “Just one of my feelings.”
I took out my cell phone and showed her the latest message. “How about these?”
“Same source?”
I nodded.
Barb suddenly shuttered. “Nope, not getting much, specific. But I’ll tell ya this Nicky, these give me the chills. And that one looks just like our Carla.”
“Sure does.”
“Like I say, watch her, Nicky. She ain’t right. Know what I mean?”
“I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Now scram. I got paying customers waiting.” She smiled at me.
“If you remember, Barb, I paid you up front.”
“So you did.” She grinned at me. “And you got your reading, and more to boot. Keep in touch, Nicky.”
***
At the hunting club the next morning, ‘Shiner’ lived up to his reputation. He showed me all around the grounds of the True Readers Fish and Hunt Club, including the bar, where we had a few, and the “reading house” a two story camp library stacked with books everywhere, where we dusted off a few volumes, including a few of Charlie Kivela’s favorites. And everywhere we went, Shiner had a story. After he’d told me five or six, all well worth hearing, he was good at telling a tale, not the typical blowhard, I asked him to tell me one more: the one about the day Charlie disappeared.
“I wish I could fill you in better, Nick,” he said, looking over a volume of Chekov’s short stories, “but all I know is that he and that shady O’Doul headed for the Fishhook Lake area, where Charlie had seen a monster buck all summer when he was fishing there. O’Doul came back alone.”
“I see. I was hoping you might have some idea about what happened there.”
“I wish I did. Everybody from the club does. It smells to high heaven, but we’re all just taking O’Doul’s word which is about as reliable as Falstaff’s.”
“I knew he was talking about the Shakespearean character, not the beer, but it amounted to the same thing.”
For kicks I showed Shiner the emojis and told him the story.
“Well,” Shiner said. “That’s Greek to me. Would be to most of us in the club. See, we don’t go in for technology much. Has its place I guess. And you say these are coming from Charlie’s phone? Frankly, I didn’t know he had one, but if Carla told him he had to, he probably did. He’d do damned near anything she asked him to do. Had a real weak spot for his second wife. None of my business, but all of us in the club agreed she had gold digger written all over her. Funny that Charlie would fall for that, though, if he was going to have his head turned by a pretty face, seems like it would have happened long ago what with all those college co-eds he’d encountered. Just like all the rest of us. My thought is, there must be something more in Carla. Something the rest of us don’t see. A potential of some kind at least.” He suddenly seemed at a loss for words. “I don’t know what to make of it…” After a minute he added, “I sure hope you can get to the bottom of it, Nick. We all do.”
As we passed out of the library, I noticed a reinforced metal door with a considerable lock. It stood out because everything else, everywhere in the club, was wood. I stopped.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Oh,” Shiner said, “the really valuable stuff is down there, signed first editions, antique guns. I’d love to show you around, but I’ll have to go up to the longhouse to get the keys.”
“I don’t mind. Gives me a while to catch up on my reading.”
“Be right back.”
I looked around some more while Shiner was gone, but all I found was books, books, and more books. Not a one of them was a how to on cell phones or emojis. This wasn’t making any sense. If Charlie was still alive, and he was sending out these messages, he must have an accomplice, but who? If Charlie was dead, who was sending the messages and why? I was ruling out the beyond the grave stuff for two reasons, first, I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. There’s enough weirdness in the physical world without borrowing from the supernatural; second, what self respecting ghost would need a cell phone to send a spiritual message? A dream I might by, but an emoji on a cell phone? That was as false as Barb McFadden’s Madame Mystola.
Shiner was back with the keys soon and showed me behind the locked metal door, down the pristine metal stairs and out into the air tight, water tight bunker where the first editions and antique guns were. All pretty impressive, but what intrigued me was the massive food stores which were also in there, along with a fully functioning and fairly luxurious bathroom.
“You guys expecting the apocalypse?”
“Oh…” Shiner laughed. “There’s a story goes with that too.”
He proceeded to tell me a long and complicated yarn about Charlie’s Uncle Herb who, in the 1950’s, was sure the bomb would be dropped any time and had insisted the club take on the bomb shelter project. The story was very entertaining, but one thing didn’t fit, all of the bathroom fixtures were modern, so were the metal stairs leading down to the space. I waited for Shiner to fill me in on the update, and he never mentioned it. I decided to let it rest, right there, as Shiner showed me through some books signed by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas, and seven or either other notables. Along with those were some children’s book written by Benjamin Franklin and a couple thousand other rare editions. There were nearly as many books down here, as there were in the two floors above combined.
“Well, if the apocalypse does come, and you fellas can get here before the big flash, you won’t be short of reading material.”
“Oh,” Shiner laughed. “All that post apocalyptic stuff is nonsense. The kids will get over it eventually, just like everybody did after the fifties. The world’s too greedy to do itself in. As long as there’s money to be made, nobody, but a suicidal nut is going to blow up the planet. And…like I say, the people in power are too egomaniacal to ever let that happen.”
I told Shiner I agreed with him and I walked out of the basement absolutely certain that there was more to the bomb shelter story, but for now, since Shiner didn’t want to tell me more, and I didn’t want to spook him on that score, and I didn’t know what it added up to if anything anyway, I let it go. I figured there’d be some other opportunities. As it turned out, I was right, but we’ll get to that.
We took a ride in my jeep out to Fishhook Lake and wandered around it. It was more of a pond anyway, only about eight feet deep at the most and covering no more than a couple of acres. They’d dragged it the previous Spring and only found some old boots, lots of fishing lures, an old shotgun, some knives and some old cans from the 40’s and 50’s. No Charlie. There were plenty of woods surrounding the lake and plenty of places where somebody might have dug a hole, but I’ve been to more crime scenes than I’d care to mention, and the woods and the lake didn’t feel like anybody had died there. I don’t mean to sound like my friend Barb, but I couldn’t feel any murder in the air there. Not at all. If somebody had done Charlie in, they hadn’t done it here.
The one thing that did look of interest, was closer to the camp proper. On our way back, I spotted it. It was an old radio tower nearby. It seemed funny for there to be a radio tower on property that had been private for so long. Who had given permission for it to be built? I asked Shiner that very question.
“Oh…” Shiner laughed. “That was Uncle Herb too. He figured after the fallout, the camp would need a way to transmit to other survivors. It’s wired right to the bunker. Crazy old coot…”
“Anybody ever play around with it?”
“None of the old guard, no.” Shiner said, “but one of Charlie’s great nephews, Eddy Red Bear, he monkeys around with it some. He’s good with all that technological stuff, modern and old. He lives up in Marquette too. Has an electronics shop at the west end of Washington… You’re not thinking he might have something to do with the messages are you?”
“To be honest, Shiner,” I said, and it was the gods’ honest truth, “I don’t know what to think. But I’ll go have a talk with him.”
Before I could leave, though, Shiner treated me to supper up at the cookhouse. The whole gang was there. You never saw such a group of friendly old duffers. Most of them were professors, most of those were retired. They all had their specialties, both academic and here at camp. They all told stories too, and I gotta say I enjoyed myself, and the seven course meal prepared by Shiner too. Pretty big step up from my usual fare at Joe’s. Great old fellas. I came away from there with another certainty. If Charlie Kivela was dead, that bunch hadn’t killed him. There was no more mean in any of them than there was in their hunting dogs, a collection of retrievers and hounds, and pointers all ready to go and friendly as can be all around. I particularly liked one old springer who just sat by the fire and wagged his tail at the jokes, both human and canine. Age is creeping up on me too, and I wondered if maybe I couldn’t wrangle a membership after this was all over and sit by the fire with that springer, and read a good book when I wasn’t fishing. But that would have to wait.
The next day, a snowy one, and bitter cold, I spent most of the morning at Mr. Red Bear’s shop. He was cut from the same mould as the rest of the crew at True Readers. Funny, outgoing, brilliant. The one way he differed was in his interest for the modern world.
“Uncle Charlie had a blind spot there,” he said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Now I get why he was always harping on Carla, much as he ever gently harped, about her fixation on her cell phone,” he said. “Her sister Nikiki too. They treat their phones like they are children. They can’t do anything without taking them along. It’s a little sickening. Now, Carla’s sister, Cordelia? That’s a different story.”
“How so?”
“Well, I have to admit to being kind of sweet on her. I’ve even told her so. She’s not interested though. I don’t grudge her that. She’s a fine person. Smart, beautiful, generous and wonderfully odd.”
“Generous?”
“Yeah, she helped front me some of the money for the shop. Came from a legacy her father left her. The old man left all three girls a good chunk of cash. But…” Here he sighed a little involuntarily, “…we’re just friends. We went to grade school together in Marquette.”
“‘Wonderfully odd?’”
Eddy Red Bear laughed, reminiscing. “Yeah, she has a strange sense of humor and some bizarre…talents.”
“Such as?”
“Well, she’s an artist for one. Incredible pen and ink work. And there was this thing she could do…”
“Go on.”
“Well, you’re not going to believe me.”
“There’s not much I haven’t seen or heard. I’m naturally a sceptic, but I’d like to hear about it.”
“Well, we’d be sitting in class, and she would make some little sound or something and she’d take out a piece of paper and set it on her desk. She’d make a weird gesture over the paper with her empty hands. Then, she’d close her eyes for a few seconds, and, when she opened them again, she’d pass me the paper. And, I swear to you, on it would be a perfect pen and ink drawing of the teacher going on and on, or something…usually with a caption.”
“Slight of hand probably.”
“Maybe. She would never let me see it appearing, said it wouldn’t work if I watched. I know, that’s right out of the magicians’ handbook. Still, Cordelia never showed me any other kind of magic tricks.”
I involuntarily screwed up my face a little and Eddy caught it.
“Hey, I’m a scientist, probably as skeptical as you, maybe more so, but it was all pretty weird. I couldn’t explain it.”
A thought suddenly came to him. “I still have some of her ‘drawings’ in a drawer here somewhere.”
He looked around and hunted one up. They looked very familiar.
“She had quite a career going for a while. She was selling quite a few of her drawings. I have one on my wall at home.She’s been written up in the papers on and off. She hasn’t had a show for a while, though. One other thing: Cordelia hasn’t always been all that stable. Her sisters had her committed once, about five years ago, for what they call her odd behavior. They never said what she’d done or said, but it happened around the time Carla married Charlie. Maybe she said something about the marriage Carla didn’t like, or maybe she was being erratic or odd, but I sure don’t think that it was necessary to commit her.”
“Why not?”
“People shouldn’t be sent to a psyche ward just for being different. At least I don’t think so. And that’s all she is: different. Not crazy. She’s honest too, maybe too honest for those sisters. As for her sisters, you ask me…and you didn’t…Carla only married Uncle Charlie for his cash. The Kivela family made a lot of money in land speculation long before the Depression, you know. That’s where the land for the True Readers comes from. And along the way somewhere, I told Cordelia about all of that. Maybe Cordelia mentioned that very thing to Carla, I don’t know, and that gave Carla some ideas. Seems like even with the legacy Carla’s old man left her, it wasn’t enough. She just wanted to keep piling up money. Always has a nose for money. And combined with her sister, and that O’Doul character…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I don’t know if I should say it, but, to my mind, none of them have ever been up to much good. Maybe that’s why they suddenly decided Cordelia needed to be committed, so she wouldn’t blab to Charlie about why Carla was interested in him.”
Eddy was thinking along my very train of thought. I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I showed Eddy the emojis and he seemed genuinely shocked.
“These look just like Cordelia’s!”
“I know. When you showed me her drawings I was thinking the same thing.”
I asked how they could be done on a phone and he gave me the same line on things the kid in the phone shop did, but he added one other detail.
“There aren’t very many people around who could manage this…There’s me, and not a lot of others…”
“Anybody in the Kivela family?”
Marty laughed, “Not likely! About the only one whose ever even shown an interest in how any of the tech stuff out there or anywhere else actually works was, strangely enough, Uncle Charlie. Much as he hates anything technological, he always wanted me to fill him in on the latest gadgetry.”
“Really? How come?”
“Well, he always said, better the devil you know…”
“So, you think he could operate things like, the tower out there? Or could he manage the creation and transmission of these messages?”
“Uncle Charlie?!” Eddy laughed, hard. “I said he was listening to me talk, I didn’t say he wanted to take part. No, there’s no way.”
“I thought as much…okay…”
“I have one other thought, though, and given that you’re, like you say, a sceptic…you’re not gonna…”
“Yeah, when you told me about Cordelia’s talent, that came into my head. But you can’t transmit a message from cell phone to cell phone through slight of hand.”
“If it is slight of hand.”
And right then, another message came up on my phone, again in emojis. This time it was the man in the hunting hat again, a bank vault, the dollar sign again, a stairway headed down, a bookshelf, and then an image I didn’t recognize at first.
I showed it to Marty, who I couldn’t help but trust, he had the same look about him as all those fellas from the True Readers.
“Just like one of Cordelia’s drawings…”
“Yeah, I know, but what do you think it means?”
“Well…if I get this right…these are all about the great books and guns in the bomb shelter…” Eddy said.
“I think so too. But who is this last figure supposed to be.”
I looked it over again, Tiger baseball cap brown jacket, three day growth of beard, followed by a question mark.
Eddy smiled at me, “Funny.” He said as though I’d made a joke. Then, he read my confused expression and realized I wasn’t joking.
“Well…” he said, after a minute, “I guess it’s true what they say. We don’t know ourselves. That’s you Mr. Faraday!”
Sure enough. It was.
I said my goodbyes to Eddy and thanked him. Out in the parking lot, I called, Cordelia and in that husky voice, she told me they’d all gotten the same message. I decided to keep quiet about the pictures Eddy had shown me, and how much they looked like the emojis. I thanked her after telling her I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, which was true. She said she was fairly certain what Nikki, Carla, and Mickey thought, which was that there was a vault full of money somewhere in that basement.
“Yeah,” I said. “I had that thought too, but why is my picture on there?”
“I suppose, Mr. Faraday…”
“Nick…”
“Nick, I think whoever sent this thinks you know where the money is now, after your visit out there.”
“How did you know…?”
“Come now, Nick, you’re an investigator. Of course that’s where you’ve been.”
“Of course you’re right, but I don’t know where the money is, if there is any. And you can tell that to the rest of the family. I’ll be in touch.”
“I look forward to it, Nick. And Nick…”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful. Sometimes…I don’t trust my sisters, and I never trust Mickey.”
I drove away and headed over to Joe’s with a head full of bees. Something was starting to take shape in my head, but I wasn’t sure what. And talking with Joe only seemed to cloud it further. He had theories, but he and I think so much alike, that he came to same impasse I did.
“I don’t know, Nick.” he said finally. “I just don’t know.”
And so, it was now time for the court of last resort, and I always hesitated to drive the three hours east and walk up those back steps into the family home, but I was at a loss, and whenever I find myself there, I know, and it hurts me to say this, that’s it’s time to have a talk with my big sister Marie.
Now here are three true things about Marie: she’s better looking than I am, she’s tougher than I am, and she’s smarter than I am. When I came in through the kitchen door Marie’s wife Betty was cooking eggs. She’s a pretty little thing, as smart or smarter than Marie, and full of piss and vinegar. Pretty too. A red head, petite, gorgeous green eyes. Marie also has a better neck with women than I do.
“Well, hello, Nick!” Betty said. “You’ve got that look on your face again. It isn’t a retirement face. So that means you’ve got yourself back in it again.” She sighed. “I worry about you, Nick. Got a case you can’t solve, eh?”
“Dead on as usual, Betty, right down the line. Where’s Marie?”
“Out front watering the plants.”
When I got to the porch Marie’s back was to me, but she said matter-of-factly, “Hi, Nick.”
She’s always been spooky that way. “Hi Marie.”
She turned around wearing a half smirk under veiled eye lids. “Well, it must be a case you can’t solve. It always is. When are you gonna grow up and quit all this cloak and dagger stuff?”
“Soon as they let me.”
“You don’t have to say yes when they come for you, you know.”
“Ah, you know I’ve always been a pushover. Hey, by the way, Barb McFadden says, ‘hi’.”
“Where’d you run into her?”
“In her shop in Marquette. Goes by ‘Madame Mystola’ now.”
Marie sighed and pulled back her graying hair, “ Barb always did have a wild hair. Okay, Nicky, what is it? I’ve got plants that need attention. Staying for lunch?”
“Can’t. You know…”
“The case.”
“Yup.”
“Okay, tell big sis all about it.”
So I laid it out for Marie and almost before I finished she said, “There’s a missing piece here, Nicky. And I don’t think you’re going to figure out what it is until you get all of them with you out there at the hunting club. You need to watch them looking around and see what they see, and how they see each other. You’re good at that. I can’t believe you needed me to tell you this.”
She was right. I had to put all the players on the board and see who made a move. So, after saying my goodbyes over Marie and Betty’s objections, I got back in my jeep and back on my phone and called everybody and set up a meeting for the next day. Cordelia’s warning about Mickey kept going through my head. If I had stayed in Newberry, at Marie’s, the trip to True Readers the next day would have been much shorter, but I felt like that might put Marie and Betty in danger. They’re tough women, but it was an unnecessary risk, one I’m not willing to take with family.
***
That night, back in my office/apartment in Marquette, located right below the clock tower on Front Street, I was feeling uneasy. Those drawings of Cordelia’s kept running through my head, along with all the details of the case. And what did I think of Eddy’s claims that Cordelia could do this hocus pocus with drawings and writing? It was silly, of course. I mean, even if it were true, how could somebody like Cordelia have learned such a strange, specific, slight-of-hand trick by the time she was in high school? And why? From whom? And the very idea that this ability might belong to some mystical realm cut against my hard boiled grain completely. But why would a level-headed guy like Eddy believe it? Long after midnight I finally fell asleep and had all kinds of dreams about red flashing lights and warning buzzers and bells. The mind is a funny thing.
I wasn’t even that surprised when I woke up with a hand over my mouth and a gun to my head.
The voice in my ear didn’t surprise me either.
“Okay, Nick, I tried to play nice with you. I tried to keep you in the loop, but you just decided to queer the whole deal. Well, fine. Now we’ll keep it simple. You and I are going to take a ride out to True Readers in your jeep and you’re going to show me where the money is.”
Mickey’s hand released my mouth, but the gun stayed put, poking right at my right temple.
“Evening, Mickey. Jeez, your cologne sure precedes you. I’m amazed I didn’t smell it when you were still down on Front Street. Now you didn’t break my lock did you?”
“What and break up your beauty sleep? Locks are no mystery to me, Nick; you know that. Let’s go.”
Well, in a way, Mickey was doing me a favor. He was taking me where I wanted to go anyway and who knows who we would meet there, and more importantly, who we wouldn’t meet there. One way or the other, I was going to learn more than I knew then. Even if it was at gunpoint. One drawback though: I might not know it for long before Mickey blew my head off. All in all, I was about where I usually am at this point in solving a case: in the dark at the wrong end of a gun.
When we got outside with Mickey, right out of the mystery books, keeping his .45 inside the pocket of his leather jacket while we walked under the street light, I looked around me: no car. So Mickey had come on foot. Smart. No Carla, no Nikki, no Cordelia, either. I didn’t know anything new yet.
“Expecting company, Nick?” Mickey said rather boldly, I thought.
“Oh, I just wanted to see who else is going to prison for my kidnapping and murder,” I said even more boldly and twice as loud.
“Shut your yapper, Faraday! I don’t want to hear your voice again until we get to the hunting club. And rest assured there won’t be anybody there today. I put word out that the wife and me wanted some alone time.”
“‘The wife and I’, Mickey. If you’re going to murder me, at least don’t torture me with your bad grammar,” I said as I got into my jeep, sliding across the seat and over the stick from the passenger said at Mickey’s…request.
“Enjoy your little jokes now, Nick. They may be some of your last, if you don’t tell me where the money is.” I took note of the time: 3 a.m, exactly. Sun would be just coming up by the time we got to the camp. He hadn’t planned this very well. The possibility of witnesses, slim as they were, out on the Seney Plains on a weekday in early Spring, would be much better in the light.
It was a long drive to the True Readers. I dodged more than a few deer coming across the Seney Stretch, 26 miles of the straightest flatest roadway you have ever seen. Finally we got to the turn off and Mickey, who I thought might have been close to falling asleep a time or two, but wasn’t— a couple of meaningful glances during the drive had told me— finally said, “Okay, out of the jeep and down to the shelter. I’ve got the keys.”
We made our way to the longhouse and right to the cellar door. Mickey hadn’t made many mistakes. He was back far enough so I couldn’t make a grab for the gun. Down the stairs we went, and it was there that Mickey grabbed my shoulder and carefully spun me around.
“Okay, Nick. Where’s the hidden safe? I want the doe!”
“Well, Mickey, I would show you in a second if I had any idea. For all I know there isn’t a safe, or any doe. I got the same message…”
I didn’t get a chance to complete that sentence before Mickey pistol whipped me across the chops and I went down in a heap seeing stars.
“Wrong answer…” Mickey said.
“Leave him alone, Mickey!” a familiar whispery, but strangely forceful voice said from the top of the stairs. It was Cordelia, of all people, with a double barrel over/under Browning .12 gauge leveled at Mickey’s midsection. “He doesn’t know anything.”
I took my opportunity and aimed a punch from my angle on the floor at a spot on Mickey where I knew damage would be done. It was an uppercut and it hit him just right to bring him down to the floor with me, dropping his .45 in the process. I had the pistol in hand in a second. I stood, slowly, with the gun on Mickey. I turned half way towards Cordelia who was now descending the stairs. “Thanks,” I said, my head still spinning, but Cordelia had the shotgun trained on me now.
“We’re not done yet, Nick.” she said. “There’s another act to this show.”
“Sure is, you little brat!” I looked towards the row of book shelves and there was Carla with Nikki, the latter holding a snub nosed .38 on Cordelia.
“That-a-girl, Carla!” Mickey said, still a little breathless.
“Don’t you ‘that-a-girl’ me, Mickey! You were going to take the money yourself, probably run off with some bimbo.”
“Ah…baby…you know I wouldn’t…”
Suddenly the door from upstairs swung open and a guest I had only half expected was standing there: Charlie. There were some pretty significant gasps all around, especially from Mickey, but Cordelia’s expression hadn’t changed at all.
“Okay, fellas,” he said in a raspy voice with a bit of a smile enveloping it. “You can come out now. And take their guns and their cell phones. All of them.” Suddenly, from trap doors, and drop ladders and hidden wall panels, a collection of armed old men in flannels and some evening tweed jackets, emerged. This, I hadn’t expected. Charlie smiled at me from the stairway. “Right out of the mystery novel cliches, isn’t it, Mr. Faraday?”
“Mickey, you idiot!” shrieked Carla. “I give you one job! Bump off my creaky old husband, and you can’t even…”
“Shut up, Carla…” Mickey managed in a stifled squeak.
The old men were moving about the room emptying pockets, purses and wallets as they went and padding down everybody involved but me.
“If you wrote it, nobody would believe it,” I said.
“Agreed,” Charlie said. He took a seat on the stairs. “Everybody get comfortable. This is where I tell you how everything is going to go.”
Cordelia walked over to Charlie and handed him the shotgun. “You can relax now, Nick,” she said. “Your part is pretty much over.” I took a step back and turned towards the book shelves, looking the whole room over. It was quite a scene.
“I have loved literature my whole life,” Charlie said, in what sounded like well rehearsed lines. “And I love Shakespeare most of all. But, Carla, darling, have I ever told you what my favorite play is?”
“I’m sure you have you old fossil;” Carla said, “but I’m sure I wasn’t listening.”
Nikki, her sister, shot Carla a quick look, “Not the smartest thing to say, Carla.”
“Oh shut up Nikki!”
“I’m sure you weren’t listening,” Charlie said. “I’m sure your cell phone and my money distracted you. I realized shortly after we married that that was usually the case, but I didn’t think you’d stoop to murder.”
“That was all Mickey’s idea! He hired the hit man!”
“Shut up Carla! I swear to God I’ll…”
“No one is going to kill anyone else. At least,” Charlie said looking around at his professor friends, “I hope not. Some of us aren’t as steady on the gun as we used to be. Anyway. let me finish.
I’ll never forget that day a year and a half ago, Mickey. I should have been more suspicious. You wanted to go out deer hunting with your dodderring old brother-in-law. I should have known something was up. And thanks to Cordelia, I did.”
“You bitch!” Carla yelled.
“Please, dear,” Charlie said. “Language. Anyway, Cordelia, with her highly perceptive, I’ll venture to add supernatural skills, called me and told me that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.”
“Huh?” Mickey said.
“She told me you were probably going to try to kill me and that her sisters were in on it.”
In a voice straight from the crypt, practically hanging icicles, Nikki said to her sister with a cold gray stare, “ You little eavesdropper. If I get out of this alive…”
“Oh, you’ll be fine Nikki, but you aren’t going to hurt Cordelia, and you’ll see why you won’t, shortly.”
He took a breath, and smiled sadly, “You’ve always underestimated your sister. Both of you. You should have taken a hint from William Blake’s parents… Save the questions, you wouldn’t understand who he was if I told you, yet. Soon, though, you’ll be reading a pair of companion poems called The Lamb and The Tyger, and when you do, maybe you’ll come to understand, that supernatural gifts in a loved one, should be treasured, not remedied.”
“What’s he talkin’ about, Nikki?” Mickey said.
“Shut up…” both Nikki and Carla shrilled.
“To continue…” Charlie said clearing his throat. “Once I got word from Cordelia, I put the boys on the lookout. And sure enough, the morning of our scheduled hunt, Shiner spotted a black sedan parked out on the highway and a dark figure cutting cross country towards my deer blind. Funny thing was, when I got to my deer blind, after parting with Mickey, about a quarter mile up the trail at his request, the boys, who had been waiting there to take the fella in hand, were standing around your hit man. He was dead.”
Shiner, who couldn’t resist joining into the story, and had a wavering sawed off twelve gauge trained on Mickey, continued the narrative, adding,”So Charlie says, ‘Boys! What happened here? I didn’t tell you to kill him! I just told you to detain him and call the police!’ Truth was, we hadn’t touched a hair on his head. The city slicker fell out of the blind on to his own arrow from that fancy crossbow he intended to kill Charlie with. Pretty slick really. No noise. Nobody the wiser. But it didn’t work out for him.”
Charlie picked the story back up from there, looking directly at Carla with a bit of sadness in his eyes. “And when the boys explained it all to me, that’s when my favorite Shakespearean play came into my head, dear heart: The Tempest.” Charlie slowly shook his head. “In the play, my dear, Prospero, an old man who has seen too much of the world’s evil, relents in his complex plot to bring his oppressors to justice. He decides instead, to show mercy and see if they can reform themselves.”
“Huh?” Carla said.
“Just listen, dear,” Charlie said. “You’ll get the idea. For a year and a half we’ve been putting together this plot. We used Cordelia’s special talents, and I know you’re a sceptic, Mr. Faraday, but if there’s slight-of-hand involved, I surely don’t know how it works…”
“You mean to say…”
“I mean to say that Cordelia can somehow project messages and images on to people’s cell phones through her mind.”
“Well,” Cordelia said smirking, “I have to know their numbers first. I don’t know why, but the numbers are necessary. I’m not sure how it all works myself.”
I still had some doubts, but at this point, I was getting pretty ready to believe.
“She sent out the necessary messages and the result is what you see.”
“But,” I said, “what about the hitman?”
“Oh he’s on ice,” Shiner said. “In the big freezer in the back room down here, right between the Easter hams and the porterhouses. He’s just waiting for the police to have a look…”
“If that ever becomes necessary…” said Charlie.
“What were you saying a about mercy, baby?” Carla suddenly and pretentiously cooed.
“Yes, my dear. Mercy. Well, the first part of it is, you will remain a widow. And I will remain dead for all official purposes. I’m perfectly happy to live out my days here on the grounds. What’s more, you and your sister and your brother-in-law will get a substantial monetary reward, if certain conditions are met.”
“Here it comes…” Mickey muttered.
Mickey may have figured he’d be doing some kind of major penance for his crimes, but what came next surprised everyone but Cordelia, the old professors and Charlie, though The Tempest reference should have tipped me off.
“For the next four years…” said Charlie. “Or for however long it takes. You will first of all, do without your cell phones…”
There was a groan from Nikki, and a shriek from Carla.
“So called ‘land lines’ are permissible. I’ll have a certain private eye friend of yours put a team on you, at my expense.” He winked towards me. “Further, two days a week, most likely Saturdays and Sundays, you will spend eight hours a day here in study with myself and these other learned men. You will hand write, in proper and legible cursive, papers on various subjects and take oral exams.”
“What the…” Mickey started.
Charlie held up his hand. “We only mean that you will give some of your answers aloud, Mr. O’Doul, despite what likely came into your filthy mind. When these learned colleagues of mine and I are satisfied that you have finally learned something useful, from your experiences here on Earth and our tutelage—something useful intellectually, ethically, and morally—based upon those previously mentioned examinations. You will receive $10 million each in untraceable bills.
“And…and…” Carla started, an astonished, exasperated, and affronted tone, at the idea of actual study on her part, coming into her voice, “what if we don’t cooperate?”
With a grin, Shiner lowered the boom, “Well…there’s a certain body in the fridge…”
Charlie watched the twitching eyes of all three of his future students for a moment and added, “And I can assure you, all of us will be watching the three of you every moment. Cheating on the papers and exams simply won’t be a possibility.”
Nikki and Carla visibly shuttered. Mickey scowled.
Charlie now turned directly towards me, focusing his kindly old green eyes on my bemused expression. “Of course, all this can only work, if you are willing to keep quiet about these arrangements, Mr. Faraday.”
I only had to think about it for half a moment. “Far be it from me, Dr. Kivela,” I said, “to stand in the way of furthering someone’s education.”
So, you may be wondering, how did it all turn out? Well, as you might expect, the education of Mickey, Nikki, and Carla, did not all run smoothly. There were lots of tears and tantrums from Carla when her first papers came back marked with “F’s”. Nikki, the smartest of the three, did better and managed it all in the prescribed four years. And even tutored her husband as a kind of student- teacher before she divorced him and ended by marrying Shiner of all people. They live happily now, up on Ridge Street In Marquette. What’s more, Nikki, has become living proof of the transformative power of the principles, hopes, and processes of liberal arts education that Charlie and his friends have always followed: she has become a fine, educated, enlightened, and honest woman. In addition, she and Shiner have founded a whole range of charities which serve the greater U.P. community.
Mickey finally got through after seven years, with D’s, but with a purer heart. Much purer. It will surprise you to know that, in the end, Mickey turned down the money and took a job as a crossing guard, living mostly on his police pension. Again, a little education can do marvels.
Carla…well…she’s still studying at the University of True Readers, still trying to work the angles, still unaware that there are none. It’s been eleven years now. Perhaps some day…
And you may be waiting to hear that Cordelia and I got together, but we didn’t. Out from under her busy sisters’ thumbs she turned back to the lost love of her life, our friend Eddy Red Bear. They live happily these days. Very happily.
Now and then I stop by at the True Readers on my way over to visit Marie and Betty. I’d like to tell you that, in keeping with the play, Charlie’s every third thought is of his death, but here’s where the plot varies. Charlie is still hopeful, that he can make something of Carla. It may be the very best quality Charlie has, that he’s still in love with her. There’s no accounting for taste.
As for me, well, folks keep trying to get me back into private eye work, and now and then I give in, but mostly, I take walks along the breakwall in Marquette and stare out at the lake. Sometimes I spend whole days trying to figure out how Cordelia did the emoji trick. It’s the one thing in any of my cases, I’ve never been able to pin down to the simple facts of the here and now. I’ve thought about getting a dog, too. Charlie says they’re good company. I dunno. I don’t like being tied down, and you never know when the next case might get interesting, and take to you places and modes of thought you least expected.
Author’s Note: In this universe, there are all kinds of faith. Some is simple trust in the people you love. Some is more transcendent and all encompassing. Sometimes both these varieties of faith, are one and the same.
The Miracle of Sagan 7
“Monsignor, I don’t understand. You called me here to testify, to give evidence to support Catherine’s canonization and you have made a point of challenging every shred of evidence I’ve put forward. With all due respect, I’m an old man, monsignor, I have little time to lose. You’re a renowned young fellow, and I respect your work, but if you’ve called me here to belittle my claims and to make light of my wife, I must say, I can think of better ways to spend a Spring morning.” Max Conroy wiped a bit of spittle from his chin, picked up his coffee cup, set it down, and started to stand up with the intention of leaving the rectory of St. Gregory’s and never coming back again.
He had come back to his home town of Newberry, Michigan in 2130, after a career as a geologist mining the asteroids and many years after the incident in question, to simply live quietly. The last 20 years of his work in space had been productive, but interrupted numerous times each year when the questions concerning Catherine and the Miracle of Sagan 7 had again arisen, either on the anniversary of the event, or when Catherine approached or crossed a new threshold towards sainthood. And now, back home, in this sleepy little town of retirees, vacationers and fishermen, the questions were back again. At this point, they were either going to canonize her or not. He’d told his story over and over, healing and miracles through her intercession on behalf of over a dozen people had been substantiated, and now this Monsignor Marconi, a little man with a face like a ferret, complete with darting dark eyes, was sifting even the tiniest grains of the story to find the minutest of faults. Well, let the Church make its decision. He knew what he knew: Catherine was a saint.
Still, he hesitated to walk out. This visit by this apparently eminent Vatican official to Father Jim’s little parish was a major feather in his old priest friend’s cap. And Father Jim was a good man. One who had worked very hard for many years in a thankless vocation in the middle of nowhere. What’s more, this little man, Marconi, just might be the final hurdle. It would be a shame to walk away just when Catherine was about to be fully recognized. Still, he was at a loss.
The little man suddenly darted forward and awkwardly took Max’s hand.
“Please, oh please, Mr. Conroy, only a few moments more.” His eyes looked genuinely concerned. Max looked over at Father Jim, who was standing by the mantle gripping it in his big Irish left hand as though he were hanging on to the safety bar in a carnival ride.
“All right, Monsignor,” Max said.
Father Jim let out an audible sigh.
“Please, to…just once more only, tell the story from the beginning. I will not interrupt, I will only listen. If I have questions, I will write them down and ask them when you finish.” His expression was genuinely one of pleading. What political forces were at work behind this little man’s anxiety, Max wondered? For all Max’s years in the Catholic Church, those few in his boyhood before the incident, and those after, he, like most Catholics, didn’t really understand how it all worked, and what these men went through. Perhaps, he could be patient one more time.
“All right…” he said, sitting back down and taking a sip of coffee from the cup Father Jim had just refilled. Max took a deep breath and launched into the story one more time.
***
It had been a sudden impulse for the two of them, after they’d met at a geology conference in Newfoundland. They’d had a whirlwind romance, and since Max was about to take off on a mining mission to the asteroids, and would be gone for three years, and only legal spouses were allowed to live on the belt station, they’d married. There was no time for a major wedding, but Catherine, a devout Catholic, had insisted on a priest. Max was at best indifferent to the idea and had even been hostile towards religion for most of his adult life, but being a lapsed Catholic himself and no stranger to the church, harboring even a faint, secret affection for Church’s ceremonies, and loving Catherine more than enough not to object, most of all, Max went along with the hurried process.
As it worked out, their quick, life-altering decision was pretty practical for Catherine, who was finishing up her PHD in geophysics anyway. While he was out on site work, she could work on her paper. All her field work was complete, it was just a matter of writing. After that, she could train by correspondence and with the instructors on the station, in zero G site work, and then sign on as Max’s assistant. She’d be way overqualified, but she didn’t care. They would be together. She could worry about moving forward in her career later.
All went according to this plan, and before either of them had a moment to mark the time, Catherine’s paper was complete, submitted, and accepted, she was fully trained in for space, and they were out together at the sites doing their work.
It was a simple, two person project. They would go from asteroid to asteroid in a tiny space pod, with one of them in charge of inspecting the robotic operations systems on a given asteroid through a link up arm, a periodic procedure just to make sure the stationary systems were functioning correctly; the other monitoring on-board pod systems and spacesuit systems from inside the pod, in the event someone had to go outside. In a couple of instances, there had been a glitch with the aging pod’s link up arm and Max had gone outside to monitor first hand.
On the day of the incident, the pod was showing many signs of wear, and would be replaced after this outing. The last asteroid on the list: Sagan 7, had not signaled the all systems go code in several days. It was likely just a minor glitch, one Max could fix in a moment and he had decided, since the pod’s systems hadn’t worked correctly on the last two asteroids, he’d just save some time and head out right from the start.
“Let me do it!” Cat said, her green eyes flashing with excitement.
“It’d be easier if…” Max caught the gleam in her eye and smiled. “Okay…why not? You know the procedure as well as I do, and you’ve watched me…”
“Got it down, chief!” She smiled.
The Zephyr, the combination transport and cargo robot vessel, that had brought them out, was due in one hour, but this little project shouldn’t take more than five minutes, plenty of time for Catherine to go out, get back aboard, and for Max to fire the retros and make the rendezvous. The Zephyr had a very strict fuel allotment, and could only make one pass a day. There could be no stops. If the Zephyr stopped, even for a moment, it would throw the whole schedule off and cost the company millions. All the geologists and miners knew the score: the minerals were more important than the men and women. So, it was up to the pod crews to make their rendezvouses. Worst, case scenario, they missed the rendezvous and had to wait a day, with supplies for two days, and the two of them alone with a beautiful view of the solar system. He could think of worse fates.
And that view out the portal would inspire other things, many of them quite pleasant, but they would also inevitably inspire one thing he dreaded: a religious discussion with Catherine. Whenever Catherine stopped for more than a few minutes to look at something beautiful in the firmament, she would bring up God’s grandeur, like that maddening Gerard Manley Hopkins, who she constantly made him read. Such remarks by Catherine would lead him, after glancing at the phenomena she’d seen out the portal, to his inevitable, “ Cat, can’t we just smell the flowers without placing them in the Garden of Eden?”
And she would happily, maddeningly say, “Sure. It’s okay to discuss little metaphors, but eventually, don’t you wonder about the author?”
And they would go round and round trying hard not to enrage each other and perhaps secretly attempting to do just that, if only to see the other full of the emotional sincerity which had attracted them to each other in the first place. These arguments would often end with them making love. When they were spent, and they lay together in the afterglow, in full view of the stars, Max was nagged by a suspicion, given Cat’s always knowing and slightly condescending little smile, if she viewed their lovemaking as a metaphor for higher presences as well. He’d asked her point blank once whether this was so and Cat had only smiled more broadly, and said, “Maybe…”
At last, knowing that the other would never change in their convictions, they had let it rest, and would each knowingly smile at the other. They had even come to laugh a bit about it, but Cat’s beliefs, her powerful faith, which she had sustained in the face of a scientist’s life since childhood, remained intact.
“Almost got it!” Catherine said with child-like excitement through her suit com system to Max inside the pod. “Just have to recalibrate this doohickey.”
“Ah…” Max said laughing. “I see you’ve caught up on the latest terminology.”
“Shut up you. There, that’s got it.”
“Okay, get in here and let’s go.”
“On the way.”
The warning message, complete with flashing lights and a buzzer came two seconds late. By that time the debris, likely jettisoned in an emergency situation from a passing cargo bot ship of one of the rival companies, came roaring through the site and struck Catherine full on knocking her senseless and causing internal injuries which would prove fatal.
“Cat!”
A moment later more debris crashed through the site and struck the pod, knocking Max for several loops inside, where he crashed into several vital operating systems, doing still more damage, it too irreparable.
“Cat!” No response.
As quickly as his dulled senses allowed, Max suited up and went outside remaining calm until he saw the blood pouring from Catherine’s mouth, nose and ears, inside her helmet.
“Catherine!”
“Yes…boss…”
She smiled, even now.
“How are you?”
“Well, I’ve been better.”
He quickly got her inside the pod, took her vitals and saw the truth: both Catherine and the ship were beyond hope. The systems were shutting down inside both.
“It’s only a metaphor, babe.”
“What?” he faltered, filled with desperate love and now a touch of pique.
“It’s only a metaphor. I’m not really dying.”
“You’re right about that. We’ll get you through, just rest a while.”
He attempted to fire the retros six times, knowing full well from the instruments that it was useless. He swore, cried for a moment. Then went back to his dying wife.
“We’ll…we’ll just wait a day here while I fix the pod and we’ll catch the shuttle tomorrow.” Max had seen the red light flashing on the environmental controls. He knew Catherine had as well. They had no more than 15 minutes of oxygen remaining.
Catherine coughed and blood came up and floated away. She said weakly, “Have a little faith. We’ll make the rendezvous.”
“How are…sure, sure we will.” Max said and added another impossibility, “And we’ll get you to the station hospital. You’ll be singing hymns in the choir at the chapel in no time.”
“No…” she said weakly. “No…I won’t. But you will. You’ll see.” Then her eyes closed. She would never speak again except, when, after a long moment of silence, when he called her name she responded in a whisper, “Quiet, silly, I have to pray with…concentration…have to make the retros fire, fire up your faith…”
And in the next instant, inexplicably, and without his even engaging the useless system which he had tried so hard to engage on six separate occasions since he’d gotten Cat back aboard, the retros fired. Max, at that moment, unwilling to look this miraculous gift horse in the mouth, had simply steered the pod to the rendezvous, locked onto the Zephyr and its life support system and then looked to Catherine. It was much too late and had been from the moment the debris had flown through the site and struck her. Cat was gone. When the robot ship Zephyr arrived back at the station, crewmen there, after multiple failed attempts to contact the pod during their route back, found Max, catatonic, holding Catherine in his arms. He was unresponsive for days. When he at last came back to himself, a grief more expansive than the stars was in his heart, but a firm, logical resolve was in his head: he would come to some understanding about what had happened on Sagan 7.
In the months to come Max had examined and reexamined all of the evidence, trying desperately to occupy himself with something other than his overwhelming grief, but the answers kept coming up the same and they were beyond science.
1. There was no way the retros could have fired. The system was completely disconnected and demolished and had been since the incident on Sagan 7.
2, The retros had fired anyway.
For years after that, through much soul searching, and finally, much prayer, Max wrestled with the angels until he first ceased his atheism, second became a reverent agnostic, third, returned to the Faith with a bone to pick with God, fourth, achieved a kind of discernment and a tentative acceptance of God’s Will, and fifth and finally, began to devoutly attend Mass and take part in the Sacraments. By his own ready admission, he was far from a perfect Catholic, and still occasionally cursed the darkness, but he was Catholic enough to recognize the nature of Catherine’s spiritual deed at Sagan 7, and for her sake, his sake, and he believed, for the greater good, he refused to allow the miracle to go unrecognized.
***
“And it is your contention, then,” said Father Marconi, “that Catherine’s prayers made the…uh…retro rockets fire, and that she made this happen in order to save your life and further, to restore your faith.”
“There isn’t a single doubt of that in my mind, Monsignor. I am alive and my faith is alive because of Catherine’s miraculous prayer.”
“The science…” the Monsignor began.
“The science fails to explain what happened. There is no way the retros could have fired; the system was completely disconnected and broken, and yet they fired anyway.”
“Perhaps, as some have theorized, a spark leapt…”
“Oh, Monsignor, not that old grasp at straws!”
“Occams Razor…”
“‘All other things being equal, the simplest answer is the best.’ Well, the simplest answer in this case, Monsignor, is that I was saved both physically and spiritually by Catherine’s miraculous faith, pure and simple, not by a preposterous leaping spark that somehow flashed seventy five separate contact points into life in a delayed manner, brought on by my attempts at firing the retros five minutes before!”
The Monsignor smiled and nodded. “Quite unlikely, as you say.”
“Impossible.”
“Yes, impossible. So that leaves us one more issue. Your Catherine was a person of great faith without question, but perhaps this was the power of her love for you at work. And of course that would be God’s Will, but what makes this a pure miracle of Faith in God?”
“Isn’t God love?”
“Yes, and so much more.”
“If you believe that, why don’t you believe this was a miracle?”
“I don’t disbelieve, Mr. Conroy.” he said with that maddening smile again. “I’m only trying to line up all the facts.”
“So you’re saying, Catherine acted out of love for me, not God? Well…at the risk of sounding sacreligious, what’s the difference?”
“It might well be that her prayer was only one of self interest.”
Max turned his head and tried to compose himself. At last he said, quietly, the sin of wrath licking its flames around his words, “Seriously? Self interest? She was dying! She knew she was dying! She was thinking completely of my welfare! She was praying that I would survive and become a person of faith; she basically said that to me! It was the last thing she said! If that isn’t the work of the Holy Spirit it’s what? Black magic?”
“Max, he’s only trying to get at the facts…” Father Jim started.
“I…I know… but look, Father…Monsignor, I’m a believer now. I wasn’t before this happened. I was the most hard boiled lapsed Catholic unbeliever atheist going, and Catherine showed me a power that has no logical explanation fueled completely by love. Is that not God? If not, what is it?”
The Monsignor flashed an uncharacteristically gentle smile, leaned forward, patted Max’s knee only a touch condescendingly and said, “Your faith, and the faith of your sainted wife saved you. You have erased my last doubts. Thank you, Mr. Conroy.”
In the months to come, as Max endured still more annoying interviews, one interminable and repetitive question after another, Catherine was canonized. Following the announcement of Catherine’s canonization, which coincided with the occasion of the election and placement of the new Pope, Catherine began to appear to Max in his dreams. Not the beatified St. Catherine of Sagan 7, but the beautiful young woman Catherine had been. Young, gorgeous, nubile Cat kept appearing night after night to him in his dreams. Some of those dreams were not for public consumption, but when he would wake from them, he would smile and laugh to himself and say, “Yeah, I know, Cat, it’s only a metaphor.”
She was calling him home he knew, and it wouldn’t be long now. He was happy and grateful that he had been allowed to attest to Cat’s faith and love. Once and for all, he had proven, what myriad other loving husbands, had for millennia believed of their spouses: his wife was a saint.
Author’s Note: I’ve long been fascinated with the Arthurian Cycle. I even played Merlin once in a production of my friend Shelley Russell’s, called “Pendragon”. So, it was probably inevitable that I’d eventually write my own version of the great tales. For some reason, these came out in monologues. You need a little bit of background on the tales to follow the narrative behind these snippets. If you don’t have it, try, as Barb suggests in the first monologue, T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”. The question that sparked me to write this piece was, “What would the characters of the Arthurian Cycle: Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gwenivere, and the rest, be like if they were born into our times?” Enjoy!
Barb’s Big Dinner
I’ve seen so much of the future, well, all of it, but there is so much that some gets lost in the deepest recesses of my memory. I seem to be able to remember the final outcomes of events when I really need to, and I’ve been to the future, so it’s all familiar. See, I’ve already lived in the future in those many forms that I, for the most part can’t recall either, but I always know what, for you, is coming next. You see, when you take on a new form, you can only process experiences in that form, and so it takes all my best magic and memory to imagine I am in another form or personae, when I’m not. Confusing, eh?
Well, let me explain for the temporal mind. Right now, I’m Barb McFadden. I’ve been many other personaes or personages if you like, as well. People, that is. No point in going into everyone I’ve been. It would take too long, and I’d have a hard time recalling exactly. To be completely frank, I’m never really all that clear on all of them. See, I don’t remember what you would call the past very well. To be honest, not at all. I can recall, pretty well, what people tell me about the past, so that’s helpful. I do remember a lot of my past, but my past is actually what you would call the future…
Right back in the mist again, eh? Okay. Here’s how it works: I live backwards. What you would call yesterday, is my tomorrow. What you would call tomorrow is my yesterday. Okay. Take a minute. Got it? Yes? Just to clarify, I go through the day from morning to night just like you do, but when I wake up again, it’s your yesterday. Okay, so I remember the future as you would remember the past, but there is so much future that I really don’t have the capacity, nobody does, to remember everything. I don’t recall all that for me was and for you will be. Still with me? Good. If you want to see it in black and white try T.H. White’s Once and Future King, he got this concept very well.
You say you’re only going to see a few decades of the future? Maybe. It depends on your perspective. Let’s say that I believe I’ve been to the future, well, I know I have really…I’m not trying to offend your sensibilities or beliefs here, but if I’m going to explain this, I’ve got to risk it. I know that I’ve been here on Earth many times and will be here, in this life on Earth, a tiresome endless number more before it’s all over. I know that I’ve been here many times before only from the reports of others and from the legends. Again, I have no memory of the past, because I haven’t lived it yet.
The most famous person I have been from your perspective, and will be from mine, is Merlin. Yes, the Merlin the Magician, from the Arthurian Cycle. Yes, he was, I am, real. And as I said, for the present in both your sense and my sense, I am Barb McFadden. I’m what you would call a seer. I play at being a phony medium on Third Street in Marquette, Michigan. It’s a little town by most standards, but the biggest in the thinly populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan circa the Twenty First Century.
So, my job, in the here and now, is to touch base with the whole crew. That is, all the persons from that bygone era. Yes, all the folks from the legend: Lancelot, Galahad, Percival, Lady Elaine, Gwenivere, the whole bunch. And Arthur? Yes, Arthur…except he’s always the hardest to round up. Oh, I don’t get all of them to come to the reunions, ever, but Arthur…he only shows up every few millennia, and I’m told, by the others who have shown up, or rather will show up…again, I don’t remember the past…that he hasn’t been around for a good while now. I figure this is Morgan Le Fay’s doing or Mordred’s. I don’t grudge them that, though they begrudge me plenty. As I understand it, when Morgan and I were trapped together in the Crystal Cave, apparently until the late nineteenth century when Al Tennyson freed us through the inadvertent magic of his writing about the cycle, All she did was recite her grudges against me to anybody who would listen. And no body did. Just thought she was nuts. She barely escaped being sent of to Bedlam. I rescued her from that. I don’t blame her for hating me. Apparently I’m going to do, or from your perspective, did, a pretty terrible thing to her dad, Gorlois. He shows up quite often at the reunions: amiable guy. He never seems to be carrying a grudge. He even gets why it was necesarry. Well, read the story, The Mists of Avalon. Of all the adaptations, it does that part best, according to Morgan.
Anyway, what I’m trying to do in this temporal present, is organize the latest reunion. This is a preparation time reunion. There will be action times in the future. Several of them. Everybody involved always thinks they’re going through the big action, the one just before the end of the world. It never is. Well…not never…but…ah, there’s no way I can explain. Sorry. I’m trying not to be condescending, there just really is no way I can explain the concept of infinity, because my communication skills are finite and so are yours. It defies words, even numbers for the most part…ah…let’s just try to move on for now. Suffice it to say that you better get used to living in this world because you’ll be doing so for a long time yet, no matter what your books or movies, scientists or theologians tell you. Don’t look for complete utopias or complete dystopias, there’s always better and worse, but there’s never zenith or nadir, neither, given the nature of this universe, is possible.
Anyway, we’re in a quiet time for our little band of 150 to 200 or so. It’s a time to prepare. When these times come we always incarnate in some little backwater like the U.P. It’s a good place to ruminate, mull it over, for a lifetime or two.
So coming up, around the end of September, Michaelmas, the feast of Lucifer’s Fall at Michael’s hands and not coincidentally the Feast of Crispin and the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, also of the Shootout at the OK Corral, interestingly, just as the various hunting seasons start in the U.P., and that fits our needs. I’ll be getting the reunion together at a hunting camp. I have to call up the caretaker, Arnie Mills, and get him to get the camp in shape. He does a great job. He’s a simple soul. Never asks much. And he has a deeper sense of things too always seems to know what I want. It’s like that with some of these folks who are close to the land. Anyway, it will take place at the family camp, that’s what we call cottages, lake houses, and woodland shacks in the U.P., north of a little town in the east central U.P. called Newberry. There’s nothing but trees around that place for miles in every direction. A tiny place called Paradise, right on Lake Superior is to the North, Newberry, all 2,000 or so souls of it, is to the Sourth, and the McFadden family camp which I inherited is right on the Tahquamenon River.
So, my job, is to contact each of the members of the Round Table…oh, don’t make me explain the Round Table and all…do some reading about it on your own and come back, if you don’t mind. Folks who figure out who I am always want me to tell the story, and I know it, but I only know it from studying the legend and asking the others involved for details. Arthur, when he shows up, and if he’s awake, tells it best. He’s been there, and every detail is important to him.
What do I mean, ‘awake’? Well, see, they don’t always know who they are. Morgan usually does, and she tells Mordred right away. Lancelot and Galahad typically do, but most of the others, not so much. And Uther? Well, he’s way too fixated on the face in the mirror and on people telling him how wonderful his very presence is, especially this time around, to sense anything deeper. And Percival? Percy? Well, Percy never does and kind of always does in a way. He didn’t even know in any real ordinary sense when he was living the actual Percival life, and yet he always seems to take amazing things for granted. I only know how he was in those times of Merlin from what Galahad tells me…love those boys…well…Galahad is a girl this time, not that it matters. Anyway, my job here is to get them together, so they can compare notes, drink a few toasts, remember, and then move on. We meet every ten years. As I said, sometimes a lot of people come, sometimes just a few. How do I get hold of them? Well, I’m sending out feelers right now. No, they’re not engraved invitations, except for the one I always send to Uther, he’d be too stupid to get the message any other way. If, as Uther, he’s going to be as obnoxious as he is this time around, or rather, from your perspective, if he was, it’s a good thing I’m not going to leave him to father Arthur, or left him to…well, you get the idea. Uther won’t show up anyway, and that’s a huge relief, frankly, but I am obligated by the powers that be…hard to explain…to invite him anyway. It has to do with free will, folks. You have to have been afforded the chance to say yes or no, to this and nearly everything else, good or bad. Those are the rules. Anyway, for everybody else but Other, the invitations go out psychically. Not from my shop on Third Street in Marquette, in some goofy seance or ceremony, or through a crystal ball or anything hokey, like my clients there believe. What can I say? It’s a living. And I never do any of them any harm, and I always steer them towards the light and towards the choices, good or bad, that they are entitled to make. As for my living, well, I make enough, but what do I need with money? Besides, knowing the future has its advantages in that way. One glance at a newspaper is enough to make me wealthy on any given day. There’s a little coercion at times to get some of the old crew to come, I’ll admit to some cajoling, but never commands. That wouldn’t work anyway. Once they know who they are, they usually come. They’re mostly pretty grateful to find out who they are, because when they don’t know, it nags at them pretty terribly. It keeps them up at night, makes them ornery with their spouses and kids. But Arthur? Well, Arthur has been a puzzle for a while. Truth? I haven’t seen him in a thousand years of future, and don’t recall seeing him beyond that, except I know he shows up at the ultimate end, and nobody else has seen him, well, since he was Arthur of Camelot. Over 1,500 years. Seems like a long time to all of them. It isn’t.
Arthur
Barb, I mean Merlin, doesn’t know who I am. Sometimes that puzzles me, but then I forget that she hasn’t lived where I was yet. Well, the higher me, not me Arnie Mills; that’s who I am this time. See, Merlin taught me how to take on the guise of every animal in creation, which is handy in every incarnation. Merlin also taught me how to read thoughts and how to remember past lives and how to remember people by certain traits they always carry whenever they incarnate. By the time I was seven, in this incarnation I had been reminded of all that knowledge again. It all came back to me by the first snow of my seventh year, which was the cue Merlin buried in my spirit. So, here I am, right under her nose, and for some reason, this time, she doesn’t recognize me. It’s funny, she doesn’t really know what she taught me in the past, because she hasn’t lived it yet. I don’t think she even possesses the knowledge of how to teach me yet. That must be something she’s still going to learn. Oh, of course, she’s read about it in books, that Bedivere inspired, but one can never know what is truth and what is exaggeration, wishful thinking, or just plain fantasy in any book. That’s for one’s true heart and mind to discern. She taught me that too, but she probably doesn’t remember that yet either.
She’ll be contacting me by text or a phone call if she’s feeling friendly in a day or two. I won’t have the heart to tell her, never do, that the place is already set to go, including my little hiding place, my little attic room where I’ve listened in on the round table conversation on four separate occasions over the last 40 years, ever since I was ten, when she first hired me. My Pop had me take on the job, walked me through it the first time. Ol’ Pop, reminds me so much of Ector, who will be coming this time if my senses hit me right. Pop’s getting up there now, but he keeps busy, has to, now that Mom is gone. Sweet people. I do love them and not just as Arnie, though there’s nothing wrong with Arnie’s simple love.
I like being Arnie. I’ve liked all of my incarnations since Arthur. They’ve all been humble, no matter where I show up. And after being Arthur, with everybody telling you all the time that everything about you is grand, simply grand, every single second, a being needs a lot of doses of humility. And they have been the balm of Heaven to me. I delight in them. I’m just fine being Arnie in my camp attic room, listening to the talk.
Anyway, I sit up there and toast them all as they go on and on. I feel a little guilty sometimes, because they want so much to see me, to have me tell them that I’m all right, and that it’s time for action. But so far, it isn’t. Frankly, I thank God for that. I’ve never cared for action much. And I’ve certainly never cared for what violent action does to me.
Usually, I make a point of being there as they leave on the Sunday of that weekend. I make some excuse. It’s always good to see the All. Makes me feel like Peter the Great. It’s a little easier for me to hide from my subjects, though, I’m not seven feet tall.
One of these times I’ll make myself known to them all. I don’t know if it will be this time. I don’t have a sense of it yet. I can’t wait to reveal myself really, but I can only do so when the time is right. But my frankly dangerous urge to do so at my own whim, shows that there’s something of the mischievous little boy in me yet. I really want to see the look on Barb’s face when she realizes who I am. She’ll gasp for just a second, then she’ll get that look she’s always had in every guise, her best, most admirable quality: humility. That wonderful humble look of hers says, ‘Oh, I’m a fool! I so often forget that I’m a fool! Of course. Of course.’
We should all be so perceptive.
Mordred
I get sick of the voices. And working in a library, when I’m not researching in some old volume or reshelviing books, or doing inventory, or working up budgets to make the university happy. There is so much quiet time to hear those damned voices. Sometimes they even come ranting in when I’m quite busy. I hate them. There is one, a fairly gentle one, that tells me that what I do serves a purpose, that somebody has to be Judas in order for the sacrifice that saves us all to take place. It says that I must fulfill my destiny and that I should feel no more guilt over it than a barnyard ax or a bomb in a cargo bay. I’m just the instrument; I’m not the Prime Mover. And at times I take comfort in that, but then it’s pretty demeaning to be compared to a bomb or an ax. A tool. I’m a tool; that’s the implication. I’m the hammer to drive the nail, the rake to gather the leaves for burning.
Burning. That’s what I remember most of that time. Everything was on fire and I took some kind of perverse pleasure in it, that I had brought it about. And I was ashamed of it and afraid of it. I have never wanted to be evil, but it is built into my very being to be so. I hear another voice that says all men can resist evil, if they trust in the Lord. So what is the Lord’s Will? That I resist evil and let the sacrifice go undone? That rather than be the instrument of evil and take the load myself, I leave it to someone else, some purer soul less equipped to take an evil deed upon his or her shoulders?
Merlin, hesitated to kill my grandfather, knowing that if he did so he would be doing evil, but he rationalized that to bring good into the world this was necessary. How is my deed different? Merlin has told me through the ages that it isn’t, but that we all have free will. I have asked him, and her in her guise this time, what will happen if I exercise my free will and choose not to do the deed. She says she doesn’t know. And then I ask if it’s ever happened before, and she says in the ages to come, to the best of her memory, it doesn’t happen, but as for the past that’s cloudy. That kind of knowledge, that kind of semi-advice seems pretty murky to me. Maybe even evil.
Then there’s the very practical voice of simple Claudia, that’s who I am this time, a librarian who simply wants to steep herself in ideas and can’t understand why I’m so fixated on this one story from a long time ago. There are so many stories! She insists. Why pick this one? So I try to pick another, but no matter which one I pick I find this one still showing through the threads.
Then there is mother! He’s an FBI agent this time. He is always relentless. She always has been. He’ll insist at the dinner over and over again that I find a way to do the deed as soon as possible in this incarnation and every other incarnation I take on. The deed must always be done over and over. Bring the fire! Bring the fire!
Mother is nuts.
And then oh…dear Father. Arthur himself. I don’t know who he is this time. Nobody seems to, not even Merlin, but he’s there in my head. Sanctimonious as usual. Yours is a divine purpose. You must take it on. I wish I could do it for you, but I can’t. It pains me that my son must take this burden and be misunderstood by the world. In a better world some day, we will be friends. We will drink together, eat together as father and son should, but for now the powers that be require what they require of each of us, of all of us.
Dad’s got quite a gift for rhetoric, and he’s as bad as Mother in his own way.
I’m tired of being the pawn, but a pawn is what I am. I have no real choice. I would like to choose not to go to Barb’s Big Dinner at all, but I’ll wind up there. I know it as well as the fact that I’m holding The Once and Future King in my hand right now, looking out the window, watching the squirrels collecting and fighting and chasing and fleeing through the oak branches.
And I hear all the voices now. All the voices all the time. They won’t stop until the dinner. So I’ll be there. I’ll have to be. Then, when it’s over, I’ll get to be just Claudia for a few years before it starts again. It’s not much, but it’s my only peace.
Percival
I like flowers, but it’s cold now. There are some out in the church garden still and I feel sad for them, but my mother used to say that Spring always comes. That is true. It does. Sometimes there is a lot of damage done to stuff under the snow…a real lot sometimes, so that, silly old me, it makes me cry when I see it, but then I remember that mother said I was sweet but silly to cry, because didn’t I know that the Spring makes things better. Not perfect, I remember, she said, but better, and most of the time a lot better.
Mother got me this job here at the church taking care of the grounds. And Father Jerry says I do a good job. I have a room here, “a garage apartment” they call it. I’ve had it ever since Mother died. Father Joe, who is gone now too…they always say “gone” instead of “dead” I don’t know why… But Father Joe, I think, was kind of sweet on Mother. I said that to Mother once and she smiled and told me not to say that to other people. She said then that I was “perceptive” and I asked her what that means and she said ‘smart’ and that made me feel good to think I was smart in some way because I ain’t smart in most ways. I was real sad about Mother being dead for a long time, but I’m done with that now because Spring did come even after that and even though it didn’t make Mother come back in her body, it made her come back real well in her whatchacall…spirit. Because when Spring came after she died, a lot of years ago now, I could hear her saying I was sweet but silly to cry because Spring makes things better.
But it’s Fall now and I gotta do the last things that I do on the grounds raking and such like before it’s time to get the shovels and the salt out. But before the snow, and in just a couple of weeks now, I’ve gotta go see Barb on third street. Madame Mystola! That’s what she calls herself and she does all this hocus pocus nonsense, like Mother said, but mother also said that Barb was a good soul and I should listen to her, so I do.
Barb tells me that I’m always the same no matter how many times I come back. And I nod, but I don’t really know what she means because why would I be any different just because she hasn’t seen me in a while? She asks me every time if I’m still having the dream about the cup and I always nod because that seems to make her happy, but the truth is I don’t have to dream about the cup she means because it’s right in my cupboard. I even showed it to her once, explained that I had the cup she kept asking about and asked her did she want it? But, she said no, I should keep it for later, because it was mine to keep. When she said that the first time I asked Mother about it and Mother said that if Barb said I should keep it I should, so I still have it. I told Father Jerry once that I had a special cup that I was supposed to keep, and he laughed and said he had one too so I laughed with him, but I didn’t know why we were laughing, but you know, that seemed all right. Most things seem all right with Father Jerry. I’ve been lucky that way. I had Mother first, and Father Joe, and then when they went I still had Barb and now there’s Father Jerry who is nice. There were a couple of priests there in between who weren’t so nice and kind of treated me like a little slave boy until I told them my Mother and Father Joe said I wasn’t to be treated like a little slave boy, and they seemed to listen when I told them that so they mostly left me alone. I forget those two priests’ names and I’m not sorry because they probably don’t remember my name anymore, wherever they went.
So, like I say, Barb’s Big Dinner is coming up and I can’t hardly wait because all kinds of interesting folks will be there at that place out in the woods with the big round table. And it’s funny, every time we have this dinner I feel like I know them all real good and not just from the dinner but from something else from some other time. Like a whole bunch of other times it seems like, and I don’t quite understand it, but both Barb and Mother have always told me that in my case it’s okay not to understand because I understand in other ways that most people don’t. And I kind of understand what they mean by that, but I don’t have the words to explain it to you. Sorry. I wish I did.
Anyway, it’s the last work with the flowers, and maybe trussing up the shrubs and putting on the storm windows at the priest house, and then Barb’s Big Dinner and then the snow will come and after a long, long, long time, sometimes even longer…the Spring will come just like it always does, and things will all be better, just the way Mother promised.
Lancelot
There isn’t and never has been any way I can explain this to anyone else. Certainly not my husband. A good man. A very good man, but simple. I don’t mean stupid. Simple. He sees a problem in our law office, and takes an action. He is never troubled by the complexities of our profession that keep me awake late at night. He sifts through, finds the fairest and simplest way and moves on, never troubled by the fact that the fairest isn’t always really very fair to everyone, and in fact, in most cases isn’t fair at all. That’s not his fault. He means well. And it’s not that he’s unaware that the world can be a miserable place for a great many people, he simply sees that some problems, many problems, can’t be solved simply or at all. So, he does the best he can.
I sift through and I make do, and try to arrive at the best possible answers and then move on as I must, but cases don’t leave my mind and heart. Injustice troubles me always. Especially injustice I caused. And God knows I have caused much injustice, both in this life and in my others, especially my life in and out of Arthur’s court. Barb has explained it to me over and over. In her guise as Merlin she did so too. And this time around we have sat alone after the dinner every ten years and I have cried and she has comforted me, telling me as she has so many previous times, “Some things simply are. Not to say they don’t have causes and effects, and not to say that people don’t set those causes into motion, but sometimes larger forces intervene and people have no control over their actions.”
I can never really tell whether Merlin is simply saying kind words to comfort me or telling me the cosmic truth. I hesitate to ask her this out right and have always hesitated to ask if the words are just platitudes to comfort me. I’m afraid to ask it outright. What if Merlin tells me that they are just platitudes? Then I’ll know that this isn’t destiny at all, but simply my foolish heart. All this damage caused by me, for love of a woman! A truly grand, gorgeous, mannered, intelligent, insightful, kind, sensuous, graceful woman, I’ll grant you, perhaps exceeding in those qualities every other person who has ever lived, but just one person, one woman, nonetheless. I sold my soul and the universe for her and nothing has ever been the same since, not in all the incarnations of everyone, and it all starts with me.
I detest when the others see me as great, and throw all of the blame towards Mordred, or Morgan, or Merlin. They point out to me that had Merlin not chosen to have Gorlois killed, none of this would ever have happened. Or had Morgan not nursed her grievance into vengeful madness and set Mordred in motion against Arthur by publicly revealing the sin of adultery that Gwen and I had committed, none of the devastation that followed would have happened. Or even if Mordred had simply defied his mother…but anyone who has met Mordred in any incarnation knows that the universe has been very unkind to him or her each time and that demon voices push and prod poor Mordred all the time and always will. How can one hold Mordred, who was only the bullet not the trigger at all, at fault?
No I had a free choice and I took my best friend’s wife, my king’s consort, my soulmate into damnation. You may say that multitudes, uncountable multitudes have committed the sin of adultery. Many have also combined this with a betrayal of friendship, and even of disloyalty to country or leader in combination, but none are so great in any of these as my sin. You may say that Gwen had a choice too and you aren’t wrong, but I will only tell you that my heart will never, not through all eternity, be able to see any fault in her. She is my ideal. She always will be. The one true love of all of my incarnations. We have thought of marrying in other times. And now, and from now on, we are free to marry no matter in which sex we incarnate. But each time we have found each other and contemplated such an action, my guilty heart will not allow it. And so I marry another or become a contemplative in a convent or monastery or on some lonely hill, or a hermit as I did in my incarnation as Lancelot, living out my days attempting to atone for my great sin. The problem is always the same, though. I simply can’t forgive myself for the damage I’ve caused, and I can’t give up my love for Gwen, not ever.
No, other than those members of the table, I have never tried to explain this to anyone else. What would the point be? My husband, simple, good man that he is, not unlike dear Elaine, would probably suggest that I talk to a psychiatrist. He would believe that I believed my story, but he would not believe it himself. He might even pretend to believe for my sake, but he is not a good liar, which is so unusual in a lawyer. Oh, he lies, but somehow, he isn’t aware he’s doing so. It’s strange. This modern Western world is strange, so full, simultaneously of prudery and perversion, and no one seems aware or bothered by this dichotomy, this paradox, this open and clear contradiction and hypocrisy! The stain of corruption is on everyone, and the worst seem to revel in it! What were Yeat’s words, “…the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity…” and yes, The Second Coming is at hand, but then it always is. The second coming is a permanent condition, but one has to have the eyes to discern it. We can make choices for repentance and goodness, but as I know all to well, there is no true redemption, no true clemency, forgiveness or true penance, unless one forgives oneself one’s greatest sin. Mine is so great, and its effects are so great, I have been many incarnations attempting to atone, but the forgiveness of self remains my stumbling block. Will I ever overcome it?
No doubt, Barb and I will find a time to speak again of these things, before or after the dinner. I may even stay on a day or two more and try to talk it out, but I almost dread it. I almost dread the raising of my hopes for true forgiveness, when I know they will be dashed again, as they must be until I can forgive myself. This failure to afford myself what I would gladly afford almost anyone else, is a kind of selfishness too, a delusion of grandeur really, but is it? I can’t help seeing what I see: the world is as it is, because of my lust, because of my sin. If only Arthur would come back, perhaps then, perhaps then… But I know he would readily forgive me now, as he forgave me then, as Gwen told me more than once, and he once himself told me face to face… “How can I hold you guilty for loving the same qualities I love in Gwenivere? How can I think you have done evil? I love you both! Of course you love each other!”
Arthur is so noble, so good. It would be good to see him again, but even such a talk, even those same words would not change the fact, any more than it changes the fact when I try to find the fairest solutions, the fairest outcomes in my cases, that there are still injustices that can’t be reconciled. Great tragedies that go unsolved. There are people in pain everywhere. Stupidity abounds, as does lust, violence and rankest evil. And so much of it, has its template in my sin. That is fact and will be forever. I can never change that.
Gawain
Oh, I’ll go to Barb’s damned dinner. I always do. The food is good and there are always quite a few nice looking men of a certain age there. The laundromat can take care of itself basically, and my moron of a son is around if anything explodes.
I put my second husband in the ground ten years ago. Not that he was much use to begin with. Didn’t know enough to close his mouth in the rain. And my first husband? Well, he was big and beautiful and gave me my moron son, but he had the roving eye and he’s lucky he took off with that secretary of his, because if he’d stayed with me while seeing her much longer, he wouldn’t have been long for this world. They’re in Phoenix these days I hear; may they both rot in hell.
Anyway, the food is good at Barb’s Dinner and there are those men. Maybe I can find one this time to knock a piece off with out in the bushes. A girl can hope. If I can just keep Barb away from me with all her nonsense about all of us being the reincarnations of the Knights of the Round Table, and me being this Gawain who was supposed to have been this fierce knight who put his life on the line for King Arthur and had that go around with this Green Knight or whatever… I’ve told her that I think the whole thing is nonsense but if she wants to feed me prime rib and tell me I’m Marie Antoinette this time, I really don’t care. I can put up with it for a good meal and maybe a good lay.
I mean, it’s stupid, really. Even if we are all these people she claims we are, what good is that to us now? Can I go on a talk show and cash in? No. Are there priceless ancient jewels I can claim with this Gawain’s name on them? No. Is there a good chunk of real estate in England that is the family lands, that I can cash in and profit from? No. All there is, is a kind of masquerade party every ten years. Well, like I said, the food is good and the men are mostly pretty fine looking.
Of course, I never say this in so many words to Barb, but that woman, for all her crazy ass ways, is really something. She can kind of read what I’m thinking in my eyes, I think. She said to me last time, “You are a much better person than you want anyone else to know. And when you are put to the test again, as you were long ago and will be so many times in the future, you will prove yourself once more. Oh, you’re very rough around the edges, but you’ve got a good heart.”
There aren’t very many people in this world I’d let say that about me. And if she’d said it in front of anyone else I would have punched her in the jaw and then pulled all her hair out, but the truth is, and if you repeat this I’ll come and find you, I like Barb and all her silliness. She goes to a lot of trouble about it even though it’s all nuts. It matters to her and she’s…well…good. It ain’t her fault she’s nuts. What are you gonna do? You’re born a certain way and that’s how you stay; that’s how I see it. I don’t know about reincarnation or after lives or ‘the nobility of the human spirit’ the way Barb puts it, or any of that, but I do know that people are a certain way and you can usually tell how they are inside ten minutes. Barb is good and I’ll smack anybody who says she ain’t. That’s that. Deal with it.
So, I’m getting out my slinkiest dress for the dinner and Barb and Percy and me are heading over there together. If I can’t find anybody interested there, like I’ve told Barb before, Percy will do just fine, even though he’s a half wit. Barb says that would be a truly evil thing to do, and she kind of smiles at me when she says that. I think she figures I would never do that no matter what, Percy being such an innocent sort. She’s probably right. My bark is worse than my bite sometimes, I guess, but not most of the time, only where Barb is concerned.
Truth? Every once in a while I half believe all this nonsense. I’ve had dreams where I’m guarding a king while I stand on a hill above this enormous battle that’s going on down in the mud and rain below me, and suddenly there are warriors all around and I let out a yell and I realize I’m not me, I’m this great big warrior, and I start going at them all with my big ass sword. I’ve had this dream a bunch of times and once when my second husband was alive I had it and I punched him right in the nose in my sleep. And he woke me up with his “Watch it there, hon!” and I laughed and laughed. I was never very good to him. He wasn’t a bad sort. Truth, I’m never very good to much of anybody. I don’t know, just seems to be in my nature. That’s what I mean. See, from what I’ve read about this Gawain, he was a hard case, a real man’s man, and wanted to be better, but his nature just held him back. Not to get sappy and all moony eyed, but I’m kind of like that too, just like Barb says. I don’t know.
Ehh, on second thought, it’s all crap! I don’t believe that. Never did. I’m just humoring Barb. Like I say, great food and a chance to get laid.
Gwenivere
It violates numerous tenants of the the Church that I attend this dinner every ten years, but so far as everyone but my confessor knows, it’s a hunting camp. If the others of my church knew what I believed about myself and that I believed in past lives and reincarnation—oh my! If they knew that I know in my heart of hearts that I, in another life, was the great lover of Lancelot and betrayer of Arthur! That I was Gwenivere, Queen of ancient England, and later the Holy Mother of an order of nuns! If my parishioners knew I believed these things about myself, those on the right would think I was possessed, and those on the left would think I am psychotic.
But, as Santiago says in Hemingway’s masterwork, “but since I am not crazy it does not matter.”
Clearly the Church is in retrograde motion right now, and I don’t say anything about that either, except to my more liberal friends. I have, like many leftist Catholics, thought about leaving, but there is still an important place for “old Father Jerry” as they call me, and it would do a lot of damage in my community to leave, so I have not and I will not. Two years from retirement, it would be ridiculous anyway.
That feeling that I have so much to atone for has followed me through several lives. Mrs. Crane, who was my Lancelot, still seems so weighed down with it that she can barely live the life she’s living now, which is hardly fair to her husband. But he seems oblivious to her fixation, and nearly everything else, the few times I’ve met him. What would he think if he knew what the two of us believe about ourselves and our past? Would he be alarmed, or oblivious about that too? To be fair, he seems like a good sort basically, and is generally good for her. He keeps her busy with all the legal wrangling in their firm. I keep busy with the church.
I find it amazing, though I shouldn’t, that Percival is near me nearly every day. And that his name is still Percival. Merlin…Barb…says it always is his name. He can never be anyone else. In a way that is pure discernment, he knows exactly who I am, and who everybody else is, as he always has. I don’t know if he assumes that everybody else knows all about everything too, or if he’s quick enough even to wonder that. It’s delightful to have him near. One of the few delights of this incarnation, to be honest. And his thing with his cup…oh, could it really be, do you suppose? Of course, it probably is. I don’t know. I am not certain of much.
Of course, I am seeking always for a closer walk with the Lord. But the Lord so many others in the Church follow, is much more vindictive than mine. That too, I suppose is blasphemy, but I cannot see the God that has given me chance after chance to atone for the harm my errant heart did all those years ago, as the same one who is quick to condemn sinners and sends anyone to everlasting flames. Mercy is mercy. It is granted to us specifically because we don’t deserve it.
Still, I wonder too. We are all such small cogs in the great wheel. I loved those old days so! All the colors! All the dialects! All those far flung romantic adventures! Were they really aimed at evil? Are my sins and those of Lancelot really so great? Is even Morgan’s or Merlin’s or Modred’s so great? All of us did what we did out of love for the world, or at least with the intention of bringing the wheel of justice back around. At least, I think so. My sin and the sin of Lancelot seem almost simply the wheel of destiny spinning, but that may be discounting free will.
Was it free will? Some of it was surely, but there was a higher purpose involved too. And probably a lower one. Darkness and light. Male and Female. Goodness and Evil. I can’t really comprehend all of this. I can only get down on my knees and say Merton’s famous prayer:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I cannot see the road ahead of me,
And I do not know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself
And the fact that I think that I am following your will,
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does, in fact, please you
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
And I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire.
Therefore, will I trust you always,
Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
And you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Let all the people say
Amen.
That helps for a while every time. It’s a cool balm. But every ten years, the itch is back, and I must go, for what purpose that I can’t fully see, to this gathering. If only to stay in touch. If only to wonder when it all, whatever it is, will come to fruition.
Ah, Lancelot.
Ah, Arthur.
Ah, Love.
Ah, Camelot.
Igraine
It hurts a great deal that my darling wife, the soul that used to be Lancelot, doesn’t think I know the pain she feels, has always felt. To let her know who I really am would be too much unfair confusion for one soul in any life: that her husband, officious old Hank, is really the mother of her former self’s best friend and cousin, Arthur. Thus, I won’t be going to the gathering. I’ll just keep up my guise as this clueless lawyer fixated on the law. The law of Man.
I’ve seen my Arthur there preparing for Barb’s big dinner. Years back when Merlin first contacted me in this life, before I knew my Sophia, the former Lancelot, I stopped by at Barb’s place north of Newberry, as though I were a hunter looking for the right to hunt some private land. I just wanted to see the place, to decide if there was any reason I should go to the gathering, any reason I shouldn’t. And my Arthur, who is Arnie Mills, a local handyman, this time around, was there tending to things. Barb (Merlin), to my amazement then and now, didn’t and doesn’t know who he is. She hadn’t arrived yet on that day. She was due the next. It’s hilarious in a way, and so fitting. There Arthur is right under her nose and she doesn’t recognize him. There’s a reason for it, I suppose, none so blind as those who will not see and all that maybe, I don’t know. Or maybe God just has a humbling sense of humor. Anyway, I’ve never told her. I don’t think it’s my place to.
I knew Arthur right away as any mother would. And here is what I didn’t expect: he knew me. Unmistakably and matter-of-factly he took one look at the handsome, if pretentious facade I’d made for myself then, what?, twenty years ago now, and said through that bemused smile of his, without saying it aloud, “Hello, Mother.”
Amazing. Where did he get such insights? Merlin helped, I’m sure, but he always could see through things in his way. It may not be so amazing, really that a son should know his mother no matter what disguise she has on. It is no more amazing than that I should know him instantly, I suppose.
We kept up the pretense. I don’t know why. He said he was certain Barb would be fine with me hunting birds there, that I was welcome. He said, further, that some day perhaps he and I could hunt or fish together there, along that river. His smile told me then that he knew it would never happen, that I would never be back, and that he understood why.
We were brought together all those years ago, the mother and a young king, and even that was not the first time we had been connected. I know that, though it is cloudy to me exactly who we were to each other before those ancient days, and I don’t suppose it matters much. We are joined through all time. That’s the point. And we were separated too, by Merlin’s decision to raise Arthur to be the savior of England. And he truly was for a time. For those brief shining years he certainly was. He was magnificent. I saw him as Edmund Spencer would say it, ‘pricking across the plain’, many times.
I knew when I saw him on that day near Barb’s camp, that I didn’t need to see him again. That it would be enough for this life to know that he was well and doing the job he was supposed to do. I knew too that I had no place at that table, though Barb had warmly invited me. Uther, Gorlois, wherever they are now, and I have no place at that table, any more than Uranus, Cronus, and Gaea have a place on Olympus. We are the figures behind the story. What do they call it in Hollywood? Back story! That’s what we are. Barb knows that. It was kind of her to invite me. I think she knows that I will never come. I couldn’t really, now that Sophia is involved. As I said, it would be too confusing for her. I would never have gotten involved with her in the first place, had I known who she really was then. There was just this attraction. A likeness which I didn’t understand any more than most people understand why they wind up loving who they love. I knew who she was after a year or so. I knew that this deep guilt she carried around could only have been caused by something as profound as Lancelot’s sin. I even said that myself one day as I watched her sleeping. It was a Saturday, and for once I had no work at the office and had time to think. And I was just watching this lovely woman sleep and saw a troubled dream lining her face and I nearly woke her, and that’s when it dropped down clearly too me. Of course, of course, this was Lancelot.
My sin, though not so full of will as hers, is one likewise incited by a repressive culture. To survive, I had to stay with Uther, uncouth savage that he was. I had to stay with him for my survival and then for Arthur’s. Had I known from the first that the child would be taken from me, would I have run away, thrown myself on the mercy of some other savage with a sword? Probably not. What good would it have done? At least my bondage to Uther served a higher purpose.
In the end, though, was it all worth it? All this pain for so many? Was the shining moment and the great city and justice for the better part of a century truly winning out, worth it?
It’s hard to know. We’re in preparation time now. There will be another round. Many more, from what Barb says. We play our roles. That is a truth. For better or worse, we play our roles. The rest, as they say in the military and business, is above our pay grades.
Uther Pendragon
Every ten years I get this little note from my old pal Barb. Ha! She can’t resist me really. I guess she regrets the time back in high school when she turned me down, when all I wanted was to cop a feel in the back seat. That wasn’t much to ask was it? And now I got babes all over the country sometimes several at a time! Any time I want! For as long as I want! And beautiful wives too! One after another making good looking kids. And there she is, from what I hear living above a laundromat and working as a hocus pocus con woman from what my guys tell me. She’d have to get through layer after layer of secret service just to talk to me now. But I made sure the mailroom people were watching for this invitation, because I knew it would be coming. It came for the last fifty years every ten like clockwork and here it is again.
I have half a mind to go! Haven’t been back to the home town in ages. They always thought I wouldn’t amount to much. Oh I always got the babes, always, even then, they let me grab them right by their pussies, but the pathetic small time mucky mucks in that little shithole didn’t like the way the old man tried to buy up all the prime property, and they laughed when he told them they would regret it and he moved on to bigger things. Much bigger things! And now, here I am! I’m the biggest thing of all, and everybody knows it! I’m in charge of the whole damned shooting match!
Yes, sir, I should go back there and set all the secret service people loose and just stand around for a couple of days and watch them all come around to kiss my ass and let me grab their pussies, and regret not kissing the old man’s ass all those years ago, because it’s too damned late for them now! It’d be good just to see those flabby old bastards just eating their hearts out! And then go out to that pathetic little shindig of Barb’s and maybe take her some place nice after and give her what she wants so bad now! Ha, ha! The last laugh is right here in my office! The last laugh is me looking at this pathetic little invitation. Oh, she wants me now! She wants me so bad, and I can have her any time I want and a hundred other old hocus pocus skanks like her if I want them! The question is do I want her? Yeah, do I want her? Well, let me just think about that and enjoy it.
This is the way to live! I can enjoy having her or not having her! I can enjoy going back and messing with that little shithole town or I not. And either way it’s fun for me. Lots more fun anyway than what’s going on in this town! Who knew it was going to be so complicated? I’m surrounded by idiots that can’t get anything done. And so many rules and laws! What kind of a way is this to run a world? Why, in my old businesses, I’d just say I wanted something and it would happen. And now, here I am, the most powerful man in the world and I can’t get these idiots to do what I want! And all the time the people with their signs, a lot of’em old skanks like Barb, yelling and screaming. Why, in my businesses, I’d just tell them to make me a sandwich, then get naked and wait for me in my suite on their knees. What kind of a world is this?
But I’ll beat’em! I’ll beat’em all! And, you’ll see, I’ll get re-elected by a huge majority and I’ll show them all! I’ll show them all! And I’ll build a wall high enough to block out the sun and make the world forget all this political correctness. I’ll build a world just like it used to be, just like they talk about on my favorite news shows. Ooo, there are some hotties on those news shows! Some real foxes! I think I’ll be doing some personal interviews over on that network real soon, if you know what I mean, ha, ha!
It’s lonely here, in a way, surrounded by idiots. In every room I’m by far the smartest and best looking man. Nobody is as smart or good looking as me. Nobody really gets me. I keep hiring and firing, but I can’t seem to find anybody to really understand, except my daughters. Oooo, they’re a good looking bunch aren’t they? And my sons are running my business while I’m doing this government bit. Family. Family. That’s all that matters. Well, unless they piss me off.
Well, all the protesters can all holler in the streets all they want… And there aren’t as many of them as the fake news media would like to make you think, believe me! I’ll show’em all! I’ll show all of’em! Because I’m like a smart guy, you know? I can make this all work the way it’s supposed to. And I will too. You just watch. Ha!
I’ll make it so a guy can be a guy again. That’s where this is headed.
Oh, and as for this little invitation of yours, Barb? Well, maybe next time cutie pie. Keep it warm for me. I know you will! They all do.
Ector
It’s really quite kind of Barb to invite me, as she always does. After all, I only played the role of mama bird getting the fledgling out of the nest. And even that wasn’t much. I’ve raised so many children. Six this time around, most of them pretty successful.
It’s nice to think that way. They all came from our little house right next to our bakery on the edge of town with a nice view of Lake Michigan, not that Mike and I ever had much of a view of it working away in the bakery. It never stops, and with the six kids, well, it’s been a busy life, but happy. Now that they’ve all headed out; the last one, Margie, just last year. It almost seems like we’re on vacation, now, just getting the rolls and doughnuts ready, baking the cakes, sending out the gourmet pizzas we’ve just taken up.
Mike always wonders about the dinner, but I just tell him that Barb is an old friend, that we were roommates at a church summer camp a long time ago, and it’s only one time a year. Barb even stopped by a few years ago, just to back the story, and was ever so sweet. My life this time has been very good, if pretty ordinary.
I’ve been thinking about it, though, and you know what? The world needs ordinary. It needs quiet days and simple chores and good tasting things made with working hands, maybe more than it needs anything else. The world is complicated. It’s beyond me, really. It must feel that way for a lot of others too, so our little bakery gives them all some home made comfort and simplicity: nice hot rolls and doughnuts.
From what I can remember, and from what Barb has helped me remember from that long time ago, it was complicated then too. But Merlin gave me a straight-forward job: raise Arthur in the ordinary ways of being a country boy and a squire to his brother. It was easy, really; he was a great kid. Oh, he got into the some of the same things boys always get into, and he came home covered in all kinds of filth more than once, but that’s nothing.
And then when he rose to be king and I had the pleasure of feeling I’d had some part in it for twelve or thirteen years… Well, I’ll admit to being very proud of that, still. That’s been honor enough for many lifetimes. It’s a knowledge of yourself that very few people have ever enjoyed, and I’ve enjoyed it. Oh, but then the fall… Just awful. I died in the last fight just like the rest. I wasn’t much of a knight really, and certainly not much of a warrior, but I led a band of yeoman archers, and we sent a few thousand arrows Mordred’s way before we all fell, one by one. Jerry doesn’t know it, but he was one of those boys. He was dear to me then, too. The Greek fire that Mordred was hurling about got us. It was pretty awful, just the worst kind of pain. Like napalm. The horrors men do conceive to hurt each other! Just ingenious really, infamous, truly evil.
It hurts me deeply to think that Arthur was one of the last to have to reckon with all the destruction that came in that brutal, short war. All that he and Merlin and Gwen, and Lancelot had built all in ashes, all dead. Why? I often wonder. Why? And then, poor Bedivere. He was just a kid and he was left with all those memories and the task of telling the story, over and over. And he lived a long time in that life. A ridiculously long time for that era. He was 110 when he died and still completely lucid. That’s what Betty, who used to be Bedivere told me and I believe her. She’s a good honest sort. She was in that old life too, as I recall. Just right for being the messenger to start the story down the ages. She managed a fledgling too: that story, for all those years. And now she tells it again each time we meet. And when she finishes, we all go home. “Once there was a place…” she always starts. It’s a great story, just the greatest! It brings us all to happy nostalgic laughter, and bittersweet tears. One telling every ten years isn’t enough really, but it’s always all the abundance we can take at the time.
Barb takes too much blame upon herself for how it all ended. She has told me, and tells everybody who will listen, that it was her sin of killing Gorlois that started it all. But when she explains it to me, I understand why she…why Merlin did what he did. He took England from a state of total, constant chaos into an era of peace and prosperity. The memory of that era and the longing for its return, led to quite a few more eras not unlike it. It isn’t really Merlin’s fault that Man continues to return to evil. He was really only using the usual dark methods of Man to bring about peace. And that’s the flaw, of course: any evil ultimately brings about other evil, but what else was he supposed to do? Just let chaos continue?
Oh…listen to me! Barb says I should have been a philosopher this time around, not a baker. I told her that being a baker or any other simple thing like it frees your mind to be a philosopher. She liked that, even jotted it down in her little notebook. Then she said, I do all right. I always have, she said. Well, I don’t know about that, but her saying that made me feel pretty good inside.
Kay
Okay, so, I’m trying to adjust, but it’s a hard thing to swallow. Look, I’m an old high school football player and a PE teacher. When I was in college I never took a philosophy class. I’ve never paid much attention to religion, and I didn’t even take part in the discussions in the dorms late at night. And now that I’m out of school, I like to go to parties with my girlfriend, Sally, maybe take in a Tiger game here and there, follow the Packers, coach my own football team and throw out the dodgeballs. I’m probably making myself sound really stupid. I’m not, but the point is, I’m no intellectual or romantic. So, again, this is hard to swallow.
First, I’m given to believe that there’s such a thing as reincarnation. Second, I have to get my head around the idea that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were a real thing. Third, and this is a hard one, I was Sir Kay in another life. Fourth, true mind blower, there’s a lady named Barb, who used to be Merlin, who has contacted me telepathically. Fifth, my mom’s favorite picture of me has always been the one when I was about five and I was dressed up as a knight. Never gave that much thought until now. Sixth, I guess I’m going to be going to a meeting of the reincarnated Knights of the Round Table at a camp somewhere north of Newberry. I’ve never been to Newberry, and it’s about a four hour trip. Seventh, I had to explain to Sally that I can’t make our date this Saturday because I’ve got to meet some old friends in Newberry. “What old friends?” she says. “Some guys I met when I was in college.” I say. “What guys?” she says. “And suddenly my mouth was full of the names of a bunch of fellas who will actually be there. And I knew that how? I don’t know. “I’ve never heard you talk about them before.” Sally says. “I’d half forgotten about them until they contacted me.” “Let me talk to one of’em.” Sally says. And all of a sudden I’m calling up the guy who used to be Sir Bors and when I get him, all he says is, “Let me talk to Sally.” And then he talks to her and makes her smile and she’s okay with the whole thing. How does that all work? I have no idea! I’ve never met the guy and I don’t know how I know his number or that he used to be Sir Bors, or even who Sir Bors was.
Truth is, I didn’t even know who Sir Kay was, who I apparently used to be, until I Googled him after the phone call. From the book about King Arthur, of which that I’ve now read a portion, and that I found in the library standing on the edge of a shelf as a display; he sounds like a pretty big jerk. A big dumb jock. He treated Arthur like crap…well, the way I kinda treated my younger brother Pete when we were growing up. I’m gonna have to call Pete and apologize.
So, I’m Kay. Or I was once. That’s what they’re all telling me. Yeah, I know. Not very…what…flattering, I guess. To be fair, his life was, as coach Bruce would say, kind of a tough row to hoe. Being Kay, it seems like to me, is kind of like being the brother of Jesus or Elvis or somebody. Arthur gets all the glory and Kay gets to be…what…the security guard at the royal wedding or whatever.
And here’s the tough part, the very worst part in some ways: I have a pretty strong feeling…well I’m absolutely certain, that all of this is true. It’s sitting in my head clear as a bell. I can see it all as clearly as I can see the highway ahead of me as I drive to school.
And It’s not like it came to me in a d