Wolf’s Eyes

It has been eons since I shared one of my old short stories on The Eye-Dancers!  And so, for this post, blemishes and warts and all, I will share a story I wrote way back in 2007–just before I began writing The Eye-Dancers the novel.  The story is called “Wolf’s Eyes”–and, again, I am not going back in and updating it all.  What follows is the story, exactly as I wrote in fourteen years ago.

On the surface, this story is very different from The Eye-Dancers, but what they have in common, I hope, is an honest exploration into the human condition and a depiction of the struggles and challenges and loves and hurts and joys and wonders of life.

I hope you enjoy the story!

 

“Wolf’s Eyes”

Copyright 2021 by Michael S. Fedison

**************************

Nick dodged the punch easily.  The guy had telegraphed it by a mile.  Off-balance, stumbling forward,  the puncher fell into a snow bank.  Nick could have pressed his advantage, pummeled the guy, but he didn’t.  Over the years, he had learned to keep his cool—essential in his line of work.  He would only use force as a last resort.  Even then, it was risky.  Breach of the peace lawsuits were common, and often went in favor of the debtor.

“Look, Mr. Hickman,” Nick said, speaking slowly, calmly.  The man who had tried to hit him—Hickman—regained his feet, brushing snow from his nightclothes.  Fresh flakes, swaying drunkenly in a light, cold breeze, salted the air.  The only light came from a nearby street lamp, which glowed in the dark like a beacon, and a small fluorescent light that hung above Hickman’s front door.  “I have to take it away tonight.  You know that.  Why make it any harder than it has to be?”

“You lied to me!” Hickman said, closing the distance by half between himself and Nick with one long step.  “You told me you’d give me more time.”

Nick took a deep breath.  This was a part of the job he hated.  It was why he’d come here tonight after eleven—hoping to avoid a confrontation.  But no such luck.  “I didn’t lie to you, Mr. Hickman,” he said.  “I said I’d give you more time, and I did.  But I can’t give you another day.  My boss wouldn’t like it.”

From behind, a door opened, then slammed shut.  Nick turned, but kept an eye on Hickman, just in case he tried something again.  Great, just what he needed.  Mrs. Hickman.

“We’ll get the money!” she yelled.  “Just give him one more week.  Can’t you do that?”  She was now face-to-face with Nick.

Nick shook his head.  “I extended the deadline last time,” he said.  “I wasn’t authorized to do that, either, and I got an earful for it.  Can’t do it again.  The car needs to come with me.”

Hickman tensed, and Nick readied himself for a second attack.  But the thin, balding man just stood his ground.  The fight had apparently gone out of him.  “I’m just a little down on my luck right now, that’s all,” he said.  “I need to get a job.  I will get a job.  It’s not my fault I got laid off.  But how can I get hired somewhere if you take my car away, huh?  It’s the only one we have.”

Nick shrugged.  “I’m sorry.  But if I don’t take this car tonight, I’ll be looking for a job myself come tomorrow morning.”  With that, he got on his hands and knees, ready to finish what he’d started before Hickman had interrupted him.

The Hickmans stared at him while he worked.  It was as if they were frozen into silence by a combination of the subzero temperatures and Nick’s unbendable resolve.  He had pulled his tow truck into the driveway, directly behind the Hickmans’ blue ’03 Stratus.  Now, with the aid of a flashlight strategically placed on the snow-dusted surface of the driveway, he secured the tow chains around the car’s rear axle.  That got Hickman moving again.

He placed his gloveless hands on the Stratus’s trunk, as if to proclaim ownership and a right of refusal for its being towed away, then quickly pulled his hands away, wincing, the metal too cold to touch.

“Stop!” he said.  “Stop it!  How will I get a job without a car?  There’s no good work to be had in this town, and the city’s twenty miles from here.”  It sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

“I know,” Nick said, as he operated the winch, lifting the car off of its back wheels.  “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”  It was Mrs. Hickman.  “You’re sorry?  How can you do this to us?  How can you just . . . steal our car like this?”

“It’s not stealing, Mrs. Hickman, and you know it.”  He checked his work, making sure everything was tight and properly secured.  Then he hopped into his truck.

As he backed slowly down the driveway, the Hickmans followed him.  Mrs. Hickman signaled for him to roll down his window.  He did, not sure why he was still such a glutton for punishment after all these years.

“You have no soul, do you know that?” she screamed at him.  Puffs of vapor escaped her lips, adding emphasis to her accusation.  “You are evil!”

Nick reclosed the window.  It served no purpose to argue with these people.  When he drove away a moment later, he looked in his rearview mirror.  Mrs. Hickman had her head on her husband’s shoulder, and he was holding tightly onto her, as if it were her support alone that prevented him from falling, face-first, onto the ground.

♣

Two hours later, Nick thanked his father for staying over and watching Angel.  His father said to think nothing of it—Angel was a joy, as always—but Nick knew how fortunate he was.  Having his parents still living in the same community as he did helped him out immeasurably.  How many times had his father or mother babysat for Angel when Nick was out roaming the streets on one of his jobs?  Hundreds, easily.  And often at odd hours of the night.

When his father left, Nick felt bad.  He wished he could do something special for his parents, something more than the standard run-of-the-mill “thanks, Dad, thanks, Mom.”  He shuffled into the kitchen, ran some tap water into a tea kettle, then placed the kettle on the front left burner of the stovetop.  After turning the heat on high, he leaned against the counter.  Maybe he could put aside some money for them—little by little—and, once it amounted to enough, present it to them so they could take a cruise or visit Switzerland—a lifelong dream.  He shook his head.  He wouldn’t be able to save that much.  Not with Angel to look after.  Any money he could squirrel away went toward her college fund or the braces she might need in a few years.  Not for the first time, he thought back twelve years and wished he’d chosen a different line of work.

It had been one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions, made by an eighteen-year-old kid, fresh out of high school.  A friend of Nick’s at the time had an idea:  His uncle ran a repo agency, and was willing to hire the two of them on a trial basis—just to give them some real experience before they decided what to do with the rest of their lives.  “If nothin’ else, the job’ll show you how well you can work under pressure,” the friend’s uncle—a gray-bearded man who went by the name of “Buddy”—explained to Nick during their interview.  Nick found out quickly how true that was.  His friend, apparently unable to cope with that pressure, quit after a week.  But Nick stayed on.  He didn’t mind all the driving, worked the tow truck with ease, and wasn’t afraid of confrontations with angry debtors.  Nick was 6’3”, and, even at eighteen, was chiseled with muscle.  Most people didn’t want to tangle with him.

After a month on the job, Buddy told Nick he was hired, full-time, if he wanted it.  “Man, you’re already one of my top agents,” Buddy informed him.  Nick accepted.  The pay was decent—not great, but a lot better than flipping burgers.  The hours were long and irregular, but Nick didn’t mind.  He was a teenager.  Who cared if he sometimes spent entire nights driving around, searching for cars?

But, eventually, that all changed.  He met a girl, fell in love, and suddenly resented the crazy work schedule.  Sometimes, out on a date with Marie, he’d hear the whine of his cell phone, and he knew what it meant.  A job.  He’d need to cut the date short and perhaps drive as far as the county line—fifty miles one way.  Once he got married and they had Angel, it just got worse.  He wished he could work at an office, like a normal guy, and come home every night by six.

Additionally, after years on the job, he was tired of it.  Seventy-five percent of the time, he was able to avoid the debtors.  That’s why the late-night shifts often proved to be so effective.  There isn’t going to be a confrontation with someone who’s asleep.  But the other 25 percent of the time . . . He was burned out with it.  The ridiculous excuses.  The threats.  The name-calling.  It had just gotten old.

But the worst aspect of the job was what he’d experienced tonight.  Taking the car from the Hickmans wasn’t easy—it bothered Nick, and he suspected he might lie awake in bed for a while, replaying the image of the couple holding onto each other at the base of their driveway.  He wished he could be more hardhearted, but Marie had been glad that he wasn’t.  She used to say, “If it didn’t bother you, then you wouldn’t be you.”

The kettle on the stovetop began to whistle.  He shut off the burner, poured the steaming water into a teacup, then mixed in the hot chocolate packet.  It was a good night for hot chocolate.  The thermometer out on the front porch had read seven below when he’d gotten home.  Spring didn’t want to arrive this year.  Tomorrow was the first of April, and still there was no melting of the snow pack, no relief from the record-setting cold, no signs of the earth’s renewal.  Normally, crocus flowers would be pushing their way through the last patches of snow, and the daffodils, eager to upstage them, would be ready to bloom in a matter of days.  But now, there was only the deep snow and the whipping, howling northwesterly winds, and the endless days of leaden-gray clouds sealing off the sky.

He sat down at the table, took a sip of the chocolate.  Good and hot, and sweet, just the way he liked it.  He thought again of Marie.  He tried to push her away—thinking of her was too painful, but in his mind’s eye he could see her so clearly, as though she were sitting across from him, smiling, waiting to listen to how his job went.  If only it could be.  She would never smile at him again.  Never talk to him again.  Five years ago, she was driving along Pebble Creek Road, south of town.  Suddenly, a deer darted in front of her.  Swerving to avoid it, she lost control, and slammed into a tree.  The impact broke her neck, killing her instantly.  And Nick never could come to grips with that.  The power of an instant.  One moment, driving home, looking forward to seeing your husband and baby daughter, the next—in the blink of an eye, two final beats of the heart—slumped dead and motionless over the steering wheel.  He shuddered to think what might have happened to him if it weren’t for Angel.  She was the reason he’d managed to hold on—she still was.

He put his cup of hot chocolate down, rubbed his eyes.  It was no good brooding this way.  “Quit it,” he told himself.  “Why don’t you just quit it?”  As if in response, the wind grew louder outside, screeching, rattling the eaves and seeking entry into the warm house.

“Quit what?” a high-pitched little girl’s voice said from behind him.

He turned.  “Angel!  What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep.  I thought I heard the wolf, and . . .”  She tilted her head.  “But, Daddy, quit what?  What are you gonna quit?”  Her eyes were bright and alert.  Here it was, after one o’clock in the morning, and his seven-year-old was wide awake.  Like father, like daughter, he thought.  She walked up to the table, and looked into his cup.  “Can I have some?” she asked.

He handed her the cup.  “Careful, Angel.  It’s hot.  Just take a sip.”

She did—a loud, slurping sip.  He laughed, and it felt good.  Angel usually had that effect on him.  They had named her Angela, but he had never called her that, and was sure he never would, not even after she grew up, settled down, and had children of her own.  She would always be his Angel.

“So what are you gonna quit?” she said again, once she had sampled enough hot chocolate to her satisfaction.

He placed the cup back onto the tabletop.  “Nothing, Angel.  I was just thinking about my job, that’s all.”  He didn’t want to mention Marie.  No reason to go down that path.

She sat on his lap.  “You don’t like your job, do you, Daddy?”

He smiled.  “I just don’t like taking stuff away from people, that’s all.  I remember how, right after I started, a couple of the other guys told me not to worry.  It would get easier, the more I got used to it.  But it hasn’t.”

She looked up at him.  “Well, if you don’t like it, then why do you do it?”

It was a fair question.  He asked it himself from time to time.  But the answer was obvious, as clear as the blue in his daughter’s eyes.  There weren’t many good jobs in the area—Hickman had been right about that.  Besides, what could Nick do?  He had no degree, no special skills.  His entire working life had been spent repossessing automobiles from people who couldn’t—or, at times, wouldn’t—pay their bills.

He put his arms around Angel.  “To take care of you,” he said.  “And so when you get to be, oh, seventeen or so, you’ll be able to go to the mall with your friends and pick out all the jewelry you want, and they’ll say, ‘How can you buy all that stuff?’ And you’ll say, ‘Cause my dad’s a repo man, and he takes of me.’”

Angel giggled and rested her head on Nick’s shoulder.  “You’re silly, Daddy.”

“I’ll show you who’s silly,” he said, and reached for her underarm.  Even through her pajama top, he knew how ticklish she was.

She squirmed and laughed.  “Stop, stop!” she said.  When he did, she kept on laughing.  Then she looked into his eyes.  “I love you, Daddy.”

He almost cried then.  The trust in her.  The confidence she had in him.  He hoped he would prove worthy of it.  “I love you, too, Angel.”  He hugged her tight.  “Now, why don’t you go back to bed, honey?  It’s way too late for little girls to be up.  You have school tomorrow.”

She pulled back, sitting on his knees now.  “But, Daddy, I can’t sleep!  I heard the wolf howling!  I hoped maybe he wasn’t really there, but I kept on hearing him!  Didn’t you hear him?”

“No,” he said.  “And I don’t hear him now, either.  Do you?”

She turned her head sideways, listening.  “No,” she said.  “But I heard him before!  I know I did.  What if he’s here now?  Right next to my window?  Right—”

“Ssh,” Nick said.  “I’m sure he’s not here.”  Well, he was fairly sure.  Wolves were rare in these parts, but periodically some hunter or hiker might come across some paw prints deep in the woods, or even catch a glimpse of a wolf pack, especially at dusk or dawn.  Even then, the wolves were generally of no concern.  They almost never ventured into the town, and, though he lived a few miles out—in the boonies, as his parents liked to say—Nick hadn’t ever seen one on his land.  But he knew this year might be different.

Over the past two weeks, there had been an abnormally high frequency of wolf sightings
. . . though Nick wondered if they were genuine.  Maybe the folks who claimed to have seen a wolf were just trying to cause a stir.  If that was their intent, they succeeded.  Some of the town’s residents had joined together on what they called a “wolf watch.”  They thought some of their livestock might be in danger of attack, and, besides, wolves shouldn’t feel free to roam this far south.  “Keep ‘em up in Canada,” one old man had told Nick last week while waiting in line at the post office.  “They got no business comin’ down here.  Where’s the Border Patrol when you need ‘em?”

Still, Nick didn’t think he’d see a wolf on his property any time soon.  And he certainly didn’t want his daughter losing sleep on account of such an unlikely scenario.

“I’m sure it’ll be safe in your room, Angel,” he said.  “Go to sleep.”

This seemed to reassure her—a little.  “What about Michelle and Tammy and Carrie and Henrietta and Rosetta and—”

Nick let out a chuckle.  He kept a dozen chickens in the barn (he had always loved the taste of fresh eggs), and Angel had named each one of them.  Some of them were hard to distinguish, but Angel always seemed to know who was who.  “I’m sure they’ll be fine, too,” he said.  “The barn door is shut and latched.”

“I hope so,” Angel said.  “’Cause Jane Ferguson told me in school today that the wolf musta come to her house last night, ‘cause this morning, when her dad went outside, he saw wolf tracks goin’ straight to the barn.  And if the wolf went there . . .”

“Don’t worry about that, honey,” Nick said, but he understood Angel’s alarm.  The Fergusons lived only a half mile up the road from them.  That was too close for comfort.  “Nothing bad will happen.”

She got off his lap.  Her eyes were finally starting to look sleepy.  “Promise?”

“I promise,” he said.  “No wolf will break into our barn tonight.  Okay?”  He smiled at her.  “Here.  One for the road.”  He held the cup out to her, and she took one last loud sip of the hot chocolate.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said.  “But it’s not so hot anymore.  G’night.”

“Good night, Angel.”

She left the kitchen, and he heard her climbing the stairs to her bedroom.

♣

Ryersons’ General Store was one of those relics from America’s past—a small-town shop with dusty hardwood floors, a proprietor who knew you by name, and cramped shelves filled to overflowing with items you could buy much cheaper at the super chain stores in the city.  But Nick had always liked this place.  He’d shopped here since he was a kid.

When he opened the door, a bell announced his presence.  Jim Ryerson, who had owned the store since before Nick was born, stood behind the cash register, chatting with a red-haired woman Nick couldn’t identify.  He glanced up at him and waved.  Nick waved back, then proceeded to the refrigerator case.  He slid open the glass door, which squeaked, and retrieved a gallon of whole milk, along with a package of sharp cheddar cheese.  Then he approached the checkout counter.  Close up, the redhead looked familiar, but Nick still couldn’t place her.

“You should put a signup sheet outside, or right up front,” the woman was telling Ryerson.  “And get the men to band up.”

Ryerson looked over at Nick.  “All set, Nick?”

Nick nodded, placed his items onto the counter.  The woman eyed him, unfriendly.

“Impound many cars lately?” Ryerson said.

“A few,” Nick said, and suddenly it occurred to him why the woman looked familiar.  A couple of years ago, Nick seized a minivan from her.  She’d been four months behind on her payments.  At the mention of impounding cars, the redhead’s expression darkened.  Nick worked the entire county, and many of his jobs sent him down to the city.  He didn’t usually need to repo cars from his own town.  But he’d gone after enough that awkward, chance encounters like this one were bound to happen once in a while.  “Awful cold lately,” he said, wanting to change the subject.

“Tell me about it,” Ryerson said.  “Worst spell I’ve ever seen this time of year.  Makes me want to pack up an’ move to Florida.”

“Nah, too crowded,” Nick said.  “And too flat.”

“Well, at least they don’t have wolves there,” the woman said.  She was still scowling at him.

“Has there been another sighting?” Nick asked.

Ryerson nodded.  “They saw ‘im up by the Baker place at dawn.  Tried to shoot ‘im, but Kenny Baker never did win any prizes for marksmanship.”

“Man, what’s going on?” Nick said.  “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“It’s probably this crazy weather,” Ryerson said.  “With the cold we’ve been gettin’, and with the snow still so deep, pickin’s must be slim out in the woods.  So what’s a wolf do?  He comes raidin’ our barns, lookin’ for meat.”

Nick thought about that.  It was as good an explanation as any.  He was relieved he had a shotgun at home—an old Remington his father had given him.  He didn’t think he’d need to use it, but he was beginning to wonder . . . .

“Raiding barns would be bad enough,” the woman said.  “But he’s goin’ after pets, too.  My neighbor said the wolf got to chasin’ some cat right out in the road.  And my kids are havin’ nightmares, worryin’ about ‘im!  You got to put that signup sheet out, Mr. Ryerson.  Get a bunch of men to go out together and not come home till they gut that monster.”

Ryerson told her he would consider the suggestion.

“Do more than consider it,” she shot back.  “Everyone in this town will rest easier once that wolf is dead.”

♣

Another late-night job, but this time there was no confrontation.  It went smoothly, and he was home just after midnight.  As he went upstairs, to check on Angel (his dad said she’d been asleep for hours), he felt that familiar sense of relief mixed with regret that he always did after completing a repo job.  He was relieved that the job was over, but he regretted having to take someone’s car.  He didn’t know the person he had targeted tonight.  A woman, apparently living by herself.  He didn’t know if she was delinquent on her payments because she was stupid with money, irresponsible, or whether she had been dealt one of those cruel, random blows life sometimes liked to dish out.  Maybe she was a good person, who tried hard to balance her checkbook.  Maybe she was kind and generous, lending money she didn’t have.  He didn’t know, and didn’t particularly want to.  Knowing always made the work harder.

He tiptoed to Angel’s door, gently pushed it open.  Her nightlight was on, and she was breathing gently, in a deep, sound sleep.  Any doubts and misgivings about his profession left him.  Everything he did, he did for Angel.  That was the only thing that mattered.

♣

All through the next week, it snowed.  Still no sign of winter’s retreat.  Easter was approaching, but it seemed more like Christmastime.  And the temperatures remained well below freezing.  The townspeople openly wondered whether spring would ever come this year.

There were more wolf sightings, too.  A high school boy, out snowshoeing in his backyard, saw paw prints that led straight up to the porch.  An old married couple said the wolf had raided their storage shed, rummaging for scraps of thrown-out meat.  Another couple said the wolf had scratched at the side of their barn, apparently sniffing the sheep within, until its paws must have bled.  Dried red streaks littered the siding like a crazed, haphazard display of graffiti.  Even Jim Ryerson claimed he thought he saw the wolf out behind the general store, right in town, one night, in the moonshine.  And several people said they heard the wolf howling, deep into the night.

That whole week, whenever Nick came home from a repo job, he always thought of his Remington, secured and locked away in its gun case, but ready to use if necessary.

 

♣

“Daddy!  Daddy!  The barn’s open!  Daddy!”

Angel was shaking him, rousing him, but he didn’t want to be roused.  This had been a rare night with no jobs.  He’d tucked himself in early.  “Wha?” he said.  “Angel, what are you doing?”  He shook his head, trying to clear it, rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes.  Checking the digital clock on his nightstand, he saw that it was 2:33 a.m.

“Daddy, the barn!” she shouted.  “I can hear the door!  It got loose!”

He sat up.  “That’s impossible, Angel.  That door’s latched.  It—”  But then he heard it.  A dull, rhythmic thud, thud coming from beyond his window.  The wind had been fierce earlier—fifty miles per hour.  There had been an advisory to stay off the roads.  Somehow, it must have jarred the door loose.  He slid back down, plopping his head onto the pillow.

“Daddy, what are you doing?” Angel said.  “The barn!  The chickens—”

“I’ll check on the chickens in the morning, honey.  If the latch broke, there’s not much I can do till it gets light anyway.”

“But, Daddy, the wolf!  He’ll get Jillian and Henrietta and Rosetta and—”

He sat up again.  “Angel . . .”  But then he stopped himself.  She was breathing so fast, nearly hyperventilating.  He knew she would never be able to get to sleep until he checked outside.  “Okay,” he said.  “Okay, honey.  I’ll go take a look.”

“Hurry, Daddy!”

He hurried.  And, once downstairs, he actually felt alert and awake.  He put on his overcoat—it was in the teens outside, and with the wind chill, it surely felt a lot worse—then considered the Remington.  He doubted the wolf would be out there, but if he was going to wander outside in the middle of the night, he wanted to be prepared for anything.  He unlocked the case, and pulled out the gun.

“Daddy?”  Angel looked scared.  She stared at the Remington.

“Go upstairs, Angel,” he said.  “I won’t be long.  I’m sure everything will be just fine.”  He offered her a reassuring smile, then opened the front door.  The wind sliced into him, freezing his exposed cheeks and hands.  Stupid, no gloves, he thought, but he didn’t want to go back and get them.  He went outside.

The barn door was clearly visible, bathed in the glow of two lamps that hung directly above it.  It had gotten loose, all right.  It banged repeatedly against the side of the barn, wood smiting wood, the sound echoing along the cold current of the wind.  A few bundles of straw whirled about the open entranceway, some of it spilling out into the snow-strewn path.  Looking more closely, Nick thought he saw something else, too. . . .

Tracks.

He walked over to the barn.  There were several sets of tracks, both going and coming.  He knelt down to examine them.  Wolf tracks, without a doubt.  And fresh.  Interspersed with the tracks, trickles of blood marred the path, freckling the snow with reddish-brown blotches.

“Great,” Nick said.  “Just great.”  From behind him, deep inside the barn, he heard the chickens clucking and moving about.  How many of them had the wolf gotten?  He was about to go check, when, from the corner of his eye, he saw movement.

He wheeled around, quickly, and saw, in the distance, a large shape heading for the woods.  It had to be the wolf, the same wolf that had raided his barn and killed who knew how many of his chickens.

“That’s the last time you’re gonna kill anything,” Nick said.  As if speaking for the wolf, in response, the loose door slammed into the barn’s side, causing Nick to jump.  “Get a grip,” he told himself, and set off after the wolf.

In his haste, Nick had forgotten to grab his flashlight, but the night was clear, and a cluster of distant stars along with a waning gibbous moon provided just enough illumination for him to see.  Snow crunched beneath his feet as he trudged into the woods.  He had lost sight of the wolf, but the tracks served as a guide.

He picked up his pace, nearly running, not wanting the animal to escape.  The tracks led around a bare maple tree, its limbs casting black shadows, like twisted fingers, onto the ground.  Nick sped past the tree, ready to continue the pursuit.  He was in a clearing now, but the tracks no longer forged ahead.  Rather, they veered sharply off course, they—

To his right, not ten feet away, he spotted two yellow eyes, reflected in the moonlight, staring at him.  He swallowed, but it felt scratchy.  His throat had gone dry.  The yellow in the wolf’s eyes was wild, feral.  Nick realized one wrong move might prove deadly.

At the wolf’s feet, three dead chickens lay in the snow.  They appeared remarkably unharmed—but they were dead, just the same.  Nick felt a rage come over him.  Angel would be heartbroken over this.  “Just stay right where you are,” he said, and slowly raised his Remington.  He tried to remain calm, but his heart was beating like a trip-hammer.  He was sure the wolf could hear it, sense it.  Just like it could probably smell the fear on his skin, the way it seeped through his pores and spread over his body like sweat.  He took aim.  Still, the wolf stood its ground.  Nick had it now.  All he had to do was fire his gun.

But then the wolf staggered.  It nearly fell over, but it was able to balance itself with an effort.  Nick couldn’t help but notice how ragged the animal was, how thin.  Its ribs stuck out through a mangy coat of fur, its left ear was gashed at the base, and blood leaked from its forepaws.

Looking into those wild yellow eyes, Nick pulled back the trigger, and . . . hesitated.  The wolf continued to stare at him.  It was almost as if the animal were attempting to communicate with him, connect with him.  That was a ridiculous notion, absurdly impossible.  And yet . . . why didn’t the wolf attack?  Or run away?  Or move at all?  Why did it just stand there like that?

Again the wolf staggered.  Clearly it was exhausted.  Finally, it looked away, at the multiple sets of tracks it had made.  Then it glanced at the chickens, before locking its gaze back onto Nick again.

Nick returned the gaze, peering deeply into the yellow depths of the wolf’s eyes, as if they were the gateway to a strange new world and he was an explorer intent on discovering its secrets.  He blinked, wanting to look away, wanting to fire his Remington and rid the community of this menace.  But he was unable to.  He was getting lost in the animal’s eyes, searching, searching. . . . until, like a cog fitting perfectly into place, he felt something click inside his head.  And he was able to see . . . really and truly see.  He saw the wolf for what it was . . . for what she was.  He saw a den tucked away deeper within the woods, where pups huddled together for warmth.  The wolf’s brood.  Somehow, he had no idea how, he knew those pups desperately needed to eat something, or they might not live to greet the morning.  He considered the wolf’s protruding ribcage again, her state of exhaustion.  How many nights had she hunted for food?  How many nights had she gone back to her children with nothing to share but hunger?  She must have been ravenous, on the verge of starvation herself—but she hadn’t taken a single bite out of the chickens.  She was saving them for her pups.

The wolf sat down, too tired to remain standing.  She wouldn’t take her eyes off of Nick.  In them, he thought he saw a recognition.  A species of kinship.

He lowered the gun.  “Go ahead, then,” he said.  “Take those birds back to your pups.”

The wolf, still, silent, looked at him.  Looked in him.  It even seemed to Nick that she nodded her head, ever so slightly.

He turned around, headed back through the woods, following the wolf’s tracks and his own, in reverse.  As he walked, he thought about what to tell Angel.  He knew she would ask him why he hadn’t shot the wolf, why he had let the wolf get away after killing the chickens.  He wished he might be able to invent a story for her, one that would lessen her hurt and outrage.  But all he could do was tell her the truth.  Tell her how shooting the wolf was something he just couldn’t bring himself to do.

And maybe someday, after she had grown older and this night had become merely a momentary blip on the radar screen of her memory, she would come to understand.

**************************************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “The Beggar”

The Eye-Dancers, it’s my hope, tackles, among other things, the very concept of what we term “reality.”  What does “real” mean?  And is the line that separates “reality” from our perceptions and dreams and nightmares truly as distinct as we might imagine?  What other worlds and universes exist, and how can two strangers, so far apart it’s nearly impossible to imagine the distance, share a psychic connection, a cosmic bond, with one another?

Of course, there are many ways a story can question our perceptions and our views of reality.  Over ten years ago, I wrote a short story titled “The Beggar,”  in which the protagonist  is confronted by something, and someone, who ultimately contradicts some of his long-held assumptions and challenges the way he looks at the world.

I hope you enjoy “The Beggar.”

 

“The Beggar”

Copyright 2014 Michael S. Fedison

*****************

Looking through the bus window, Mark saw the beggar. The old man was standing in front of a middle-aged blonde woman, no doubt asking, pleading, for money, just a dollar, just a quarter, anything to help out. Mark knew the routine. He’d been on the receiving end of it more than once.

“Look at that old loser,” Mark’s seatmate, a prematurely graying accountant named Harold Gardener, said. The bus slowly lumbered on, and the beggar disappeared, as if by magic. A Winchell’s Donuts, a Burger King, and the entire assortment of suburban paraphernalia came into view and then slipped past in a never-ending display of sprawl. “I’ve seen that freeloader way too many times. Why don’t they arrest him? Or shoot ‘im.”

Mark said nothing. He sat with Gardener several times a week—the accountant worked four blocks north of Mark’s office and never said good-bye when Mark got up to leave, so Mark had stopped saying good-bye, too—but he’d learned early on that they disagreed on most issues, the beggar among them. Gardener seemed to hate him, eyeing him as he would the carrier of some soul-infesting disease. But Mark could sympathize with the old man. Even the word beggar sounded distasteful to him. Maybe the guy was all right. Maybe he’d even been successful once.

“Filth, that’s what bums like that are,” Gardener continued. He glanced at Mark, as though awaiting a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he said, “I didn’t move my family out here to deal with filth like that. Know what I mean?” With that, Gardener faced forward, looking at the brown hair of a businesswoman seated in front of him.

Mark looked at Gardener. “I think you’re too hard on him. I mean, c’mon, filth?”

Gardener snorted. It was the kind of sound a man makes when in the presence of unspeakable stupidity. “I see enough of those bums in the city. Down by Coors and the train station. I don’t need to see them here.”

Mark thought of pursuing the conversation, but he didn’t. He knew Gardener’s view of the old man was set in granite, and it was just too early for an argument. Better to let it rest. Hopefully, they wouldn’t see the beggar again. The bus rarely passed him.

But Mark had seen the old man several times, never knowing when or where he’d turn up. The beggar seemed as unpredictable as the weather. The first time Mark encountered him, in fact, he had been walking down the litter-free streets of an upscale neighborhood.

♣

It had been a chilly day in mid-October, with a perfect Colorado blue sky and a tang in the air that felt so pure and fresh, Mark wanted to take a bite out of it. He was enjoying his daily lunch stroll, walking through the neighborhood behind his office. He rarely failed to take a walk at lunchtime, even during winter cold spells or spring snowstorms or summer rain showers. It was a running joke at the office. They said, rain or sleet or snow, Mark will take his walk, even more reliable than the postal service! You could set your clock to it. But he didn’t mind the teasing. At least he stood out for something. Besides, it was good to get away from the cubicles and the people and the stress. It was—

A gaunt old man with a full, gray beard and a tattered wool hat turned the corner at the nearest stop sign. He was heading toward Mark.

Mark did a double-take. The man’s appearance did not fit in with the affluent surroundings of the neighborhood. Most of the lawns were large and well-tended, and the houses—sleek, new ranches with attached garages and gigantic western-facing windows—all looked shiny and polished, as if they had just been given a coat of varnish.

Not wishing to judge a book by its cover but unable to avoid it, Mark quickly deduced the man was a vagrant. Trying to appear indifferent, acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Mark slowly crossed the street, wanting to avoid the man without making it look so obvious. He whistled a tune as he did, giving the performance an air of nonchalance it otherwise might have lacked. He focused his attention to the west. Over the rooftops of the ranches, the distant snowcapped peaks of the Front Range sparkled like sunlit diamonds.

“Pardon me, young man? Young man?”

Mark turned his head. The drifter was there, staring at him. He berated himself. While he had been carelessly enjoying the view, the old-timer must have snuck up on him.

“Do you live here?” The beggar had no teeth that Mark could see. His face was covered in a scraggly forest of white hair. His wool hat had holes in it. It looked nearly as old as the man who wore it.

“Uh, no, no, I just work here.” Mark was looking for an out. He could have simply walked away—he knew most guys would—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. His wife had always told him how much she appreciated his sensitivity. Right now, he wished he could be as bottom-line oriented and callous as Gardener. “I work over on East Hampden. I’m just taking a walk.”

The old man nodded, then said, “It’s good that you have a job. I had a job once. A whole bunch of them. But I don’t have one now. What do you say, my young friend? Can you help a fella out? I didn’t eat any breakfast this morning, and my stomach’s groaning.”

Mark couldn’t believe how fast the man had launched into his sales pitch. He started to walk away.

“Hey, wait!” the old man said, following Mark. “Even a dollar would help! Even a quarter.”

Mark kept walking, but the man had caught up with him. “Why are you in this neighborhood, mister?” Mark asked. He picked up his pace. So did the beggar. “You might get arrested just for hanging around here. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, I know,” the man said. He was huffing now, struggling to keep up with Mark. “People here are much too good to even look at me. But I wanted to do something different today. Is that so bad?”

“No, it’s just—”

“And then you came along, and I thought—‘well, what a break. That nice young fella will help me buy some lunch. Thank the Lord for his kindness’. That’s what I thought, yessir. Now, how about it, fella? Give an old man a break, huh? Just a few bucks. A few measly bucks. What’s it to you?”

They walked past a white ranch with skylights and a privacy fence to the rear and sides. A young woman in a ponytail was working in her flower garden, preparing it for winter. She eyed Mark and the beggar with suspicion. What is that grungy old man doing on my street? her look said. We don’t have people like that on my street. Mark shot her a disapproving look right back, and suddenly felt a strong impulse to give the man some money.

Turning a corner, walking past more polished, white ranches, Mark stopped. The beggar stopped, too, then bent over and gasped as if he had just sprinted five miles and needed to get his wind back.

“You walk too fast, young man,” the drifter said once he had sufficiently recovered. “Give an old guy a break.”

Mark took out his wallet, fished inside, then handed the man a ten dollar bill—and imagined how fiercely his wife would protest. He had been stopped by beggars before, and he almost always gave them something. One time, two summers ago, she let him have it after he had given some guy a twenty.

“What’s the point?” she had said. “All they do is go spend it on booze. They’re better off without it.”

“But he said he wanted to buy something for his daughter. He said—”

His wife rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Mark. Spare me.”

“I thought you liked my sensitivity,” he said, a pout on his face. He fought to remove it. Pouting never worked with his wife.

“There’s a fine line sometimes,” she said, frowning, “between sensitivity and stupidity. Giving a beggar a twenty and thinking he’s gonna spend it on something other than booze? That, I’m afraid, crosses the line.”

That ended the discussion. He thought about pressing his case—the man’s eyes had looked so honest, so needy—but he admitted to himself that his wife was probably right. Still, what could he do about it? She’d told him before he had a face that attracted beggars.

“What?” he’d protested. “How so?”

“Because,” she’d replied. “They can see you’re a softie.”

Last year, they’d moved out of Denver and headed southeast. They now lived in a brick ranch several miles outside the city. Their neighborhood was quiet, even dull, but peaceful. And there were no beggars. He worked in Aurora, and for a while he hadn’t had to deal with any beggars there, either. But the old man in the wool cap changed all of that.

Handing the ten dollar bill to the man, Mark resolved not to tell his wife about it.

“Bless you, son, bless you!” the man gushed. He seemed like a kid on a treasure hunt who has just discovered the coveted prize. It made Mark uncomfortable. The man’s ridiculous display, his outright begging—he had no pride, no dignity. That’s what bothered Mark the most, and that’s what made him think he could never beg for money himself. “You don’t know how grateful I am!” the old man said.

“It’s okay, really,” Mark said. “Just go get something good to eat. No big deal.” He looked around at the white ranches. No one was outside. But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching this spectacle from behind a window. He told the old man he needed to get back to the office.

“Bless you, young man,” the beggar repeated when Mark started to walk away. “I’ll never forget this.”

I hope you do, was all Mark thought.

♣

The bus did not pass by the beggar again for a long while. And Mark himself had been spared dealing with the old man, too. After that first encounter, he’d been flagged down by the beggar a handful of other times—and he always gave the man a dollar or two, never again a full ten—but it now had been months since their paths had crossed. That was okay with Mark. He suspected his wife’s harsh view applied to this beggar as much as it did to any other—though he never recalled having smelled alcohol on the man’s breath.

As more time passed and he didn’t see the beggar, Mark wondered if maybe the old man had moved on to another section of town, or even died. It certainly was possible. He had to have been at least seventy, and, with his vagabond lifestyle, he couldn’t have been in good health. The possibility of the man’s death had no effect on Mark. It did not sadden him. What was an old drifter to him? Nor did it please him. He was positive the beggar’s death would please Gardener, though.

But the old man was not dead.

♣

“I swear, if he ever tries that with me again, I’ll punch ‘im, tear ‘im in half!” Gardener raged. “Old freeloading . . . ”

“Where’d you see him?” Mark asked.

“Right outside my office! Can you believe it? The nerve of those people!” The bus worked its way through streets still soaked from on overnight thundershower. But the sky was brightening by the minute, and warm spring sunshine filtered through the window, striking Gardener on the side of his face.

“I thought he might be dead. I hadn’t seen him in a while,” Mark said.

“Well, he’ll wish he was dead if he ever asks me for money again! Old piece of—”

Mark tapped Gardener on the elbow and nodded imperceptibly (he hoped) across the aisle. Gardener glanced in that direction, at the people seated across from him and Mark. An old woman with a floral dress sat next to a little girl with pigtailed blonde hair. The woman was glaring at Gardener—and Mark—and the girl was gaping at them with wide-eyed delight, as though she were hoping to hear a forbidden word. Mark had never seen either of them before, and he doubted he’d see them again.

Gardener clenched his teeth and whispered, “Great. Now I can’t even talk about it.”

“That’s why a wife is good,” Mark offered. “Great sounding board.”

Gardener shook his head. He’d said before he wasn’t the marrying kind.

“What did you say to him?” Mark asked. He didn’t understand why he cared, but for some reason, he did.

“I told ‘im—” Gardener said, his voice loud again, and Mark nudged him. Stealing a quick glance across the aisle, Mark was sure that if the old woman’s eyes could shoot laser beams, both he and Gardener would be vaporized by now. The pigtailed girl was still smiling. From the back of the bus, there was laughter. From the front, a few muffled words, but mainly silence, save for the drone of the bus’s engine and the swoosh of the tires as they sloshed through the rain-drenched street.

“I told ‘im to get his filthy, lice-infested self out of there,” Gardener said quietly, obviously fighting to keep his temper in check. “I told ‘im to go beg somewhere else, or go stand in front of the next garbage truck he sees. Then they could run ‘im over, pick ‘im up, and take ‘im to the dump with the rest of the trash.”

Mark said, “Man, you really hate that guy, don’t you?”

“Yup,” Gardener said. “Like I hate fleas, or roaches. Pests. Like I hate pests.”

♣

That day on his lunchtime walk, Mark crossed paths with the beggar. It had been so long since he’d seen him, it caught him by surprise. He was walking through a different neighborhood today, several blocks away from the office. The houses in here were not as polished, not as large, and several For Sale signs dotted the bottoms of lawns. He liked this neighborhood, in part because it did not feel so suffocating, in part because it had a lot of trees—primarily maple, Russian Olive, and spruce, but there were also a few aspen and dogwood. He also liked it that no one else from his office ever walked through this area. Some of the others strolled through the upper-class neighborhood close by, but no one came this far out. Any time he really needed to get away from it all, he came here.

He had been thinking of what to get his wife on their wedding anniversary in August. It would mark their eighth year together, which amazed him. It seemed just yesterday that they had exchanged their vows. He wanted to surprise her this time, really come up with something original. But before he could construct a mental list of potential possibilities, he spotted the beggar.

He had just turned a corner and was walking toward Mark, briskly, with a purpose, as if he’d known Mark would be walking down these streets today. Mark brushed that idea aside as sheer foolishness. Just a coincidence, that’s all, and not a very appealing one. He didn’t want to deal with the old-timer today. He hated the begging, the loss of all self-respect. If the drifter was not embarrassed at his own behavior, Mark was embarrassed for him. Instinctively, he felt for the bulge in his pants pocket—his wallet. He was pretty sure he had a few singles in there.

This time, Mark did not pretend he wanted to cross the street. He walked straight for the old man. The best thing to do, he figured, was to get this over with, give the man some small bills, then cut short the “bless you, young man” performance that would undoubtedly follow.

They approached each other. Mark looked down at the pavement. If the beggar wanted to stop him, he would. If not, Mark would keep right on walking. No reason to offer money unasked.

“Young man, young man.”

Why am I not surprised? Mark thought. He noticed the beggar was still wearing his wool hat, despite the heat of the day.

“Hey, slow down, and give an old guy a break, huh?” the man said. “Don’t make me run after you again.”

Mark came to a stop. He and the beggar stood on a sidewalk in front of a beige ranch with a roof that looked like it needed repairing. Mark thought that roof must have leaked last night, during the rain storm. A tall maple tree, its leaves still wet and glistening in the sun, provided the two of them with welcome shade.

“You remember me,” Mark said.

“Of course I remember you. Ten dollars last fall. Made me have a heart attack almost, chasing after you that way. And whenever I’ve seen you since, you’ve been generous.”

Mark winced. Generous? What was a dollar or two? He wondered if most people responded to the old man the way Gardener did. If so, it was easy to see how his pittance had seemed generous to the man. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and took out a five dollar bill.

“Here you go, mister.”

The beggar just looked at the bill, then at Mark. Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled out into the tangled, gnarled beard that covered his cheeks. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not today.” He reached into his own pants pocket, and for a moment, Mark worried that the old man was going to pull out a gun. But all he had was a one dollar bill. “I know it isn’t much,” he said. “But take it, and please know I’d give more if I could.”

Mark stood there, and he felt his jaw drop open. He didn’t know if he should feel honored or insulted. What exactly was going on here? In the distance, from somebody’s backyard, he could hear the giggling of a little girl.

“Look,” Mark said, “just take this, okay?” He thrust the five dollar bill out further. “Go buy lunch with it.”

The beggar shook his head fiercely. “No! Take my dollar! I’m giving it to you. Don’t you see? I’m giving it to you! I don’t want your money today. Please take it.” The man’s hand was trembling, and the dollar fell to the ground. Mark snatched it up. “Keep it,” the old man said, then started to walk away.

Mark easily caught up with him. “Wait!” he said. “I don’t need your money, mister. Take it back, and take the five, too.”

The beggar brushed past Mark. He continued walking. Shaking his head even harder, he said, “You don’t understand, you don’t understand.” Then he reached the next intersection and turned the corner.

Mark just stood there on the sidewalk, feeling stupid and sad. He folded his five and the beggar’s one and stuffed them into his wallet.

“Thanks for the dollar, old man,” he said.

In the distance, he heard the little girl giggle again.

♣

Gardener wasn’t on the bus today. He was probably in bed with the flu. A nasty bug was going around. It was September, and a cold snap had come in strong and bitter, blowing down from the mountains and reminding everyone that winter was not far off. Mark heard that the people of Vail had awakened to nine inches of snow that morning. But that just made him smile, as he thought of the anniversary gift he had bought for his wife last month—a weekend stay at her favorite ski lodge the second weekend of December. He had everything reserved, right down to the privacy booth in the restaurant she liked. All he needed now was for the mountain weather to cooperate. With nine inches of snow already, things were headed in the right direction.

Mark sat by the window. People on the sidewalk were bundled in winter coats and scarves. They were shivering, not used to the below-freezing temperatures. Just last week, it had been in the eighties.

“Whew, it’s freezing out there,” Mark heard someone say. A young woman with flushed cheeks sat down beside him. “Feels like February.” She took off her hat and scarf and placed them in her lap. Long black hair fell over the puffed bulk of her winter coat. She looked familiar to Mark, but he had never sat next to her before.

“Yeah,” he said. “Good weather for sleeping in, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “I wish I could. But, duty calls, y’know?”

He just smiled. The bus slowly worked through its rounds. Three stops before he would get off, Mark spotted the beggar. He had his coat wrapped tightly around himself, and he was talking to a young blond-haired man on the sidewalk. Mark saw the blond man hand the beggar a bill. He couldn’t tell what denomination, but he saw the old drifter smile and nod, almost bow, and he could read the lips: “Bless you, son, bless you.”

The bus pulled away from the curb.

“I don’t think I could ever do that, could you?” the woman next to Mark said.

“Do what?”

“Give away money like that guy just did. I mean, I feel bad for someone who doesn’t have a bed to sleep in at night and all, but, I mean, like, what do they do with five bucks? It isn’t gonna really help them get a life or anything.”

“No,” Mark agreed, “but maybe it can buy them a hot meal.”

The woman shrugged. “That’s what the shelters and soup kitchens are for. They can get their meals for free there. It just bothers me, the way they come up to you and just, like, beg. They have no respect, for themselves or anybody else. Being that poor, I guess it makes you self-centered, y’know? Never thinking of anything but your own needs. Always wanting to take.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t give him a penny.”

At the next stop, she got up.

“Keep warm,” she said, then headed for the door.

Mark nodded and smiled. But he didn’t feel warm at all.

*****************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

Short Story — “The Gatherers”

Clearly one of the themes in The Eye-Dancers is learning to cope with mystery, with things beyond the scope of our understanding.  Marc Kuslanski, in particular, feels the need to explain every irregularity, every new experience that lies beyond the purview of his knowledge.  How he ultimately learns to deal with this is his great dilemma (and opportunity for growth) in the novel.

The protagonist in “The Gatherers,” a short story I wrote shortly before beginning The Eye-Dancers, is faced with just such a dilemma when he spots a small group of people linking hands, standing in a circle.  On the surface, this does not seem particularly odd or out of the ordinary.  But there is more to the story . . .

I hope you enjoy “The Gatherers.”

“The Gatherers”

Copyright 2014 by Michael S. Fedison

**************

Christopher Burriss was frustrated.

He’d wanted to take a right-hand turn, head to the drug store, and buy the strongest over-the-counter pain medicine he could find. But he hadn’t. Instead, he had driven straight through the light, cursing and slamming his fist into the dashboard.

It wasn’t that the intersection had caught him by surprise, or came up more quickly than he anticipated. He just could not seem to make the turn. It was as if a force, an invisible presence, had locked the steering wheel in place.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said to the dust bunnies floating inside the car. He just wanted something to take. To dull the pain.

Yes. The pain. The flaring, mounting pain that had overtaken him without warning. He’d been driving . . . where? He couldn’t remember. Had he been shopping? Running an errand? Going to work? When, suddenly, his head began to throb, then to pound, as if someone had lobbed a grenade inside his skull and pulled the pin. And his side. His entire left side ached. A knifing, jabbing pain, spreading from his rib cage, up to his armpit and down to his hip.

He thought of turning around—the intersection, and the drug store, were still close behind. A driveway came up on the left, and he slowed down, signaled. Trailing him, a white Subaru, too close for comfort, waited for him to complete his turn.

But he couldn’t do it. The steering wheel wouldn’t budge. Was it stuck? Making sure that his foot was planted securely on the break pedal, he exerted more force, but still the wheel would not move. The car behind him honked its horn.

“Shut up!” he yelled back. “I’m trying! You think I’m doing this for fun?”

He pulled as hard as he could. Nothing. The driver behind him continued to beep, and now others joined in. A line of traffic was forming in his rearview mirror.

“Great. Just beautiful.” He pressed hard on the gas pedal, and sped forward. The Subaru followed, still closer than he liked.

The pressure in his head was unrelenting, and his side was a lit fuse. He didn’t think he could drive much longer. It was difficult just to stay in control of the vehicle, to keep it within the lines. He felt himself swerving into the wrong lane, toward oncoming traffic. The car behind him honked again, perhaps thinking he was drunk or falling asleep. He wished he were drunk. Anything to numb the pain.

He drove for miles. He wasn’t sure how he managed to, but he did, even as his condition became more serious. Houses, buildings, trees flew by him like mirages. He had no concept of time, of how long he’d been traveling. All he knew was that something else seemed to be in control. He had tried several times to pull over, onto the shoulder of the road, to let the traffic pass him. But he couldn’t. Maybe the wheel was stuck. Maybe it couldn’t be turned. But that was impossible. He had rounded a few curves, it had swiveled effortlessly then. It—

“Mom, Mom, why? . . .”

“Sssshh, honey. Be quiet. We just have to hope for the best. That’s all we can do.”

“But, Mom. Why? Why won’t . . . ?”

The voices weren’t clear. But he recognized them. How could he not? Sharon, and Mollie. Why was he hearing them? They weren’t here. Sharon was at work, wasn’t she? And Mollie. Mollie would be in school. She had just started the second grade. She was excited, eager to get back to her school friends, looking forward to new adventures, new vistas.

Another sheet of pain flared and exploded along his nerve endings. Had someone taken a razor blade and sliced open his left side? He actually looked down, checking for blood, sure that he would see the beige fabric of the seat stained with red. But there was nothing. No hint of a wound, no evidence of an attack.

He felt the car swerve again, and he righted his course just in the nick of time. An 18-wheeler whined past, in the other lane, honking an accusatory horn at him.

“What is this?” he said. “What’s happening to me?” He needed to get control of himself, right now. If he kept this up, he would be a candidate for a soft-cushioned room with calming pastorals hanging from the walls.

An intersection was coming up. He didn’t know which one, but it didn’t matter. He was determined to turn off of this road. He’d had enough of it.

But when he saw the street sign, he reconsidered. Blakely Avenue. Unless he had a good reason otherwise, he avoided Blakely. It was a nightmare—a congested mess, a snarl of traffic jams, of hot metal, bumper-to-bumper, broiling in the midday sun, matched by the hot tempers of the motorists. Every week, there was an accident. Better to wait until the next intersection, and turn off there.

For some reason, though, he merged into the left-hand turn lane, and flicked on his signaler.

“No!” he said. “I’m going straight.” He tried to turn the signaler off, but it was stuck. He fought with the wheel, trying to force it to the right. It wouldn’t budge. It didn’t matter anyway. The lane next to him had filled with cars. He was trapped. He had to take the left turn now.

“This is unreal.”

The left-hand turn arrow flashed green, and he turned onto Blakely, merging into the extreme outside lane, past a gas station with a sign by the road boasting of fresh sub sandwiches and soft drinks inside. He swore under his breath. This was unreal. Ahead of him, through the maze of cars, he could see a long line of fast-food restaurants, car dealerships, and chain stores. And, coming up on the right, the mall. The largest mall in the city. He hated it, and yet . . .

A hammer blow to his head sent him reeling. He desperately needed some painkillers. The mall would have a drug store inside.

He inched along, crawling with the traffic, before stopping at a red light. The mall’s entrance was just ahead now. He signaled for a right-hand turn, and, intuitively, knew that the steering wheel would oblige this time. A chill ran through him, as if someone had just poured five gallons of ice water into a gaping wound. Now the water rushed through him, mixing with his blood, freezing him to the core. There was something about this spot. Something familiar. Something . . .

“Something what?” he said. There were two cars ahead of him. As luck would have it, the car in front was going straight, blocking his chance for a right-on-red.

Anxious, fidgety, having a hard time just sitting there, not being able to make sense of anything, he glanced toward a strip of grass that lay just beyond the sidewalk, in front of the mall parking lot, and spotted a small gathering of people—about a dozen of them. (Where had they come from? Had they been there a minute ago?) They were all looking down, hands joined. Solemn. That was the word. They were solemn. And they were . . . He blinked. Again. And again. That confirmed it. They weren’t all there. It sounded crazy, but that was the only way he could describe it. He was sure he could see the sun rays hitting them, traveling through them, as if they were composed more of air than of flesh-and-blood organic matter.

He felt inexplicably drawn to them, almost as if they exerted a force, compelling him to join them. But he didn’t want to. The idea of it was intolerable. He wasn’t sure why, but he was determined to resist. He would just go into the mall, buy his pills, then get out.

The light finally turned, and he drove past the people who were there, yet not there, and pulled into the mall parking lot. His head was getting worse, if that were possible, and the pain in his side was unrelenting.

He struggled out of the car, the world losing its focus as he stood up. He grabbed his side, doubled over, coughed. He was in even worse shape than he’d thought. If he wasn’t careful, he’d pass out right here, on the asphalt. He had to pull himself together, buy those painkillers. He needed to focus only on that one goal.

But the people gathered near the lot entrance made that impossible. He glanced back in their direction, his view of them only slightly obstructed by a row of shrubs flanking the perimeter of the parking lot. He could see their bowed heads above the shrubbery, the specter-like quality of their skin. Again, he felt a powerful urge to go to them.

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I won’t.”

He closed his eyes, turned away from them, and then dared to open his eyes again.

“Don’t look back,” he said. “Just get those pills. You’re all right. You’re okay.”

But he wasn’t okay, and the mere act of walking was a struggle. He concentrated, willed his feet to move, one step, two, three. Left foot in front of the right, right in front of the left. He tried not to look too far ahead. He didn’t want to be discouraged by the distance he still had to cover. So he focused on the ground directly in front of him. A single step was an accomplishment, navigating a foot of pavement a victory.

Finally, he pushed his way through the doors of the mall. It was crowded in here, but at least the drug store was close—the second store on the left. He dodged a band of teenagers who seemed oblivious to anyone but themselves, and staggered into the drug store, heading straight to the nonprescription painkiller aisle. He wanted to find the most potent product on the shelf, but it was not possible to be discriminating. His head felt like it would blow up in a minute; his side was a minefield of live ammunition. He grabbed the first package he saw with the words “extra strength” written on it.

He leaned against the shelf, dizzy now, on top of everything else. The store was spinning, spinning. Another bomb burst exploded in his head, and a thousand nails poked and prodded his left side. He was aware of noises, sounds. Where were they coming from? Beeps. A soft, whirring hum, like a faint heartbeat. An antiseptic smell. And then voices . . .

“Christopher . . . can you hear me?” Sharon. Why was he hearing Sharon?

“Dad, Dad . . .”

“Mollie,” he said, closing his eyes. “Mollie, but you’re in school. Aren’t you?”

More voices, blurring, blending, like a musical score gone out of control.

“Faster! Hurry! Move!” A strange voice, this one. It sounded like a young man. “You gotta go faster! Hurry!”

“Good morning, Mr. Burriss.” A woman’s voice, one he had never heard before. Or maybe he had. He couldn’t tell. “Sunny today. About time, too. After all this rain.” And then he heard her footsteps, walking away, growing fainter, then coming closer, louder again. He felt her—how could he feel her? Fingers brushing against his forehead, slightly moist, the smell of soap . . .

“Dad!” Mollie again.

And then Sharon, “Christopher, honey . . .”

And the frantic screaming of the young guy. “Move it! Hurry, hurry!”

“Shut up!” he yelled. He rammed the palm of his hand against his head, once, twice, three times. “Just . . . shut . . . up.”

He tried to walk, the store still doing cartwheels in front of his eyes. He groped, like a blind man, using the shelves as support. Glancing at the checkout counter, he saw a ponytailed blonde in a blue smock ringing up a heavyset man. Two old women stood in line behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t. I don’t have the strength.”

He wasn’t a crook, but there was no way he could wait for the cashier to check out those customers. He’d collapse right there in the line. He needed the pills now. He needed relief now. Pocketing the bottle of painkillers, he left, as quickly as he could.

Stumbling out into the mall, he found a nearby drinking fountain, and swallowed half a dozen of the pills. There. Hopefully that would take the edge off. But what could he do about his throat? Why was it getting so hard to breathe? And his eyesight. Why was everything spinning? Why were his surroundings growing hazier? The passersby were now two-dimensional, black-and-white. The color itself was being drained from the world.

“Need to get out of here,” he said. “I just need to get home.”

“Dad . . .” Mollie again, but her voice fainter now, farther away. “Dad . . .”

He wanted to follow that voice, go to it, but how could he do that? It was a hallucination. Wasn’t it?

It seemed to take hours to reach his car. He could barely see now. Shapes were merging together, blurring—so much so that the spinning had stopped, or perhaps it hadn’t. He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Except that his side and head continued to torment him. The painkillers hadn’t helped at all. If anything, the pain was getting worse.

He looked straight ahead, through the mounting haze. Beyond the shrubs. the small gathering of people still stood there, heads bowed. And again, the force—he didn’t know what else to call it—urging him, prodding him to join them.

He shook his head, put his hands over his eyes. No. It was the only word he could think of. No. No. No. He wouldn’t succumb to their mesmerizing hold on him.

But then he was looking at them again. (How did that happen? He hadn’t remembered taking his hands away from his eyes.) Only, he wasn’t just looking. He was staring, riveted. Something was different about them now. They no longer looked like wraiths. They had fleshed out, like sketched characters who had received a finishing touch of paint. As the rest of the world dissolved, the gatherers became more solid.

“Dad . . . dad . . .dad . . .”

“Chris . . .Chris?”

The voices, fading . . .

As if tugged by a magnet, he walked toward the group. He could no longer resist their pull, had no strength left to fight it. There was a sense of inevitability now, of things coming to an end. Or perhaps a beginning. Somewhere overhead, he thought he heard a gull sqwauk, but maybe it had been a crow or a jay, or nothing at all.

As he neared the patch of grass where the gatherers stood, hands still joined, the pain in his head and side escalated to an intolerable crescendo. It no longer felt like knives cutting into him. Now it felt like metal, jagged teeth, rusty but sharp, gripping, biting, eviscerating. And his head. Was it even still there, attached to his shoulders? Or had it burst into pieces like shrapnel?

He fell to his knees, gasping—so hard to breathe. And finally the people let go of their hands, broke the circle, and approached him. He was aware, yet not aware, of the traffic noise in the road. It sounded like the hum from some other world, some gap in a dimensional barrier. But then another sound emerged, near, close, and horribly loud.

Tires screeching. Get out of the way! Too late, too late . . .

Impact. The feeling of being torn, broken, trapped in a heap of wrecked metal. Pain, flaring, shooting through his body. His head on fire. His side a shattered mess. And his last thought before the blackness came . . . Mollie. Sharon. What will they do?

The people were upon him, the only figures left that were real. And he understood now why this spot felt so familiar. Why he had experienced a chill of recognition when he’d reached the parking lot entrance . . .

“Hello, Chris,” a bald man with a gray mustache and a long, beak-like nose, said.

“How do you know my name?” he asked. And he realized, as he stood up, that the pain was gone now. Not lessened, not dulled. Gone. And his breathing had returned to normal, an easy, gentle rhythm. He had never felt better.

“We just do,” the man said. Apparently he was the group’s leader.

“What’s happened to me?” he wanted to know. The sound of the traffic was now completely muted. He could still see the cars, the road, the mall behind him in the distance, but they were outlines now, light pencil marks blending in with the empty white space of the blank page.

A middle-aged woman with short black hair and a pleasant smile said, “You know now, don’t you, Chris?”

He again remembered the screeching tires, the never-ending second before impact. He had been pulling out of the mall—he’d come here to meet an old friend who wanted to meet for lunch at the Food Court, a long-lost buddy, out of the blue. The other car never even attempted to stop, never slowed down. . . . He had been preoccupied, thinking about the visit with his friend, the way life sometimes threw curveballs at you, reintroduced you to people you knew once, and then almost forgot. He hadn’t looked left or right, he just went when the light had turned green.

“But the voices. The . . .” Then he stopped himself. It all came clear. Sharon. How he wished he could kiss her again, hold her, just one more time. And Mollie. Sweet, pretty Mollie . . .

“You fought hard, Chris,” the old man said. “Very hard. You almost made it, against the odds.”

“Who are you people?” he said.

“As you are all too well aware, Blakely Avenue is a busy road,” the old man said. “It’s taken its share.”

“You mean . . .?”

“I was killed in sixty-six, the year after they put the first shopping plaza in,” the old man said. “Hit right near where you were. Drunk driver got me.”

“I was blindsided about a quarter mile down the road,” a young guy, who looked no more than twenty, said. “Never even saw it coming.”

“I was hit by a truck,” the middle-aged woman with short black hair said. “My car was wrecked beyond recognition.”

On and on they went, a dozen accounts in all. And now, he would join them. When the next time came, perhaps next week, or next year, or three years hence, he would relate his story, along with theirs.

“We’ve got to stick together, you know,” the old man said. “Wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

“But Sharon. And Mollie. Will I . . .?”

The man nodded, smiled. “Yes. Of course. In due season.” He extended a hand. Chris, reassured, took it. Then the black-haired woman reached for his other hand.

They formed into a line, all thirteen of them, and, with hands clasped, walked away into the distance.

****************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “Stone Wall”

The Eye-Dancers, at its core, despite the ghost girls and parallel worlds and strange, recurring nightmares, is a coming-of-age story, where the main characters must confront certain aspects of themselves and deal with the inner demons they have always wrestled with.  This coming-of-age theme is one I have written about many times–often in short stories.

One such story, “Stone Wall,” is a very short tale I wrote quite a few years ago about a moment between a father and a son.  The intent, when I wrote it, was that the short interaction presented in the story was one that would leave a lasting mark on the boy . . . something he would always remember.

Looking at the story now, I question some of the choices I made when I wrote it a dozen years ago.  Dissecting their old stories is something all writers do, I suppose.  But I wanted to share “Stone Wall,” in its original form, and I hope you will enjoy it!

 

 

 

 

“Stone Wall”

Copyright 2014 by Michael S. Fedison

**************

When Dad asked me to go outside with him, I felt a little worried.  He didn’t talk with me much—didn’t have a chance, really.  He tended our herd of Holsteins and worked full-time at the power plant in Montpelier on top of that.  So, usually, when he called for me it was because I had done something wrong and deserved a good talking to.  I wasn’t sure if I had done anything wrong recently.  I couldn’t think of anything, unless calling Jane Hanson a no-good little tramp was off limits.  But that had been over a week ago, and I wasn’t even sure if Dad knew about it.

“Get your jacket, Billy,” Dad said as we walked toward the back door.  “Kinda cool this mornin’.”

I put on my jacket, now a size too small for me, and we walked out onto the back porch.  The air was wet and a thick fog hung over the valley.  In the distance, I could see the summit of Camel’s Hump mountain peaking above the low-lying clouds.  It made me think of a sleeping giant.

“C’mon, Son,” Dad said.  “Follow me.”

We walked into the yard.  It was the middle of March and much of the ground was still covered with snow.  It crunched under our boots.  But the first patches of pale grass were beginning to show up on our hillside, where the cows would be grazing just a few weeks from now.  It looked like a soiled green and white quilt that had been exposed to the Vermont elements for too long.

Dad continued walking, and I followed close behind.  I wasn’t sure where he was taking me or what his purpose was, but I figured I would find out soon enough.  I took a deep breath, inhaling the clean late-winter air.  The air felt sharp in my nostrils, as if it might draw blood if I wasn’t careful.

We crested the hillside and headed for the perimeter of our property.  We were in the high meadow now.  I loved coming here in the summer.  The grasses would sway in the wind and the cows would look so peaceful below me, and the mountains would appear so far away and yet so close.  They would make me think of soaring birds and barefoot rambles in the hollows, of stars that shimmered mysteriously on an oily canvas of October sky.  And sometimes the mountains would cause a longing in me, a longing for something so beautiful it couldn’t be expressed, like the sound of a butterfly’s wings flapping, velvety soft, on a windless summer twilight.  I didn’t understand it all.  I just knew I belonged here, in the hill country.

“See that stone wall there?” Dad said then, jolting me back into the moment at hand.

I nodded.  We were at the very edge of our acreage now.  Just beyond the stone wall was a thick copse of fir trees.

“That wall was built near two-hundred years ago, Son,” Dad continued, “and look at it.  Standin’ firm and true to this day.  Weathered, maybe, but still gets the job done.”

The stone wall actually bounded our property on three sides.  I always thought of it as The Barrier.  I could go anywhere I wanted, within reason, on our forty acres, but never cross over The Barrier.  That would be an offense bad enough to get a spanking.  My brother, Davey, crossed The Barrier without permission once and got tangled up in some barbed wire just beyond it.  He didn’t get a spanking, though.  Dad figured the barbed wire was punishment enough.

The wall wound its way through fields and woods, through flat land and hilly terrain.  It even crossed over the brook that bordered the east edge of our land.  I had never thought much about the wall.  I just knew it was old and, as I have mentioned, not to cross it.

“Your great, great, great grandfather Abraham built this whole wall, all round this forty acres, with his own two hands.  He built it as a dividin’ line.  Set off his property, maybe keep the goats from leavin’—or comin’ in if they were someone else’s.  That’s why folks built these walls in the old days, Son—to divide up the land and keep the animals penned in.  Nowadays, they’re reminders, mostly, relics.  Folks like ‘em, but don’t get much use out of ‘em.  Amazing thing is that they’re still standin’, even after all this time.”

Dad lifted his head, as if listening for something.  I heard nothing out of the ordinary.  But then—

“Hear that?” Dad said.

I did.  Red-winged blackbirds.  I heard their watery call ride the chilly March air.  Their call made me think of the sound swamps might make if they could talk.  It was a wet sound, damp, like the lushness of a springtime shower or the sweet coolness of dewdrops dripping lazily from the grassblades on a fragrant May morning.  It was the sound of spring coming, ever so slowly, ever so shyly, to the Vermont hills.

Dad smiled.  “Winter’s comin’ to an end,” he said.  “The blackbirds are here.  But c’mere, Son.  Let me show you something.”

Dad walked right up to the stone wall and knelt beside it.  He touched the weathered surface of the wall with a work-worn hand.

“Feel that, Son,” he said.

I felt it.  It was cold and old and hard.  It made me think of Dad’s will when he set his mind to something—unyielding, unbendable, stern, and proud.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“It’s hard,” I said.  “Solid.”

“And old, Son, very, very old.  It’s been here longer than any of the trees we got still standin’ on our farm, I’d say.  It’s seen a lot of hard times, blizzards, winter winds, even a few floods.  But it’s still standin’, true and sturdy.  You know why?  You know what it is makes this wall last so long?”

I shrugged.  “I guess not,” I said.

“Look at the stones,” Dad said.  A gust of wind picked up, and I almost put the hood of my jacket over my head.  But I didn’t.  I wanted to show Dad I could take it like a man.  I was almost thirteen, after all.

I looked at the stones but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.  They looked like stones, granite stones, nothing more.

“Look at the sizes, the shapes,” Dad said when he realized I wasn’t understanding.

There were hundreds of individual stones just in this one small section of the wall.  I examined them.  They were various shades of gray.  I touched several of them.  Some were smooth, some rough and craggy.  Some of the stones were actually colder to the touch than others.  The most striking aspect of all, though, was the shapes and sizes of the stones.  No two were alike.  Some were small, barely larger than a pebble.  Others were the size of a pumpkin, big and round and cumbersome.

“They’re all different,” I said.  “No two are the same.  Some of ‘em are pretty close, but no two are the same.”

Dad nodded.  “Ayuh,” he said.  “They’re all different.  Different but not different.  That’s why this wall’s been standin’ here for so long, Son, and why it’s gonna keep on standin’ long after I’m gone.”

Dad got up from his crouch and sat on the stone wall.  He motioned for me to sit beside him.  I nearly let out a squeal when I did.  The coldness of the wall went right through my jeans.  But I just sat there, my backside freezing, hoping I would get used to it soon.

“Y’know what I mean, Son, what I’m tryin’ to say?” Dad asked me.  Another gust of wind came up, but Dad appeared not to notice.  He looked out over our meadow.

I shook my head.  “Not really, Dad.”

“They’re different—the stones—but not different.  They’re all different shapes and sizes, but they’re all stones, see?  They’re all sturdy and hard.  They ain’t gonna sway when the wind blows, when the rains come, when the storms come crashin’ through.  They’re gonna hold steady, lodged in this hard wall.  They’re different, but they’re the same, too.

“Sometimes, different is good,” Dad continued.  “Sometimes, we get stodgy, too set in our ways.  I know I have.  Take the Bakers up the road.  They’ve been here since before you were born, but time was, they moved here from California, and some of the folks didn’t take too kind to ‘em at first.  And when Harry Baker suggested we take down the church steeple and repair it, we almost lynched ‘im.  But he was right.  That steeple was old, dangerous.  It needed fixin’.  It took an outsider to see that, Son—someone from away, someone different.  The Bakers’ve helped this town out in lotsa ways since then, too.  Sometimes, different is good, Billy.”

“But they’re the same, too,” I said.  “They’re all stones.  All rocks.”

Dad nodded.  The wind came up, stiff and strong again, rustling the boughs of the fir trees, sounding lonesome, longing for something I could not see, hoping for something I could not touch.

“Lots of folks in the world,” Dad said,  “and lots of notions.  A man, he needs to be like a sturdy stone wall.  Listen to ideas that help him out, learn new things, new ways of lookin’ at things.  Be open-minded, or else he’ll drive out the Harry Bakers of the world, and he’ll be worse off because of it.  But a man needs to know when different ain’t good.  He needs to be able to separate the good grain from the bad, the wormy fruit from the good fruit.  That’s what old Herb Preet has to do up on Newkirk Hill Road in his apple orchard.  Separate the good from the wormy.  You gettin’ me, Son?”

“I dunno,” I said.  “Sometimes, different things are good, and sometimes they’re bad?”

“Ayuh,” Dad said and for some reason, I thought to myself, Dad isn’t young anymore.  He won’t live forever.  “You got to let yerself grow, hear people out, take in the big stones with the little ones, you might say.  That’ll build you up, make you a better man.  But you need to be stony, too, solid.  Like this wall here.  Ain’t nothin’ here but good hard granite.  No wood.  No nails.  Wood rots.  Nails rust.  You felt the wall, Son.  It’s tough.  Don’t break easy.  Doesn’t sway and bend in the wind, going here and there.  That’s the way a good man needs to be.  You believe in what’s right, and you don’t bend.  Don’t let some smooth talker get you to do somethin’ that you know ain’t right.  Stand up for yourself.  And when the storms come, they won’t blow you down.  Different, but the same.  Just like this wall.  You understand now, Billy?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I think so.”

Dad nodded.  It was quick and subtle.  It seemed he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.  He sat there for awhile, his face turned to the wind.  Perhaps he was thinking of red-winged blackbirds and crocus flowers and dandelions.  Perhaps he was thinking of me, of the challenges I would face as I grew older, of the choices I would make.  I could have asked him what he was thinking.  I could have.  But I didn’t.

Dad stood up.  I did, too.

“C’mon, Son,” he said softly.  “Your mom’ll have lunch ready soon, I guess.”

We walked back into the high meadow, away from the wall.  We didn’t speak, but the silence was warm and comforting, like an old mitten that fits snugly on your hand and protects you from the cold.  Dad walked briskly, and I had to hurry to keep up with him.  I wished he would slow down, linger, to extend the moment and not have it be so fleeting.

We headed down our hillside, our home coming into view.  Smoke rose up from our chimney, billowing into the chilly air like ungraspable tendrils.  I loved the sight of it and again wished Dad would slow his pace.  But he kept on going and soon we were back inside, and I was taking off my jacket, and we would be eating lunch, and Dad would have chores to do, and so would I.

Dad never spoke to me of stone walls again.

*****************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “Jump”

The Eye-Dancers is, at its heart, a coming-of-age story for the main characters–Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, Marc Kuslanski, and Ryan Swinton.  Journeying through a strange and distant world, each boy must confront, and overcome, the self-doubts that have always held him back.

In the short story “Jump,” which I wrote approximately one year before beginning The Eye-Dancers, the protagonist must face a similar nagging self-doubt.  A strange, unforeseen warning in a supermarket threatens to trip up the plans he’s made after wrestling with his fears and insecurities.  Can he learn from the failures of his past and slay the demons that, far too often, have held him back from pursuing his dreams?

I hope you enjoy “Jump.”

 

 

 

 

“Jump,”

Copyright 2014 by Michael S. Fedison

*************

The young man with the long black hair stared at Joe.

“You know,” he said, his head tilting to the side, as if he were pondering the mystery of the universe, “you better stay home tomorrow.”

Joe blinked, tried to reorient himself.  What was going on?  He’d been browsing the boxed desserts in the baking aisle, thinking of a sweet treat he’d enjoy making that evening.  A few customers walked by, nothing out of the ordinary.  But then this kid—he couldn’t have been more than twenty—had strolled up to him.  He didn’t have a shopping cart, and apparently wasn’t here to buy anything.

Joe stood behind his grocery cart, instinctively using it as a buffer.  He eyed the products he’d placed in the cart already—too many carbs and sweets, as always—and he felt a mark of shame rise to his cheeks.  The kid before him was fit and trim.  He probably thought Joe, who was thirty-five pounds overweight and gaining, was a heart attack waiting to happen.  Still, that didn’t explain why he’d approached him.

“What are you talking about?” Joe asked.  He pushed his cart further down the aisle, hoping the kid might take the hint and leave him alone.

No such luck.

“Look,” the young man said, brushing greasy bangs from his eyes, “just stay home tomorrow, all right?  It’s weird.  I mean, I get these feelings, man, you know?  And when I just spotted you now, I got a feeling.  Real strong and clear.”

Oh boy.  He was dealing with a nutcase here.  Either that or someone with a perverse sense of humor who had too much time on his hands.  He wheeled his cart into the next aisle.  Chips and soda.  Great.  As if he needed more junk food in his cupboards.  A middle-aged blonde woman sped by, smelling of Chanel no. 5.

“A feeling?” he said.  Dumb.  Real dumb.  Why engage in conversation with this kid?

“Yeah,” the kid said.  “Like, I mean . . . I don’t know, you know?  Sometimes my feelings aren’t so specific.  But this one was powerful, man.  Like a punch to the gut.  It’s like this.  If you leave your house tomorrow, I mean, like, if you even just like step outside, something’ll happen to you.  Something bad.”

He stopped, his hands tightly gripping onto the cart handle.  Was this more than just a coincidence?  Did this kid know Janine?  Had he caught word of what Joe intended to do?  But that was impossible.  He hadn’t told a soul about his plans.

Still, this was too weird.  He didn’t need this.  He was nervous enough about tomorrow already.

He got moving again, ignoring the kid.

“Hey!  Don’t you get it?  I’m trying to help you.  I’m not getting anything out of telling you this, you know.  It’s just, like, I’m trying to warn you, y’know?  Just being a good Samaritan, that’s all.”

A young couple stopped their cart a couple of feet away.  The man reached for a bag of pretzels, while the woman wrinkled her nose but said nothing.

“If you want to be a good Samaritan, why don’t you just go on your way?” Joe said.  He didn’t want to come off as rude, but enough was enough.

The kid shrugged.  “Okay.  Just remember what I said.  About tomorrow.  By Sunday, you should be good to go.  But tomorrow, man, lock your doors and stay inside.”

With that, he walked away.

The woman who had wrinkled her nose at the pretzels eyed his retreating figure, then looked at Joe.

He almost blurted out, “I don’t know him, don’t look at me!”  But he just glanced away and pushed his cart down the aisle.

♣

Joe sat on his couch, looking out the window as darkness fell over the neighborhood.  He’d just finished supper, and he had gone all out, just as he’d planned.  Lasagna with a zesty marinara sauce and fresh-baked Italian bread, followed by a lemon pound cake for dessert.  He felt like he’d gained five pounds since morning.  The food did nothing to still his nerves, though.

He wished Janine were here.  He could always talk to her, tell her feelings he could never share with anyone else.  But she was visiting a sick girlfriend tonight, on the other side of town.  Besides . . . she wouldn’t be the one to confide in about this, anyway.  He was planning to surprise her, after all.  Tomorrow.  He sighed, and slunk back into the couch.

The TV was on—a meaningless late-season baseball game, with half the players from both sides having recently been called up from Triple-A.  He was hoping for a diversion, he supposed.  Something to take his mind off tomorrow, off the troublemaker at the grocery store.  But nothing worked.

“You’re such an idiot,” he said aloud, just as the twenty-two-year-old first baseman on the television grounded into an inning-ending double play.  “Get over it.  That punk doesn’t know you, doesn’t know Janine.  It was just a fluke, that’s all.  A coincidence.”

Maybe it was, but it nagged him.  Why did this have to happen now?  Of all the tomorrows in his life, why was he cautioned about this one?  The one where he planned on making the boldest, most challenging decision of his life.  Was the young man, with his uncanny warning, trying to tell him not to go through with it?  Not to take the chance?

“That’s stupid,” he said, just as the last commercial ended and the ballgame started up again.  He had wrestled with this decision for months, painstakingly going through the pros and cons, trying to overcome his fears.  He had finally built up the courage.  How could he let a stranger’s sick sense of humor or pathological need to create a stir get to him like this?

“I guess maybe they were right,” he said.  “Those kids.  Maybe I’m just chicken.  Always hesitating.  Always reluctant to take the . . . ”

 

♣

“ . . . jump!  Let’s jump it!”

They were standing at the edge of a gash in the dirt road.  It was about three-and-a-half-feet wide.  The only way to cross was to jump.  To the left, a steep, wooded hillside blocked the way.  It would have been nearly impossible to navigate.  To the right, the remains of the road abruptly fell away to a rushing stream, which thrashed its way through boulders, pieces of twisted metal, and fallen tree limbs.

“Wow,” Joe said, more to himself than the others.  “Look at this.”

The two boys with him shrugged.

“You should’ve seen it last year, just after it happened,” the taller boy, Bobby Hartstock, said.  “They cleaned it up since then.  This is nothing anymore.”

Joe swallowed, listening to the stream speed along on its course.  It was water, the destructive power of water, that had turned this section of road into the impassable mess he saw now.  He hadn’t been here when it happened, last fall.  His parents had just moved to the area a few weeks ago.  But he’d heard the stories.  About the storm, the flood, and the road that got washed away.  Still, hearing about it and seeing it were two different things.

What they were standing on, in fact, could hardly be classified as a road.  The entire right side was gone.  This stretch of the road was now a narrow footpath.  Bobby and the other kid, Peter Collins, stood next to each other, in front, and Joe stood close behind them.  There wasn’t enough room for the three boys to stand together, side by side.  If one of them took just a couple of steps to the right, he would fall off the edge.  Where the road had been, only a ragged, steeply sloping ravine remained.  Rusty outflow pipes jutted out like sawed-off knives.  The guardrail, which had once hugged the right side of the road, protecting motorists from the thirty-foot plunge to the fast-flowing, rock-filled stream below, was suspended in midair, hanging there like a dying snake.  It was hard for Joe to believe that a real road had been here, just a year ago.  It hardly seemed imaginable.  The only saving grace was that no homes had been hit.  This stretch of road wound through uninhabited forests and meadows.  Joe’s new neighbors had told his mom that it had been used as a shortcut before the storm.  Residents doubted that the road would ever be repaired.  Too much money involved, and not enough justification to fix it.

“So, you wanna see more?” Bobby asked.  He had turned around to look at Joe.  He and Peter Collins lived a few houses down from him.  They had seen him walking alone one evening, and joined him.  School had just started, too.  And they were his first friends since moving here.  He was thankful for that.  He didn’t make friends easily, and starting ninth grade in a new town was challenging enough, without the additional pressure of finding people to hang around with.

“I don’t know,” Joe said.  “How can we?”

Peter rolled his eyes.  “You just gotta jump, that’s all!”  He motioned to the gash in the road, the one that blocked their forward progress.  It lay there like an open wound.  The drop was fifteen, maybe twenty feet.  There were small stones mixed with broad-shouldered boulders at the bottom, before they fell away to the right, toward the slope that led to the stream.

“What’s up ahead?” Joe wanted to know.

Bobby smiled.  “It’s even better up ahead!  The road goes up higher, and the drop to the stream is awesome up there!  C’mon.  Let’s go.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Bobby leaped across the gash.  Joe closed his eyes, afraid that he might trip or stumble on a small rock, and then fall, headfirst into the hole.  But when he dared to look again, all he saw was Bobby standing on the other side, waving for Peter and Joe to follow.  Peter did.  He made it seem easy, just like jumping over a kid’s dirt hole in the backyard or playing a game of hopscotch in the neighborhood.

Joe walked to the lip of the hole.  He knew it was his turn.

Bobby cleared his throat.  “Well?”

He looked up, as if trying to garner the courage.  A crow flew overhead, cawing loudly, its voice echoing down like an accusation.  Joe wished he could sprout wings and follow that crow, over the hillside, clear across to the other side of the valley.

He noticed all the loose rocks, the strewn pebbles and fallen leaves.  So many things that might cause him to trip and fall, just as he readied himself to jump.  He didn’t want to fall down that hole.  If he landed on those boulders, they would—

“C’mon, are you coming or not?” Peter said.  “We don’t got all day, Joe.”

“Um.”  He knew he couldn’t jump.  And he hated himself for it.

“Whatsamatter?  You chicken?”  It was Bobby.  “A little girl could jump that hole, Joe.  Don’t be a wuss.”

He started to sweat, then.  He could feel his shirt sticking to his skin, despite the late September chill.  He was stuck.  Found out.  There was no place to run.

“Geez, I thought you were different,” Peter said.

Bobby shook his head, and the boys turned to walk away, further up the road.  They turned a corner, and were gone.  They hadn’t even looked back at him.

“Wait,” he croaked, to the air, to the hardy insects of early fall, the ceaselessly rushing stream below.  “Wait.”

But all he did was stand there, stranded, unable to follow, unable to . . .

♣

“ . . . jump.  Sometimes, you just have to step out in faith and take a chance, you know, Joe?”

He knew, and he knew she was right.  Janine usually was.  But how could he make such a commitment?  How could he know it would all work out?

They were sitting on her sofa, in the apartment she had rented uptown.  It was February, and snow was falling like fluffy popcorn from chalkboard-gray clouds.  He had known Janine for over two years now.  They met at work.  He had been new to the city, didn’t know anyone.  She bumped into him, literally, in the narrow hallway that spanned the front of the building.  He blushed, stuttered, but, miraculously, she had invited him to join her for lunch.  He did.  Then he fell in love with her.

But what she was asking of him now . . .

“Look, I know your mom and dad split up.”  They had.  His first year of college, his mom had called him in his dorm room, crying.  Dad had walked out on her.  After twenty-five years, he just walked away without an explanation.  Joe always thought they were happy together.  If his parents couldn’t make it, who could?  “But you’re not you’re father, Joe.  We’re not them.  Or any other couple who’s broken it off.  We’re us.  Can’t you see that?”

“Yes.”  The sofa cushions felt soft on his back, too soft, as though they were trying to suck him in, trap him.  He leaned forward.

“Joe, you know I love you.”

He looked at her.  The beautiful blue eyes, close to tears.  The long brown hair.  It amazed him all the time that she could love him.  But she did.  He never doubted that.

“And you love me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.  But I . . . I need a little more time.  I’m just not sure if I can . . .”

She got up then, looked out the window into the white heart of the snow.  She stayed like that for minutes.  It felt to Joe like hours.  Finally, she turned around.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else, Joe, you know that.  But I can’t be expected to wait forever.  I’m not trying to rush you.  I’ll give you more time, if you think you need it.  But . . . I won’t wait forever.  You know I want to have a family.  You know. . . .”

He nodded.  He wanted to say something, to comfort her, encourage her with his words.  But he didn’t.  He couldn’t.

All he could do was get up, walk to her, and take her into his arms.  Neither of them said another word, while, outside, silently, ceaselessly, the snow continued to fall.

♣

That had been eight months ago.  Janine hadn’t brought the topic up again, but he knew she was thinking about it.  There was an expectation about her, a hope, an unspoken pressure she was exerting.

He flicked off the baseball game—it wasn’t helping him to get his mind off himself.  It was just background noise, making it hard to think.

This wasn’t just about Janine, or that old wrecked road twenty years ago.  All his life he had taken the path of least resistance.  Even with his profession.  He was an accountant.  That’s how he lived his life, too.  Always calculating, weighing the debits and credits, wanting things to be sure and safe before daring to step forward.

There was the baseball team in high school.  He wanted to try out for the squad.  He’d practiced his pitching with his dad every day that spring.  But when the time came to sign up, he skulked away.  He didn’t want to fail.  Didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of the other players.  Besides, maybe he wasn’t even any good.

In college, his English professor had encouraged him to enter his essay on the poetry of John Donne into the Mills Award Contest, which awarded a prize of one hundred dollars to the student who turned in the best written document of the academic year.  But Joe never submitted his essay.

There were the girls he liked in school, but never asked out.  The friends he would have liked to make, but whom he never approached.  The words he had always left unspoken for the people who mattered to him.  The opportunities, the chances that had always been there for him, but which he had never taken.

He was tired of it all.  Last night, as he lay there in bed, staring up at the ceiling, he had made up his mind.

He would go to the jewelry shop, buy an engagement ring.  And then he would go to Janine, look her in the eyes, drop down to one knee, and ask her to marry him.  He loved her.  And he wasn’t going to throw it all away because he was afraid.  He was going to take the jump.  Tomorrow.

But then the kid at the grocery store had to come and throw a wrench into things.  Was there something to his warning?  What did he know?  Was Joe making a mistake?  Should he reconsider?

“Oh, just shut up!” he yelled.  But the thoughts would not stop.  They came at warp speed.  Don’t leave the house tomorrow!  Don’t buy the ring.  What if she says no?  What if she marries you, but then leaves you for another guy?  You’re so boring, she probably will.  What if she jilts you at the altar?  It’s happened before.  Lots of times.

In self-defense, he turned on the baseball game again, just in time to see a pop fly to right field end the inning.  Restless, he strolled into the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip.  He knew that sleep was far off.  Might as well give himself a jolt of caffeine.

He didn’t even attempt to go to bed.  He just half-sat, half-laid down on the couch.  At some point, deep in the bowels of the night, he nodded off.  When his eyes reopened a short while later, he saw that dawn had arrived.  Tomorrow had come.  His moment of decision was at hand.

♣

He opened the front door.  Sunlight smote him in the face, and he closed his eyes.  In his mind he could hear the kid from the store:  “If you leave your house tomorrow . . . something’ll happen to you.  Something bad.”

Since waking up, he had wrestled further with his decision, hemmed and hawed.  In the end, though, he knew he had to go through with it.  He wasn’t sure if the kid’s warning was Fate’s way of attempting to hold him back, scare him off.  But it didn’t matter.  Not anymore.  He was through running away.

The threshold was right in front of him.  He knew that as soon as he stepped over it, there would be no return.  This was a one-way trip.

He was surprised at the unease he felt.  He thought, once he had made his mind up, the doubts would pass away.  But they hadn’t.

He looked past the threshold, and there, right in front of him, was the old destroyed road, with the three-and-a-half-foot-wide gash.  The gash came right up to the threshold.  The only way outside would be to jump over it.

He blinked several times, trying to rid himself of the illusion.  But it wouldn’t go away.  Just the opposite, in fact.  Each time he looked, the details of the road became clearer, clearer.  The fallen leaves, the pebbles and stones waiting to trip him up, the guardrail off to the side, floating in midair like some broken metallic arm.  He could even hear the rushing stream below.

Resigned, he understood.  There could be no avoiding it.  It had to be this way.

He took a deep breath.  Stepped on to the threshold.  Looked into the hole, at the boulders and sharp, jagged rocks waiting to cripple him if he should stumble and fall.

For a brief moment, he thought of turning away, retreating into the safe refuge of his home, and closing the door.  But he didn’t.

“Here goes nothing,” he said.

He jumped.

***************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

An Effluvium of Hysteria

I love words.  I always have.  I caught the bug at a very early age.  I remember when I was eight years old, reading comic books, I would sometimes come across words I’d never heard of.  When I did, I would immediately put the comic down and open the dictionary I had, easily accessible, on a book shelf in my room.

 

One of the first words I recall discovering this way was “sanctimonious.”  It occurred in Fantastic Four # 111, and it was Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) who uttered it.  Back then, reading issue after issue of my favorite comic book, I could always count on old Reed to introduce me to new and exciting words.

 

 

In school essays, I would occasionally show off, and use some of the intimidating words I’d learned.  When I was nine or ten, teachers would comment favorably.  They were just happy I was reading and learning vocabulary.  But when I reached junior high, and especially high school, the response was different.

I remember on one essay, the teacher had circled the word “clandestine,” and wrote in the margin:  “Better to say ‘secret.'”  I took the paper to him after class and asked him why.

“If you want people to know what you’re writing about,” he said, “you have to speak to them with the language they know.  If you use words they’re not sure about, you’re going to lose them on the first page.”

 

I thought about it that night, and though I understood what he meant, I didn’t fully agree.  Of course, I realized, if you pepper your manuscript with hundred-dollar words, you’ll come across as snobbish or out of touch, interested first and foremost with your own perceived brilliance.

 

But on the other hand, if you oversimplify everything, and strip your prose down to a fourth-grade level, aren’t you losing something precious, too?

I turned to books on writing and style.  What did the experts have to say?  For the most part, they agreed with my teacher.

“Be concise.”  “Do not use needless words.”  “Avoid adverbs.”  “Too many adjectives will derail your prose.”  “If you need to look a word up in a thesaurus, don’t use it.  It’s not the right word.”  And so on.

 

And again, I didn’t disagree.  This struck me as good, sensible advice–most of the time.  But sometimes . . .

I have always been a fan of Ray Bradbury.  His enthusiasm, imagination, and rich, layered style have always served as an inspiration for me.  And while handbooks on the nuts and bolts of writing are useful tools every writer should own, I find the best teachers are not the grammarians and professors.  The best teachers are the authors.

When I was in high school, searching for my voice, learning to create fiction worth reading, I was much more likely to listen to Ray Bradbury than William Strunk.

And there is one Bradbury story in particular that I read for the first time when I was a senior in high school that clarified this entire issue for me more than any style book or teaching guide ever could.  In fact, just the first two paragraphs of the story did the trick.

 

“The Small Assassin,” first and foremost, is a terrifying short story.  Bradbury’s writing ability transcends genre.  He is often labeled a sci-fi author, but he has created tales in nearly ever genre, including horror.  “The Small Assassin” definitely falls within that category.  It gave me nightmares for a week.   It remains to this day perhaps the most frightening story I have ever read.

Much of the story is written in clear, concise fashion, not always the case with Bradbury.  Stories such as “The Sound of Summer Running,” for example, are really prose poems dressed up as short stories.

 

Not so with “The Small Assassin.”  Here, while he maintains his writing flair, the prose, in general, is more streamlined, razor-sharp, honed to a cutting edge.  Nevertheless, he does not entirely avoid difficult words . . .

The first paragraph of “The Small Assassin” reads:

“Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell.  There had been little subtle signs, little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and inescapable.”

This paragraph has the customary Bradbury magic of syntax and style, imagery and metaphor, but, apart from the possible exception of “malignant,” there isn’t a fancy word to be found.

It’s the first sentence of the second paragraph that shifts the flow.  The second paragraph reads:

“A room floated around her in an effluvium of hysteria.  Sharp instruments hovered and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.”

 

When I first read “The Small Assassin,” in my eighteenth year, I had never before come across the word “effluvium.”  I had no idea what it meant!  And yet . . . it held me rapt, mesmerized.  I didn’t look it up until after I finished the story.  I couldn’t put it down.  Because even though I didn’t know the dictionary definition of “effluvium,” the word elicited a feeling, a rushing current of hidden meaning and subtext.

 

Webster defines “effluvium” as “an invisible emanation; an offensive exhalation or smell.  A by-product, especially in the form of waste.”

So . . . what, then, is an effluvium of hysteria?  Perhaps Bradbury could have simply written, “A room floated around her.  She felt nervous and afraid.”  Or, perhaps.  “There was the offensive odor of hysteria.”  Either of these would have been concise, simple, matter-of-fact.  But it would not have been memorable.  It would not have stayed with me, years after I read it.  It would not have implanted itself in a crevice deep within the folds of my brain.  It would have been ordinary.

In the context of “The Small Assassin,” an “effluvium of hysteria” sounds like a car spinning out of control, careening downhill; a person falling from a great height; or, someone on the brink of madness, panic-stricken, gripped with a terror too powerful for words.  “Nervous,” “odor,” or “hysterical” just can’t compete with that.

 

This is not to say that the general accepted advice is “wrong.”  Ninety-nine percent of the time, clear and concise and simple trumps wordy and difficult.  But to eliminate that special 1% altogether?

Of course, much depends on context.  An instruction manual surely would not want to incorporate the word “effluvium”!  (Though it would make for an interesting manual.)  And in dialogue, certain characters, Marc Kuslanski included, will have a penchant for fancy words.  But in general, as is the case with so many writing “rules” and guidelines, the key is finding a happy medium.

 

So the next time you’re writing and one of those “too-difficult” words pops into your head, go ahead and use it.

Because sometimes, every now and then, nothing but an “effluvium of hysteria” will do.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “Cemetery”

There are moments in The Eye-Dancers when the main characters, particularly Ryan Swinton, wrestle with the concept of growing up.  Ryan especially sometimes wishes things could be simpler again, the way they used to be when he was seven, his little brother Tyler’s age.  But now, on the cusp of being a teenager, he feels the pressure to fit in, to make people laugh at his jokes, to be liked.  He is all too aware that as we grow up, even as things are gained and learned, other things are lost.

“Cemetery” is a short story I wrote several years ago.  And while the point-of-view character is a grown man, the story does also deal with childhood, and the things we love, learn, and lose.

I hope you will enjoy “Cemetery” . . .

 

 

 

 

“Cemetery”

Copyright 2013 by Michael S. Fedison

*******************************

The squirrel was crushed, stuck to the pavement as if glued.  It had been run over so many times, it was now flat, looking like a two-dimensional cutout from a children’s coloring book.  In the distance, Jerry heard another car approaching.

 “C’mon, Bak,” he said.  “We better get out of the road for a minute.”

 He took his daughter by the hand and retreated to the base of their driveway.  The car sped past, leaving a plume of dry dust in its wake.  A truck carrying loose earth had come through a little while ago, dropping some of its load as it went.

 “He didn’t go over the squirrel, too, did he, Daddy?” Bak asked, peering through the dust.  Hot June sunshine struck her in the face.

 Jerry looked at her and smiled.  Bak.  Seven years old.  His pride and joy.  She was so sweet, she had to be Bak.  They had named her Jennifer, but that wouldn’t do.  She was too special for that.  Jerry had thought about the sweetest thing he knew, and, after spending more time on the subject than he would admit, came up with baklava, his favorite dessert.  Ever since, his little girl was Bak.

 “I don’t know, Bak,” he said.  “I think he might have missed it.”

 They went back into the road.  Bak bent down over the squirrel.

 “Did it hurt, Daddy?” she asked.  “Did getting flat hurt the squirrel?”

 “Probably not,” Jerry said.  “It would’ve been so fast, so instantaneous, probably not.”

 Bak squinted up at him.  “What’s insta-taneous mean?”

 He snapped his fingers.  “Like that,” he said, and snapped them again.

 Bak nodded and looked solemnly at the squirrel.

 “Can you take him out of the street, Daddy?” she asked.

 “Sure, honey, I guess so, but why?”

 “So we can bury him.  Like they did with Mommy.”

 Jerry nodded.  Yes, they could bury the squirrel.

 ♣

 Lisa had been twenty-eight.  They had just moved into a small apartment, with leaky faucets, too many cockroaches, and a heating system that was, to put it mildly, temperamental.  But they tried to focus on tomorrow.  He had recently been promoted at work.  They would live in this apartment for a while (it came cheap, if nothing else) and then they’d buy a home in the country, where they would grow a garden, play Frisbee, and sled down the hills made slippery and white with snow.  They’d have two more children, maybe three, and they’d have their cat, Mitsie, whom they had adopted from the Humane Society shortly after their wedding.  They would live well, they would watch their children mature, and they would grow old together.  Once the kids all left, it would be just the two of them again, their hair graying, their faces wrinkling, their eyesight clouding over with age.  They’d have each other, though, and they would be happy.

 But on a mild, overcast winter evening, when Bak was just two, Lisa died.  She was sitting at the table eating supper, listening to Jerry as he shared his day with her.  As he was talking about a difficult co-worker (“He never lets me get a word in!  He’s just looking for a fight, I know it, and, you know, I just might give it to him!”), she suddenly grabbed her head, gasped, and fell off her chair.

 “Lisa?” he asked, his voice so soft, so weak in his ears.  “Lisa?”  He couldn’t grasp what he had just seen.

 Time seemed to have stopped.  Everything was locked in place, as if the earth had fallen out of orbit and was floating in the cold depths of space, farther and farther away from the sun, a frozen shell of a world.

 He stood up on wobbly legs, looked at the floor.  She was lying there on her back, perfectly still, her mouth open, her eyes staring up at him.  They’re not blinking, he thought.  Her eyes.  Not blinking.  Time was no longer stopped; it moved mercilessly on—tick tock, tick tock, the clock over the sink mocked—and Jerry wished he could grab that clock, turn its hands back three minutes, and start over.

 He went to his wife, got on his knees, calling her name, over and over, louder and louder.  She didn’t answer, didn’t stir.  Swallowing, blinking, he checked her pulse.  There wasn’t one.  What was going on?  How could this be?  He was just talking to her about Chuck at work.  He had just complimented her on the lasagna she’d made.  They were going to stay up late after putting Bak to bed and watch Notorious, an old Cary Grant-Ingrid Bergman movie.  She loved Cary Grant.  They were going to eat popcorn, drink hot chocolate, and wrap themselves in a crocheted blanket his mother had made for them as a wedding present.

 He shook her, gently at first, then more frantic, hoping it would revive her.  It didn’t.  He called 911, barely able to get the words out.  The ambulence arrived within minutes, waking up Bak.  She had played hard that day and was tired, taking a nap in her room.

 No.  It was the only word that came to mind, the only thing he could think.  No.

 Later, an autopsy revealed that Lisa had died of a ruptured brain aneurysm.  No one knew she had been living with an aneurysm, all those years.  She had never had any significant problems—a few migraines every now and again, but nothing that would have caused any alarm.  She died quickly, instantaneously, the doctor told him.  She probably didn’t even know it happened.  By the time she had hit the floor, she was gone.

 Jerry hadn’t eaten lasagna since.

 ♣

 During a break in the traffic, he scraped under the squirrel with an old putty knife.  He knew he needed to work fast, as they were on the main road, and hundreds of cars and trucks whipped past every day, going sixty, often seventy, miles per hour.  He and Bak had just moved here three days ago.  Lisa would have loved it, the traffic notwithstanding.  It was an old cape, and it needed a lot of work it was true, but the land!  Ten acres of meadow and woods, with hills and perennials, a fully-stocked fishing pond, an old barn that had been converted into a garage, a garden shed, and maple trees near the house that would turn red and gold in the fall.

 He finally pried the squirrel loose from the pavement.  For some reason, its crushed, flattened body brought to mind the pressed leaf collection Lisa used to keep.  Elm leaves, maple leaves, poplar leaves, every leaf she could get her hands on.  She would gather them in the fall, after they had turned color, press them, and place them in a photo album, where they would stay, preserved, like trinkets in a time capsule.

 He balanced the remains of the squirrel on the fat blade of the putty knife and walked to the driveway, where Bak waited.

 “You know where you want to bury him?” he asked her.

 She nodded.

 “Then lead the way, Bak,” he said.

 She led him to a shady corner of the yard, nestled between two maples and backing up against a stand of sumac and wild burdock, and the remnants of an old stone wall that had deteriorated into a state of disrepair.

 “Here,” she said.  “This’ll be our cemetery.”

 “Our cemetery?”

 “He won’t be the only one, will he?”  She pointed at the dead squirrel.

 “No,” Jerry said.  “No, Bak.  He won’t be.  A lot of animals will get hit in that road, I’m afraid.”

 “Then this is the place we’ll bury them,” Bak said.

 This was more than he had bargained for.  One squirrel, sure.  But every animal that got hit in front of their home?  That would add up, and all too quickly.  In the road, an eighteen-wheeler sped by, adding emphasis.  But Jerry figured it was okay.  They had ten acres, after all.  What was one small parcel tucked away in a corner?

 “Okay,” he said.  “We’ll need to prepare it then.  Let me dig all the grass up over here and make this a real plot.  Then, when I’m done with that, you can bury this squirrel.  How’s that sound, Bak?”

 “Will you make the cemetery big enough?” she asked skeptically.

 Smiling, Jerry said, “It’ll be the biggest one of its kind in all the county.”  Then, thinking it might be the only one of its kind anywhere, Jerry expanded that.  “It’ll be the biggest one in the whole state, Bak.”

 “I hope,” was all she said.

 Jerry placed the putty knife on the ground, went to the garden shed, and grabbed a spade that had been left behind by the previous owner.  He hurried back to the corner Bak had chosen for the cemetery, and, under her watchful eye, began to dig.

 When he was finished, he gave Bak a small potting shovel, which she used to dig a hole.  Jerry reached for the squirrel, but Bak stopped him.

 “Let me do it, Daddy,” she said.

 “Okay, Bak.”

 She gently picked up the squirrel and placed it in the hole.  Then she folded her hands and bowed her head.

 “Bak?”  Jerry said.

 “I’m praying for him, Daddy,” she said.  “You pray, too.”

 Feeling a little silly, Jerry knelt down and prayed with his daughter over the remains of the nameless squirrel.  But it didn’t remain nameless for long.

 “He’s Charlie,” Bak said.

 “Who?  The squirrel?”

 “Uh-huh.  His name is Charlie.”  As she spoke, she covered the squirrel with the soft earth she had dug, the calligraphy of her handprints like a personal signature of her work.  When she was finished, she stood up, examining the makeshift grave.

 “We need a marker now,” she said.

 Jerry hadn’t thought of that.  But there were small pieces of pine wood in the shed.  They could use one of those.

 “This’ll be okay, I guess,” she said once he’d returned with a piece of the wood.  It was short and wide, easy to write on.  And Bak wanted to write on it.

 “But it’ll wash off, honey,” he said.  “If the rain doesn’t do it, the snow sure will.”

 “Then cut letters in it,” she said.  “Can’t you cut them in it, Daddy, like they do at Mommy’s cemetery?”

 Jerry had a Bowie knife his father had given to him when he was fifteen.  It was the first time his dad had given him a grown-up present; he remembered it well.  The Bowie knife’s tip would do the trick.

 She wanted him to engrave the following:  “Here lies Charlie.  He was just a squirrel.  But a good one.”  He finished quickly, and the grave was complete.  They went to the edge of their new cemetery and looked at it.  Jerry thought the single wooden marker looked lonesome, but he knew it wouldn’t be for long.  The road would take care of that.

 “Why did you want to bury him, Bak?” he asked her.

 She squinted up at him.  Sunshine filtered through the maple trees, kissing her long red hair and making it look two shades lighter than it was.

 “Charlie musta had a family,” she said.  “He woulda had a mommy and a daddy, maybe even a wife.  They miss him now, I guess.  Like you miss Mommy.  And you go visit her in the cemetery, so maybe Charlie’s family will visit him here, too.  Maybe his friends will come.  Like Mommy’s.”

 She looked at the single grave again, using her hand to shield the sun from her eyes.

 Jerry wanted to say something, to respond to his daughter in some way, but she had rendered him speechless.

 ♣

 Early the next morning, they stood by Lisa’s grave.  The cemetery was gloomy, inhabited by hundreds of pine, oak, and maple trees, which stood over the tombstones like watchful sentries.  It was windy this morning, and cloudy, a chill in the air that would have seemed inconceivable in yesterday’s hot sunshine.  Bak had a hooded jacket on and Jerry a wool sweater that Lisa had bought for him as a birthday gift when they had been engaged.

 He watered the flowers next to her grave.  He had planted them years ago—purple and pink peonies—and he was pleased that they came back and bloomed every spring.

 “Those are pretty flowers,” Bak said.

 “Thanks.  Peonies were your mom’s favorite.”

 They were silent then, listening to the voices in the wind, the rustling of the leaves, the echoes of the good people laid to rest here.  Jerry got on his knees and touched the gravestone, gently, gently.  He picked off a piece of moss that had gathered at the base.

 “Daddy?”

 “Hmm?”

 “What color were Mommy’s eyes?”

 “Blue, like yours, like the clear sky in October when the humidity’s gone, and you can look up forever.”  He closed his eyes, fought back the tears.  Now wasn’t the time, not here, not in front of Bak.

 “Mommy musta been so nice,” Bak said.  “I wish I’da known her.”

 “Me, too, Bak.  You would’ve loved your mommy.”

 “Do you think you’ll get married again, Daddy?  And get a new mommy for me?  Like Chrissy Pitkin?  Her Daddy got married again, and she doesn’t like her new mommy much.”

 “No, Bak,” he said.  “I don’t think that’ll happen.  I could never marry anyone else.  Your mom was the only one for me.  I hope you haven’t been pining for a new mom.”

 “What’s pining?” she asked.

 “Wanting, wishing for.”

 “Oh.  No.  I guess not.  I was just wonderin’.  Chrissy Pitkin acts like having a second mom is the pits.”

 Jerry stood up and stroked his daughter’s hair.  “C’mon, Bak, let’s go.  We’ll stop at McDonalds on the way.”  He always stopped at McDonalds with Bak on the way back from the cemetery.  He figured she deserved a treat after visiting such a solemn place.

 “Egg McMuffin?”  she said.  “Hash brown?”

 “You bet,” he said, and a tear did fall then, but he wiped it away before she could see.

 ♣

 That evening, Jerry on the sofa, Bak on his lap, she said, “It makes you sad to go visit Mommy at the cemetery, doesn’t it?”

 “I guess,” he said.  “But not really any more than I already am, Bak.  I miss your mommy more than you can know.  Always.  When I’m at her grave, I guess it’s harder to block it out.  My missing her just hits me like a big wave in the ocean—it just swallows me up.  I try to think of other things a lot, ‘cause it hurts to think of your mom, but when I’m there, well . . .”

 Bak nodded and buried her face in his neck.  Jerry squeezed her tight, thankful he didn’t have an office job anymore, didn’t have a daily commute that would take him away from Bak ten hours a day.  His company let him work from home now.  That was one of the reasons he felt it was a good time to move out to the country.

 “You won’t die, Daddy, will you, and make me hafta visit you at the cemetery?”  she said, his neck muffling her words.

 “Not any time soon, Bak,” he said, grimacing.  That’s what Lisa would have said the day she died, too, if someone had asked her that question.

 “I . . .”  Her voice trailed off, and he knew she had fallen asleep.  Slowly, carefully, he got up and carried her to bed.  When he tucked her in, she woke up.

 “Daddy, did anyone visit Charlie today?”

 “I don’t know.  I haven’t seen anyone.”

 “I hope they do.  I hope they know where he is, that he’s here, in our cemetery.  So they can visit.”

 “I hope so, too,” he said, and kissed her forehead.  “Good night, Bak.”

 “G’night, Daddy.”

 He turned to leave the room.

 “Daddy?”

 “Yes, Bak?”

 “Why did Mommy hafta die?  Why do the animals get hit in the fast road?”

 “I don’t know,” he said.  He wished he could say something to help her understand, help her make sense of it all, but he couldn’t.  “Go to sleep, Bak.  Rest.”

 When he didn’t hear a reply, he left.

 ♣

 Later that week, they buried a chipmunk.  It was lying at the foot of their driveway, its body grotesquely bent and broken.  The day after that, another squirrel was flattened, welded to the road.  Jerry had a tougher time picking this squirrel’s remains off of the hot pavement than he had the first one.  Three days after that, another chipmunk.  It remained that way throughout the summer, and by the first week of September, twenty-five small wooden graves stood in their cemetery, the markers set in two straight lines and half of a third.  It was the day before school started, and Bak would be attending a different one this year.  She was scared, but excited, too.

 He watched as she dug the hole for the twenty-sixth grave.  Beside her lay a crushed rock dove, run over that morning by a pickup truck.  Jerry had seen it happen, had heard the sick thud on impact, and was grateful Bak had been in the house.  He wondered if the pickup driver even knew he had killed a bird.

 She lovingly placed the dove in the hole, then covered it with the loose dirt she had unearthed.

 “What’s his name, Bak?”  Jerry asked, Bowie knife and wooden grave marker in hand.

 “Johnny.  Johnny Dove.  ‘A good friend to all,’ that’s what you should cut into it.  ‘Cause he looks like a good friend, so I’m sure he was.”

 Jerry carved the words into the wood, then handed the marker to Bak.  She stuck it into the earth, just behind the spot where the bird lay.  This was easy for her because Jerry had sawed the bottom of the wood, shaping it into a sharp point.  He had been doing that to all of the markers since the middle of July.

 Bak knelt down to pray, and asked Jerry to join her.  He played the part, but he wasn’t praying.  He was observing, looking at his solemn daughter as she clasped her hands together, closed her eyes tightly shut, and mouthed a silent prayer for the dead rock dove.  He swallowed hard, and suddenly felt a terrible sense of loss.  He had been mourning Lisa for years, but now he was mourning his daughter, the little girl she was but wouldn’t remain.  He wondered how much longer she would dig miniature graves for animals killed in the road.  He wondered how much longer she would want him to carve the names she gave them into blocks of wood and memorialize them in this small corner plot, shaded by the maple trees just now showing a hint of the color show to come.  He wondered when the time might arrive when she would look at the wooden markers and shake her head, proclaiming what a silly fool she had been, what a dumb little kid.  He wondered how she might react to seeing a dead animal in the road when she was fifteen.  Would she walk by with some girlfriends, say “yuck,” and then without a second thought, go on talking about boys and clothes and the cute math teacher?  He hoped not, but it was a faint hope.

 Bak unclasped her hands, opened her eyes, and stood up.

 “I hope you get a visitor, Johnny Dove,” she said.  “I hope someone comes here, someone who knew you.”

 Jerry put a hand on her shoulder.  “C’mon, Bak,” he said.  “We should go in and get ready for supper.”

 She put her hand in his, and they walked to the house.

 “I hope you stay this way forever, Bak,” he said, as they went in through the back door.  “Like a little girl who thinks a dead rock dove deserves a grave.”

 “Johnny Dove,” she said.  “Not just any old dove.  Johnny Dove.”

 “Sure,” he said.  “Sorry, Bak.”

 He squeezed her hand, tightly but gently.

 “Whatcha makin’, Daddy?” she asked.

 “How about hot dogs and tater tots?”

 “Yum!”  She smacked her lips and smiled.  “Hurry!”

He hugged her, then got about to making the supper.  Later, as they ate, as Bak dunked her tater tots in ketchup and took bites from the hot dog that were too big for her, they talked–about graves and squirrels, speeding cars and rock doves.  And about the new school year that would start tomorrow, the students she would meet, the friends she would make, the new page that was about to be turned.

****************************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “Cover-Up”

Each of the characters in The Eye-Dancers carries with them some emotional pain–a fear of rejection, a lack of self-confidence, family concerns, the loneliness of not fitting in at school.  They also have a tendency to hide their issues–or at least try to.  Marc Kuslanski, for example, underneath his know-it-all exterior, is a boy in desperate need of a friend.  He doesn’t like to admit this, to himself or others, but his bouts of denial do not negate the truth.  Thankfully for him, the events in the story unite him with Mitchell Brant, and a friendship is indeed formed.

In the short story “Cover-Up,” which I wrote a few years ago, the protagonist is also carrying with him the baggage of emotional pain, the burden of regret and self-blame.  And, just like Marc, he tries his best to conceal it.  But on a long, cross-country train trip, his seatmate sees right through his mask.  Will he open up to this stranger, or throw up his customary wall?

I hope you enjoy “Cover-Up” . . .

 

 

 

 

 

“Cover-Up”

Copyright 2013 by Michael S. Fedison

************

“So, do you wanna talk about it?” the young woman with the terrible scar asked.

He was sure he didn’t.  What Patrick really wanted to do was sleep the ride away.  But that didn’t seem likely.  It was still light outside, and the train was bumpy, lurching often and sometimes feeling precariously close to derailing.  Not for the first time, he asked himself why he hadn’t just flown.  “Talk about what?”

The woman looked at him.  Her eyes were a light, pastel shade of green.  “You know . . . whatever’s bugging you.  I can tell something’s really got you down.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.  “I’m fine.  Just tired, I guess.”

“It’s not good to hold things in, y’know,” the woman said.  “You need to let it out.  And I have a good ear.  Really.  All my friends say so.”

He silently wondered if she actually had any friends, she was so nosey.  But she had seen right through his lie.  Something was bothering him.  He was annoyed that he wasn’t able to hide it, especially considering all the practice he’d had.

“Hey, really, I’m fine, so just drop it, okay?” he said.  The train lurched, and he was thrust forward, grabbing the seatback in front of him.  “Man, real smooth ride, huh?”

The woman smiled.  “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Patrick,” he said.  Taking advantage of his window seat, he looked through the glass.  They were traveling through the flat country of western Illinois now, past dead cornfields and crisp, white farmhouses with covered porches and weathervanes and dirty plastic sheets draped over the windows, flapping in the wind.

“Hi, Patrick,” she said.  “I’m ‘Becca.  Well, Rebecca.  Everyone calls me ‘Becca, though.  So, are you a Patrick?  Or a Pat?”

“Patrick.”  His dad used to call him Pat.  He didn’t even want to think of that name.

“So, Patrick . . . have you ever taken the train before?  I love it.  It’s like a real trip.  You get a chance to really talk to people, y’know?”

No, he didn’t know, and he didn’t reply, hoping she would take the hint.  He just wanted to be left alone.  But she was hard to ignore.  That scar was hard to ignore.  It was the deepest, longest scar he had ever seen on a person’s face.  He’d noticed it right away, as soon as she had boarded the train and decided to sit next to him.  It started to the right of her eye, just below the brow, and twisted its way down her cheek, not stopping until it reached the point of her chin.  Every time he glanced at her, his gaze fell upon it.  What had caused such a gash in the first place?  He had no idea, and preferred to keep it that way.  Just another reason to stare out the window.

“Where are you headed, anyway?” she asked.

“Denver,” he said.

“Really?  So am I!”  Great.  Just great.  “You must’ve gone back home for the holidays.  I did, too.  But now it’s time to return to real life and work and paying the bills.”

“Yeah,” he said.  Real life.  Work.  That was fine with him.  He never should have gone home in the first place.  The faster he forgot about it, the better.  Mom and Jayne crying.  Jayne laying into him for leaving a few days early.

“That’s just what you did before!” she’d said.  “You ran away.  Can’t you stay a measly couple days more?  For Mom?  And for me?”

But he couldn’t.  What did his presence help anyway?  They were all miserable together.  He just wanted to leave, so he had.

The door at the far end of the car opened and then snapped shut.  A couple, likely returning from a meal in the Dining Car, walked down the aisle.  Three young children, two girls and a boy, trailed right behind them like a small school of pilot fish.

He looked out the window again.  The winter sun, sinking to the horizon, gave off its last weak rays of the day.  The porch light of a distant farmhouse flicked on and shone like a beacon across the frozen fields and dead, windswept grasses.

“So, what do you do, Patrick?” Becca asked him.  “Where do you work?”

He wished she’d shut up.  He wasn’t up for this.  Still, he told her he was a technical writer who worked for a computer software company.  He wrote the how-to manuals no one liked to read.  But he enjoyed it.  Wrestling with the minutia of the programs, figuring out the meaning behind the engineers’ logic, crafting documents that somehow translated the highly complex material into understandable language for the end users.  It allowed him to get lost in the safe world of code and technology, sweeping unwanted emotions, unwanted memories, aside.

Another couple entered the car.  The next call for the Dining Car would be due shortly.  But he was thinking about going to the Lounge Car.  A few stiff drinks sounded good.  He was feeling warm, claustrophobic.

“You hot?” he asked her.  “They got the heat turned up way too high.”  He took off his jacket, placed it under his seat.

“I’m not hot,” she said.  “But if I was hot, I wouldn’t know, so . . .”

What did she mean by that?  He looked at her, but saw only the scar, which seemed almost to pulsate with a life, a vitality of its own.  Whatever had happened to her must have caused unspeakable pain and anguish.  But that thought just made him hotter, more in need of a drink.

He sidled past her, into the aisle.  The train lurched again, and he almost fell.  He would have, too, if he hadn’t grabbed onto the seat in time.  She didn’t ask him where he was going, and he didn’t say.  The last thing he wanted was for her to tag along.

“See you later,” she said.

He nodded, and headed for the Lounge Car.

It was almost deserted.  Just a young couple sitting next to each eating pretzels and popcorn, and a bald, thin man sitting by himself looking out the window into the darkening twilight, his left hand wrapped around a glass of wine.  Perhaps he, too, was attempting to drink away his troubles.

Patrick bought a beer, inwardly groaning that the kid behind the bar didn’t want to see ID.  He had just turned thirty.  Getting asked for ID used to be a hassle, five years ago.  Now he felt slighted when someone failed to do it.

He sat down, as far away from the couple and the bald man as he could get.  He needed to be left alone for a while, to enjoy the taste and buzz of the beer.  He wanted peace and quiet, light, airy thoughts.  But his mind had other ideas.  He closed his eyes, and saw his mother crying.  Not yesterday or the day before, but two years ago, after the accident.  He saw his sister crumpled on the sofa, her face buried in a pillow.  And he saw himself, standing there, hands in pockets, not knowing what to say or do.

It had all been his fault.  It never should have happened—not to Dad.  Patrick had recently moved into a new apartment across town, and didn’t visit his parents very often.  That evening, he was coming over for supper.  His car had a transmission leak and on the way over he had intended to buy some fluid.  But his thoughts had drifted, he’d forgotten, and now the car was shifting with difficulty—the transmission was dry.  When he said he needed to run to the automotive store, his father said not to think of it.  He would go.  Patrick should stay with his mom and his sister.  Patrick protested—he was the one who forgot to buy the fluid, after all—but Dad was adamant.

“Be back in fifteen minutes,” Dad had said.

They never saw him again.

Patrick took a long drink of the beer, trying to submerge the memories in alcohol, washing them down some fast-moving stream that would carry them away to a distant ocean, forever adrift, forever removed from his consciousness.  Several seats in front of him, the bald man slammed his wine glass down, causing some of the wine to spill onto the table.  He muttered under his breath, drank more wine, then banged the glass back down again.  To Patrick’s left, the young couple were whispering to each other, as if gossiping about the two lushes sharing the car with them.

He wished he were drunk.  But he was all too sober.  Suddenly, and with ferocious clarity, he heard the knock on his parents’ door.  Dad had been gone over an hour, they were getting worried.  But still, what could have happened?  The car-parts store was less than three miles away.

Images, sounds, smells raced into his head, like snapshots from a nightmare.  The door opening, revealing two police officers.  They appeared solemn, yet mechanical.  Just doing their job.  Mom shrieking when she heard them say Dad had been blindsided by a teenager running a red light.  The table had been set, the glasses full of water, the salad ready to eat, tossed in the flower-patterned bowl Mom had owned since before Patrick was born.  Dad’s plate and silverware and napkin laid out in his spot, at the head of the table.  The smell of pot roast in the oven, mashed potatoes with butter on the stovetop.  And seeing the calendar on the kitchen wall, the picture showing a snowy field in some distant mountain valley, sparkling under a blue sky the color of his dad’s eyes.  And on the date he had come over—February 17—Mom’s curly, pretty script:  “Patrick coming for supper!”

But more than anything, he remembered the cries of his mother.  She yelled at the officers, “No, no, it can’t be!  This can’t be happening!”  Later that night, Mom was in her bedroom, in the bed she had shared with her husband for thirty-two years, crying and saying, softly now, over and over, “No.”

And through it all, Patrick could only feel one thing, one repeating thought, bent on driving him mad:  It should’ve been me.  Not Dad.  It should’ve been me.  If only he hadn’t forgotten to buy the transmission fluid.  If only he had insisted that he, not Dad, go to the store!  It should’ve been me.

The train lurched again, causing some of his beer to spill.  That apparently struck the young couple as funny, because they giggled harder.  Patrick wished he could share even one-sixtieth of their good humor.  This wasn’t working.  Coming to the Lounge Car had only made things worse.  He cursed himself for having gone back home for Christmas.  All it accomplished was to cause these memories to bubble back up to the surface—after he had spent the last two years forcing them down.  That’s why he’d moved away.  He couldn’t take it anymore.  Every time he visited his mom or saw Jayne, he saw the sadness in their eyes.  And when he saw that, he felt condemned.  He knew they didn’t do it on purpose, but he didn’t need to see it, either.  Going home for the holidays, nothing had changed.  So Patrick decided to leave ahead of schedule.  He needed to go back to Denver, far away from his mom’s sad eyes, no matter what Jayne accused him of.  Running away?  Yes, he was running away.  He needed to rebury those memories again.  Shove them deep inside an impregnable vault where they couldn’t touch him, couldn’t harm him, couldn’t haunt him.

It should have been me.

“Shut up!” he yelled, and the bald man turned to glare at him.  Even the couple stopped giggling.

He downed the remainder of his beer, then got up to leave.  He realized he was better off chatting with Becca, as long as she didn’t pester him to “talk about it.”

“That was quick,” she said when he brushed past her and took his window seat again.  Outside, it was full dark now.

He rested his elbow on the base of the window, cupped his chin in his hand, gazing out into the pitch nothingness of the night.

“Guess you didn’t have such a riveting time, huh?”  she said.

He looked at her, and she smiled.  Despite her awful scar, he actually thought she was pretty.  But the scar distracted him.  He tried not to fixate on it, but he couldn’t help it.

She traced the outline of the scar with her fingertips.  “Mmm-hmm, I know,” she said.  “Hard to miss, isn’t it?”

Immediately, he looked away, at the seatback in front of him.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to—”

She smiled again.  “Hey, it’s okay.  At least you weren’t staring with your mouth hanging open.  People do, you know.”  He swallowed, still feeling like he’d done something wrong.  “I don’t mind talking about it,” she went on.  “I mean, it’s a part of me, you know?  It’s the first thing everyone sees.”

There was a call over the PA system, they were taking more reservations for the next meal to be served in the Dining Car.  A short, fat man, middle-aged, immediately rose from his seat and waddled down the aisle.  He nearly tripped and fell when the train lurched, and a blond-haired kid snickered.  The fat man blushed and cursed, then walked through the doors into the adjoining car.

Becca eyed the blond kid with amusement.  “You know, I wasn’t much older than him when I got this,” she said, still touching her injury.  “I was only a little girl, five at the time.”

“Look, you don’t have to tell me about it,” Patrick said.  They were passing through a small town now, past a darkened post office, a brick town hall, and a row of stores that appeared to be closed for the evening.  “I’m sure it’s not something you like to talk about.”

She glanced past him, out the window.  “I was left by myself—only for a couple of minutes, but that was all it took.  I found this pair of scissors, and it was like I was in a trance or something.  I wanted to see if I could make myself feel something, I had to feel something, even if it hurt.  Just to see what all the fuss was about, you know?  Everyone was always telling me to be careful, but I just couldn’t understand.”

That makes two of us, Patrick thought.

“Remember how I told you before you left that I wouldn’t know if it was too hot in here?” she asked.  He nodded.  He remembered, all right.  She was a strange one.  “Well, if you want to know the truth . . . you’re sitting next to a true marvel of the medical community.  I’m a real find, y’know.  I’m one of only sixty people in the United States with CIPA.  And only a fraction of us ever get through childhood.  And here I am, twenty-six and still kicking.  I should get a medal or something.”

He just looked at her.  Every time she opened her mouth, she lost him a little more.

“CIPA . . .” she continued, apparently sensing his confusion . . . “Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis.  It’s a condition you’re born with.  Basically, I can’t feel any pain.  I can’t feel the cold or the heat.  You can kick me in the face ten times and I won’t feel a thing!  Or throw me in a bucket of ice water, and I wouldn’t feel cold.  Pretty crazy, huh?  You should Google it sometime.”

He gave no reply, and she paused to allow him to digest it all.  His first thought was that she was making it up.  But then he figured she was probably telling the truth.  Why would someone lie about such an odd, unheard-of condition?  How would that benefit her?

“And, see, that’s what really made me want to do something to cause a sensation, to even cause pain,” she said.  The train had left the small town behind, as it continued its journey over the prairie-like countryside.  Soon they would cross the Mississippi River, into Iowa.  A long way to go before reaching Denver.  “I mean, everyone was always telling me that knives were dangerous, fire was dangerous, scissors were dangerous.  But it was just words to me, you know?  It didn’t mean anything.  So I had to see.  What can I say?  I was five.

“So I went to the dresser where I knew the scissors were, and I . . . well, let’s just say I was a very curious little girl.  I jabbed the sharp end into my face, right here. . .”  She gently massaged a point on the scar directly beside her eye.  “Good thing I didn’t go a little to the left, huh?  Or else I’d be blind.  But I still didn’t feel anything, and I was like, ‘What is this?  What’s the big deal about scissors?’  So I pushed them in a little deeper and then I dragged them all the way down to here.”  She touched the bottom of her scar, just an inch away from her chin.  “And you know, I still didn’t feel anything, and I started to see all this blood.  But I didn’t know what to make of it.  I mean, I felt fine!  So I was about to try the other side of my face, and that’s when my mom came into the room.  I guess you can figure out the rest, huh?”  She smiled.  “They took me to the hospital, and I had to have surgery.  They did the best they could, but . . . .  Anyway, I try to look on the bright side.  I mean, when I get a filling, they don’t need to shoot me up with Novacaine.  And you know what?  I can’t even sweat!  How many women would love to be able to say that?”

She laughed, and he laughed with her, though he felt awkward laughing on the heels of such a grisly story.  More than that, he felt dazed, as if he’d had five beers instead of only one.  It was so hard to wrap his head around this, to make sense of it.  But it was true.  She didn’t feel pain.  She was like a rock.  The more he thought of it, the more he liked it.

“Man, imagine that,” he said.  “No matter what happens, not to be able to feel a thing.”

She tilted her head, looked at him closely.  “It’s really not such a great deal,” she said.  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why not?  It sounds pretty good to me.”

“But don’t you understand?  I can’t feel any pain!  Don’t you see what that means?  I would have killed myself with those scissors if my mom hadn’t come back when she did.  I would’ve killed myself without even knowing it.  And even now, it’s like, I know not to do things that are dangerous, but it’s still kind of like secondhand knowledge, you know?  It’s like if you read about a volcano in the Indian Ocean or something.  It’s just news, information.  It’s not personal.  I know a knife will make me bleed, but I won’t feel the wound.  You see what I’m trying to say?  And what’s to stop me from burning myself on an electric stovetop?  I can touch the burner, and I wouldn’t even know it’s on!  Then when I look at my hand later and see all the skin is gone, I’d be like, ‘Uh oh.’  Or what if I stuck my hand in a sink full of soapy dishwater and jabbed at a piece of broken glass without even knowing it?  I could slice my wrist open.  Every day is like a minefield, Patrick.”

A handful of passengers walked by, most likely heading to the Dining Car.  They were serving three-cheese lasagna this evening, among other possibilities, all of which sounded good.  Maybe he’d go a bit later, but not now.  Not now.

Becca took a deep breath.  “It’s all just like a mask, a gimmick,” she explained.  “I mean, I can’t feel pain, but I can still get injured.  I still bleed and bruise, and my bones can still break.  The feeling no pain . . . it’s just a cover-up.  It doesn’t really protect me from anything.  It’s like pretend.  Like an act.  I mean, no matter what you’re born with, or what you try to make yourself believe, the things that can hurt you will hurt you.  You know what I mean?”

He just sat there, staring at his lap.

“I think you do,” she said.  “I think you know exactly what I mean.  Don’t you, Patrick?”

He was disconcerted, again, by the way she saw right through him.  He wanted to deny it, to deny her, but he couldn’t.  He dared to look at her, and she had concern in her eyes.  Understanding.  Compassion.  But none of those things set him off.  It was the scar.  That deep, old scar that slithered its way down her cheek like the imprint of a snake fossil.  He visualized Becca at five, wanting desperately to feel, even as she gouged her face and spilled her own blood.  And somehow, he just couldn’t deal with that.

The tears came, suddenly and with great force.  He coughed on his own phlegm, burying his face on Becca’s shoulder.  His body rocked and jerked.  He was sure he caused Becca to rock and jerk right along with him, but he couldn’t stop.

“That’s right,” Becca said, putting an arm around him as he kept on crying.  “You just let it out.”

He was aware, vaguely, that people were staring at him.  He sensed the blond kid’s eyes boring a hole through Becca’s back and right into his head.  But he didn’t care.  He was aware, too, that this was the first he had cried since . . . he couldn’t even remember the last time.  He just knew he hadn’t cried since Dad’s death.  Not at hearing the news.  Not at the funeral.  Not even when he moved away from home, halfway across the continent.  And certainly not yesterday, with his mom and sister.  When he saw them crying, he never thought it did them any good.  What was the point?  People needed to move past their losses, push them away.  If you gave into them, they would paralyze you.  That’s why he’d never allowed himself to cry.  He always feared that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop.  He thought he’d only get bogged down in the morass of guilt and regrets and lost dreams that floated high above, always out of reach.

But when the tears finally slowed, and then stopped, he found that he felt better than he had in a long time, as though a monstrous weight had been lifted from him.  He sat upright again, not looking at Becca, and peered out the window at the blackness, at nothing.

“Better?” she asked.

He shrugged, nodded, still not looking at her.

She reached over, gently turned his face to hers.  “It’s okay,” she said.  “It’s all right.”

He felt a lump in his throat, and worried he might cry again.  But he didn’t.

“So,” she said, “you ready to talk about it now?”

He looked into the green eyes of this stranger, this scarred woman he had chanced to meet on his long way back to the studio apartment where he laid his head down to sleep each night.  Where he was running back to as a desperate man in search of a refuge.  But it wasn’t a refuge.  He knew that now.  It never had been.  He looked at this stranger who was no longer a stranger, this friend who had seen him more clearly than anyone ever had.  Even himself.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I think I am.”

****************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

At the End of the Day . . .

When I was a graduate student, I had a professor in a creative writing workshop who would occasionally pick apart someone’s story in front of the entire class.  It wasn’t for the faint of heart.  But it was educational.  There were about fifteen of us in the class, aspiring writers all.  We would craft short stories, bring them to class, and share them with each other, critiquing our stories and writing comments in the margins.  For the most part, the professor,  a balding, bespectacled gent originally from London, served only as a moderator, facilitating the discussions and making sure the group stayed on topic.  But every now and then, he would decide to single out a particular story, and use it as an illustration of what not to do.

One day, he chose the topic of cliches.

 

“You should never insert cliches in your story,” he said.  “It’s okay to use them in some dialogue.  People, after all, frequently speak in cliches.  But never use them in your narrative description.  Avoid them like the plague.”  (I admit, I nearly raised my hand here to tell him he’d just used a cliche to make his point on avoiding them, but, wisely, I just listened.)

 

He then proceeded to eviscerate one young woman’s story, pointing out no less than half a dozen time-worn phrases in her ten-page piece.  I felt bad for her–brilliant as he was, this professor was not known for his tact.  Nevertheless, some of his lessons have stuck with me over the years, and whenever I edit one of my stories, I tend to keep an eye out for cliches.

I can’t guarantee that The Eye-Dancers is cliche-free.  Far from it!  But, with hope, there are very few cliches in the book.  In fact, if anyone can spot a cliche in the first three chapters, which are included on this website, please contact me, and I will send you a copy of the book for free!  Let’s call it The Eye-Dancers cliche challenge.

This gets me thinking about the entire creative process–from typing that first word, to sharing your work with others, to submitting it for publication.  It’s a challenging thing.  Looking out for cliches can sometimes take a backseat to the seemingly more important items on the writing list.

I mean, executing a story idea is no small feat.  It takes time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears.  Inspiration, after all, is 99% perspiration.  And coming up with a new twist for a story isn’t easy.  You have to push the envelope, think outside the box, and make sure you come up with an idea that hasn’t already jumped the shark.

Staring at a blank computer monitor, the cursor blinking, as if taunting you, can be intimidating, but trusting the creative process is essential.

 

The key is to type that first word and then keep going, keep working, and keep chopping wood.  If the idea takes flight, you will feel like a kid in a candy store–it’s almost too easy, too much fun!  Putting the pedal to the medal, you may speed right through the story, feeling like a champ.

But then you step back, inhale deeply, and take the time to read through what you’ve written during that whirlwind first-draft cyclone.  You may groan.  The rose-colored glasses are off now, and you see the results as clear as day.  The idea may have been worthwhile, the writing, in general, may even be passable.  But, being a first draft, the manuscript is littered with inconsistencies, poor sentence construction, the works.  The job of turning out a polished, completed story has only just begun.

 

Knocking on wood, you hope you can start again at the top, put your nose to the grindstone, go the whole nine yards, and produce a top-notch piece of work.  There is still much to do, but it’s time to roll up the shirtsleeves, raise the bar, and shoot for the stars.  It’s easy at this stage to want to rush through the edits and just say the thing is done.  But patience is a virtue, and, if you’re planning on submitting the story for publication, well–you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  Everything needs to be perfect, and you have to give 110%.

Finally, after a second and third, and fourth edit, the story is finished!  The problem?  You’ve read, reread, edited, and reedited the piece so many times, you’re bleary-eyed and tired of it.  You decide to set it aside for a day or two, then read it one last time before sending it out.

When you read it again three days later, you are satisfied–it’s ready.  It’s time to submit the story, sink or swim, do or die.  Who knows what the editor will think of it?  All you can do is send it off, and let the chips fall where they may.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And then you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait . . . and finally, after five months, a postcard arrives in the mail.

“Dear Writer,” it reads.  “Thank you for sending us your work and giving us the opportunity to read it.  However, we regret to inform you that it does not suit our needs at this time.  Thank you again for thinking of us.  Happy writing!”

You read the note again.  It’s frustrating.  After all the work, all the revisions, you don’t even receive a personal response.  Dejected, you wonder why you bother, but then you realize–there are so many other outlets where you can submit your story.  There are other fish in the sea!  Rejuvinated, you send the story to five other places within the next couple of days.  After all, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  Besides, rejection is as much a part of the writing life as, well, writing.  It’s par for the course.  Some of the magazines you’re submitting to inform that they do not want simultaneous submissions–but this doesn’t seem fair.  So you simultaneously submit anyway!  Living dangerously can be fun.  And you need to break a few eggs if want to make an omelet.

Meanwhile, as you wait to hear back from these five new outlets, you are working on a novel–a vast, multi-layered tome that will likely take months, maybe years, to complete.  And then the process will begin anew–perhaps querying agents, publishers, networking.  Maybe you will try the indie author route.  So many options!  Life is a bowl of cherries.

One day, months later, while working on chapter twenty-one, you receive an email from one of the magazines where you submitted your short story.

“Dear Writer,

“We regret to inform you . . .”

 

You sigh, print the email, and toss it into a rejection pile on the edge of your desk.  You toy with the idea of wallpapering your room with these slips.  Oh well.  That’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.  The story is still under review elsewhere.  Maybe someone is considering publishing it.  You never know.  Your fortune can change in the blink of an eye.  And truth is stranger than fiction.

A week later, another rejection slip–snail-mail.  But this one has a handwritten note!  “Great prose.  Keep up the good work.”  A rejection never felt so good.  You pin the slip on the wall, and get back to the novel.  There are still a dozen chapters to write, and hundreds of pages to edit, watching out for, among other things, all those pesky cliches!

“The life of a writer,” you say with a smile.

At the end of the day, it is what it is.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “Relics”

We learn early on in The Eye-Dancers that Mitchell Brant is a comic book collector.  The old, vintage issues transport him to a different place, one filled with magic, wonder, and gold-glittered avenues that lead to a world of endless possibilities.  As it turns out, these qualities will become essential to his survival.  As the novel progresses and things seem more and more hopeless, Mitchell must tap into that sense of magic and wonder.  He must believe in those possibilities, and keep the faith that everything will work out in the end.

I wrote the short story “Relics” while I was still writing the first draft of The Eye-Dancers.  The main character in “Relics” must, like Mitchell, believe in the unbelievable, and hold on to faith when all reason, all logic dictates that hope is lost.  And, surely, Mitchell would appreciate the role that vintage comic books play in this story.

I hope you enjoy “Relics” . . .

 

“Relics”

Copyright 2013 by Michael S. Fedison

*************

Looking at his wife from across the room, it was easy for John to pretend that things were normal, the way they should be, the way they used to be.  She was sitting on the couch, her light blonde hair in a ponytail.  Everything seemed in place, as if their life, her life, hadn’t taken a sudden, irreversible turn four months ago.

But then his eyes shifted, just a little, to the right, and he saw the wheelchair.  He swallowed hard at the sight of it, took a deep breath, and crossed the room.

She smiled at him when he sat beside her on the couch, and he reached for her hand.

At least she can move her arms, can breathe unaided, he thought.  At least the damage was only from the waist down.  The doctor had told him, hours after Lori had been rushed into the ICU, when his world felt like it was spinning and reeling, out of control, that his wife was fortunate.  The collision had been head-on.  It could have been much worse.  She was lucky to be alive.  And, after assessing her injuries, the doctor assured him that she would live, recover enough to lead a productive life.  There was only one catch.

She’d never walk again.

“Never?” John had asked.  Nothing seemed real.  Lori was fortunate?  Fortunate?  Is that what this guy had just told him?

The doctor looked away for a moment.  “Well, I suppose I shouldn’t say never.  But, in all honesty, it would take a miracle.”

A miracle.  He had read very little on paralysis—he’d never had reason to.  It hadn’t touched his life or that of anyone he knew.  But now, now, it loomed before him, a towering monolith, tottering, toppling, about to land on him and crush him to dust.

He scoured the Web for hours, days, gleaning information, searching for guidance, stories of recovery, of hope.  He read about the latest research, the new and exciting discoveries that were being made every day.  Of course there were differences of opinion among the experts, but nearly all of them agreed on one thing:  a cure was still a long way off—years, decades, even.  Someday, catastrophic injuries to the spinal cord would be healed.  There was little doubt about that.  But that day was but a speck on a distant horizon, ten thousand tomorrows hence.  What good would it do Lori?

“I think I have a little more feeling in my right leg,” she said.  Sitting next to her on the couch, as he had so many times before the accident, the questions came in a torrent.  Why couldn’t he turn back the clock?  Why did she have to be driving on that road, at that moment?  Why did the other driver, intoxicated beyond all reason, have to pick that night to lose control, why did he have to swerve into the wrong lane just as Lori was approaching . . .?

He rubbed his temples, his forehead.  A raging headache was coming on.  Ever since the accident, he’d been getting headaches regularly.  Thinking too much.  Brooding too hard, too often.

She loved to run.  She had been training for a marathon.  He tried to join her a couple of times when she went out for a run, but he couldn’t keep up.  Lori was like that with everything—a dynamo, always in motion, full of energy and life.  Now what was she?

A cripple.

“I just have to believe, that’s what I tell myself,” she said.  He saw her veins bulge out on the side of her neck, felt her hand squeeze his, hard.  She was trying to move her legs.  Pearls of perspiration beaded on her forehead.

He felt like telling her not to strain herself.  It wasn’t worth it.  It wasn’t worth the frustration, the effort, the heartache.  And yet, every day, multiple times per day, she kept trying. . . .

“Unnnh,” she said, and finally relaxed again.  She let her head fall back, against the couch cushion.  Immediately he noticed moisture forming in her eyes.

“Damnit!” she said, lifting her head, looking at him.  “Why won’t they move?  Why can’t I make them move?”  She cried then, and he reached out to hold her.

“Ssh,” he said, stroking her hair.  He wanted to follow this up by saying everything would be all right, things would get better.  But he didn’t.  He had no right to say such a thing.  He wasn’t the one who could no longer walk.  He wasn’t the one who now owned a broken and battered body, full of pain and unending, unrelenting frustration.

He again thought of what the doctor had said.  It would take a miracle for her to walk again.  The therapists at the rehabilitation center—where Lori had learned how to compensate for a crippled lower body, where she learned the skills she would need to lead a reasonably independent life, where she learned how to cope—all of them had said the same thing.  It was better, more productive, to work hard at rehab, focus on today, on realities, on tangible goals and graspable plans.  For the most part, Lori was adjusting remarkably well—better than he would have, he was sure.  She even intended to go back to work at some point.  But she had not been willing to believe that her paralysis was permanent.  Not when she first heard the news, and not now.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling.  “I didn’t mean to cry like that.”  He could tell by the determined expression on her face that she was readying herself for another try.

He didn’t want to watch her strain and strain, to no avail.  Not again.  He got up, feeling guilty, as he often did these days, at the easy functionality of his legs.

“I’ll go back to making supper,” he said.  The fact was, he hadn’t even started supper yet.

She looked at him.  There was a hurt in her eyes, and it had nothing to do with her now useless legs.  She had asked him before to believe with her, pray with her, dare to hope.

“Miracles are like flowers,” she had said just yesterday.  “They need watering.  They need care.”  Perhaps.  But he couldn’t raise up his hopes, only to have them dashed every time he saw her struggle to move her legs.  Maybe she was simply stronger than him.  Or more naïve.  Then again, it was her legs, not his, that were paralyzed.  He wondered, had their situations been reversed, how he would be coping.  He guessed that he, too, would be hoping, working, for a miracle, just as she was.  The difference was—if she were in his place, she would, undoubtedly, be believing, too, right alongside him.

“I’m making spaghetti and meatballs,” he said, feeling like a jerk, as he walked away, “with lots of garlic in the sauce, the way you like it.”

He hoped she’d smile at this, but she didn’t.  She just stared, straight ahead, concentrating, getting ready for another round of exertion.

He cleared his throat, wishing he could find the words she needed to hear, the words he needed to say, whatever they were.  But all he did was walk out of the room, into the kitchen.  He made supper, burning the sauce and boiling way too much spaghetti.  He didn’t have much of an appetite.

♣

That night, after she had maneuvered out of the wheelchair into the bed without assistance, she was thumbing through a photo album.  In the pictures, Lori was usually smiling, moving, the camera catching her in full stride, or with a tennis racquet, about to strike the ball, or playing Frisbee, reaching out to make a one-handed grab of an errant toss.  There was one picture of the two of them, taken with a self-timer, on the summit of a mountain they climbed five years ago, a lifetime ago, on a trip they had taken to the Pacific Northwest.

Beside her in bed, his gaze, inevitably, continued to fix itself on her legs—how healthy they looked in the photographs, how ready to scale and run and conquer the land.  Why did she look at these relics?  These reminders of a life that used to be, but could never be again?  What good did it do?

He turned away.

Beside him, he heard the photo album snap shut.

“You know, it would really be nice to have you support me, John,” she said.  “It’s hard enough trying to deal with all of this.  I didn’t think I’d need to do it by myself.”

That stung.  It made him feel like a failure, a pathetic excuse of a man.  On the other hand, what was he supposed to do?  What was he supposed to say?  They didn’t exactly write instruction manuals on how to adjust to life after your wife becomes paralyzed.

“I need you to believe in me,” she said then.  “In what I’m trying to do.”

“Why?  So I can watch you cry and be disappointed day after day after day, when you can’t move your legs?”  The words shot out of him, too quickly, before he’d had a chance to think them over.  But now that they were out, he needed to go on, needed to explain the way he felt.  “Why do you look at those pictures, Lori?  Do you like torturing yourself?  Is that it?  I don’t understand it!”

“No,” she said.  “You don’t.”

“Why can’t you accept the truth?” he went on.  “We both need to accept it.  I have.  But you . . .”

“You must really think I’m stupid,” she said.  There was a quiver in her voice.  I put that there, he thought.  I hurt her, again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  The anger was gone, replaced by a heavy, massive blanket of regret.  Why had he lost his composure?  Didn’t she have enough to overcome, without his outbursts?  “I didn’t mean that.”

He thought she would turn away from him, stonewall him for the rest of the night.  Instead, she took hold of his hand.  “I know this is hell for you, too,” she said.  “And I’m sorry for saying you haven’t supported me.  You have.  You’ve been by my side throughout all of this.  Don’t think I’m not aware of that, John.  And grateful for it.  It’s just . . . Look, I know you don’t want me to get hurt, to believe I’ll be able to walk again, and then . . .”

He started to say something, but she stopped him.  “I have accepted this,” she said.  “I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but I have.  Well . . . I’m working on it, anyway.  I know I might not walk again.  I know what the doctors said.  But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to lie down and tell myself it’s impossible.  I won’t stop trying, John, and I won’t stop believing.  And what I really need, more than anything, is for you to believe, too.  I need you on my side for this.  Can you do that for me?”

The logic-oriented part of his brain wanted to argue with her.  If she had accepted her situation, why would she still be trying to accomplish the impossible, or, at the least, the highly improbable?  Why put herself through that?  But he didn’t argue with her.  He just nodded, and said, in a whisper, “I’ll try.”

♣

“Hi, John, glad you could make it,” Seth said, smiling, the creases in his face multiplying like randomly expanding spider webs.

John smiled back.  He liked Seth.  He’d worked for him at his previous job, and the two became friends.  When John quit, moving to a higher-paying position at a company across town, they remained in touch; though, since Lori’s accident, he rarely got out to see anyone.  He hadn’t seen Seth since the older man had visited him in the ICU, when the nightmare was still fresh and new.  He’d barely heard what Seth had said that day.

“Been wanting to stop in for a visit,” Seth said.  “But I figured it was still too soon, you know.”

John nodded, and an awkward silence hung in the air.  It was Seth who broke it.

“Come on inside,” he said.  Another smile, more multiplying spider webs.

Seth’s house was a spacious ranch, overlooking a two-acre backyard, complete with a trout pond, lilac bushes, a well-kept flower garden, and a vegetable garden that was his pride and joy.  He had boasted about his garden dozens of times at work, before the start of a meeting, as employees shuffled in to the conference room.  But the boasts were true, and now, at the height of its midsummer lushness, the garden looked to John like an oasis, a rich, green world just waiting to lure him in with its charms.

Seth led him to the back den, with its wall of windows and glass-sliding door that opened out onto the green expanse of the yard.  There was a birdfeeder just beyond the windows.  Blue jays and grackles scuffled for control, while a cardinal and two grosbeaks looked down from a nearby perch, waiting for a chance.

But what really caught his eye were the comic books.  There were two stacks of them, side by side.  One stack piled at least three feet high, the other much less substantial—only a dozen or so comics.  Beside this smaller stack, a pair of scissors, a collection of envelopes and stamps, and several clipped-out old advertisements lie scattered on the floor.

Seth sat down in a cream-colored, comfortable-looking oval chair.

“Plant yourself,” he said, motioning to the sofa across from him.  “Make yourself at home, John.”

He did as instructed, sat down, let out a breath that felt as though it had been building for months.  It actually felt good to be here, away from the house, for a little while.  He wasn’t sure if he should leave Lori alone, but she had all but pushed him out the door, assuring him that she’d be fine.  Besides, his extended leave of absence from work was coming to an end; he would be going back next week.  So this would be good practice for both of them.  She wouldn’t be a burden to him, she said.  They needed to get on with their lives.

“What you must think of me,” Seth said.  “I didn’t even offer you a drink.  Maybe that’s what being a department manager does to a fella after a while—gives him a big head.”  He jumped up, spry as a man decades younger, and walked swiftly into the kitchen.  He returned a moment later, with two glasses of lemonade.

“Thanks,” John said, reaching for one of the glasses, taking a drink.  Very tart, just the way he liked it.  But he felt shy being here.  Usually, when he saw Seth, they met for lunch or coffee in one of the cafes downtown.  Sometimes they golfed together.  Rarely did he come here, to his ex-boss’s house.

He eyed the stack of comic books, looking for a diversion.

“Yeah, I just found those the other night,” Seth said, sitting back down in his oval chair, the glass of lemonade already beginning to sweat, in his hands.  “Ever since I returned from my trip back home, I’ve been puttering around the attic lately.”

“You went back home?” John asked.  He’d been so out of touch with Seth, with everyone.  This was the first he’d heard of it.

Seth nodded.  “My nephew got married a couple weeks ago.  I went back for the wedding.  It was nice.”  He paused, brought his finger to his lips.  It was what John had always thought of as his thinking pose.  He sometimes used to do that at meetings, too, before saying something.  “Going back was odd, though,” he went on.  “Hadn’t been there in years.  I saw some old friends, talked about the old days.”  He shook his head.  “When I got back, I started looking for any junk I might find, lying around.  Stuff I’d maybe forgotten about.  I found my high school yearbook, flipped through that.  Looked at some old pictures.  And I came across those comics I bought way back when.  Most of them are more than fifty years old, you know.  Fifty years!”  He let out a whistle.  “Where’s the time go?”

John couldn’t relate.  Time, to him, had nearly stood still these past few months.  The vigil in the ICU, the long, tedious, torturous days at the rehab center, and now the days spent at home, with Lori, as she struggled to readjust her life, to master what had once been the simplest of tasks but now, thanks to the recklessness of one drunk driver, had become grueling tests of grit and patience.

“Why do you have them in two piles?” he asked.  He didn’t want to talk about time.  And he sure didn’t want to talk about Lori.  He needed to steer things in a direction of his choosing.  “What are the scissors for?”

Seth glanced at the scissors, then at him.  John could almost hear the cogs and circuits spinning in the older man’s head, could almost hear his thoughts.  Didn’t he come here to talk about his wife, about what happened?  Isn’t that what he needs?  To talk about it?  But, to his relief, Seth didn’t push or prod.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Seth said.  His mouth hinted at a smile, but didn’t consummate it.  “Going back home, seeing how so much has changed . . . I guess it made me feel kind of old.  I guess it . . .”  He waved his hand dismissively, set his lemonade aside.  “Ah, never mind.  I’m just rambling.”

But the clipped advertisements, the stacks of old comic books—these weren’t merely ramblings. . . .

Outside a blue jay hollered at a bold grackle, and there was a flutter of wings as they both flew away.  Eager to pounce, the grosbeaks descended on the feeder.

“Besides,” Seth went on, “you’re still young, John.  I don’t expect that you’d really want to hear any of this, or that you’d even understand if you did.”

Young?  Lori was young, too—in her midthirties, a lifetime ahead of her.  But what did it matter?  What kind of life would she be able to lead?  Yes, she would reenter society, return to work, read, think, dream, imagine.  But would she be able to run again, to train for marathons, to hike up hills and mountains?  Young.  What was youth to her now?  What was it to him?

He took a sip of the lemonade, hopped off the sofa, knelt on the floor, beside the comic books.  The top one on the taller stack was a Superman, with a cover story titled “The Man with the Zero Eyes.”  He examined the cover, admiring the artwork, then looked at the ads, scattered on the floor.  There was one for sea monkeys, another for a Daisy Air Rifle, another for free passes at an amusement park—valued at twenty-five cents, the ad boasted.  The advertisements themselves were brittle, the paper yellowing.  Relics.

“Did you just cut these out?” he asked then, as he picked up the Daisy Air Rifle ad, examining it.  Grinning boys, guns in hand, smiled back at him from across the chasm of fifty years.

Seth smiled, but there was no joy in it.  “Yeah, I did.  Stupid, I guess.”

John didn’t know very much about comic books, but he did know that old collectable comics were worth a great deal of money—sometimes astronomical sums.  He also knew that if you clipped out the ads, said value would plummet like a failing stock.  What was Seth up to?

“I used to cut out the ads that interested me back when I was a kid,” Seth said.  “Then I’d mail ‘em off, and wait.  And believe me, the waiting wasn’t easy.  I’d run home from school and ask my mom right off if anything for me had come in the mail.  Probably drove her crazy sometimes.”  He paused, looked away.  “It’s funny.  Back then, I remember wanting to grow up, you know?  Finish up with school, move away, make a lot of money.  Guess I did all those things.  But now, it’s just the opposite.  Now, I wish I could go back to those days, maybe try out for the high school baseball team, maybe appreciate my folks more, while they were still here, you know?  Maybe ask Gloria Cooper out on that date, like I always wanted to but never did.  I wonder whatever became of her. . . .”

John knew that Seth had never been married.  He rarely talked about his past, but he had mentioned once how lucky John was to have found Lori, to have found love.  And John knew he was right.  He hadn’t met Lori until he was twenty-eight, and he often wished he had gone to school with her, had a chance to meet her sooner in life.  But then he’d stop himself.  He was fortunate to have met her at all.  They’d planned on having children, but hadn’t yet.  They thought maybe next year would be the right time to start a family.  But that had been before the accident . . .

“Why’d you just cut these out now, though?” he asked.  His train of thought was moving too much toward his own life, his own loss.  He didn’t want to deal with that, not now.  Hadn’t he come over Seth’s to get away from himself, even if only temporarily?

The older man just sat there.  John thought about repeating his question, but he didn’t.  Surely Seth had heard him.

Seth glanced at the stack of comic books, the scattered pile of snipped-out ads.  “You know, most people would say I’ve had a good life, and I guess they’d be right.  I can’t complain.  I’m still healthy, successful.  I mean, look at all this.”  He swept his hands in a wide arc.  “This is what I always wanted, what I strived for.  But maybe, all this time, I was striving for the wrong things.  Because now, I . . .”  He smiled.  “It’s kind of hard to explain, I’m afraid.  Guess I’m just having my midlife crisis a little late.  Because looking at these comic books now . . . there are lots of ads in them that look good, you know?  They remind me of a time, a place, I had almost forgotten.  But now I wish I could go back to that time, to that place, and do things over.  Some of them anyway.”

John just looked at the older man.  None of this was making sense.

“Guess you’re still wondering why I cut out the ads,” Seth said.  “Well . . . I suppose you could say I’m looking for a miracle.”

“A miracle?”

“Yeah.  I used to believe in miracles, once.  I think we all did.”

John swallowed.  “What do you mean?”

“Guess it’s like I said.”  Seth reached for his lemonade, took another sip.  Outside the jays and grackles had returned to the feeder, squawking and pecking at each other.  “I wish I could go back—someway, somehow, at least for a little while.  So I’m clipping out those old ads.  And you know what?  I’m gonna send for them, just like I used to.  Oh I know they’ll probably just get returned, I know the addresses can’t possibly be good anymore.  But then, who knows?  Maybe one of them will get a response.  Maybe I’ll even get the product I sent for, at a price half a century old.  It doesn’t hurt to believe, does it?  To hope.  Sometimes, I think, believing is what we need the most.  Sometimes, that’s what carries us through.”

“But . . .”  All of a sudden, it seemed like there was so much to say, and yet nothing to say.

“Why don’t you take a comic or two, John?  I don’t mind.  As you can see, I got plenty to spare.”

He was ready to tell Seth that this was all crazy, a childish scheme, ridiculous.  A waste of time.  But he found his fingers rifling through the stack of comic books.  He felt them pull out an issue of Journey Into Unknown Worlds, number 36.  The cover featured a species of giants, preparing to menace the ill-prepared human race.

What am I doing? he thought.  Why am I taking this?

As if reading his mind, Seth said, “Maybe you can clip an old ad out of that, too.  Send it off.  And hope.”

♣

He was in the living room, flipping through the comic book, actually enjoying the stories.  It was published in 1955, but the material held up surprisingly well.  Whenever he saw an ad, he examined the merchandise, considering whether or not to clip it.  He had a pair of scissors at the ready, on the seat beside him. . . .

“C’mon,” he said.  “Don’t be stupid.”

But one ad in particular caught his eye.

“Mystery!  Science!  Fun!  Magic!” it read.  “Magic wand to amuse and amaze your friends!”  It was fourteen inches long, with a black center and white tips.  It enabled the amateur magician to perform dozens of tricks.  It—

“Unnnh!”  It was Lori.  She was in the bedroom, supposedly taking a nap.  Apparently, she hadn’t felt like sleeping.  “Unnh!”  Every few seconds, he would hear her grunting.  He didn’t need to go to the bedroom to know what she was up to.  He formed a mental picture of her—sitting on the edge of the bed, arms pressed firmly down on the mattress, supporting her weight, as she struggled to move her legs.  He could easily visualize the sweat forming on her forehead, her face scrunching up, her eyes tightly shut as she pushed, focused, threw everything she had into the effort.

“Unnh!” she said again.

He looked at the ad of the magic wand, and suddenly he felt a firm conviction.  With his wife straining in the other room to move her legs, her feet, just a little, just a twitch, a spasm, anything—he picked up the scissors, lined them up just so. . . .

“I love you, Lori,” he said, and began to cut.

****************

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike