Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3)

by J. Davis Henry

  “I think I need to walk.”

  “Catch you later.”

  About ten minutes later, I stopped at an old country store. After drinking a Pepsi, I bought a pack of Kools, then noticed a sturdy metal pogo stick protruding from an odd assortment of toys for sale.

  Five minutes later, I was bouncing along the two lane road, springing past cars, causing an assortment of reactions from the stoned occupants. Moving forward like a giant mechanical rabbit meeting the challenges of maximum leap technique, and as the conqueror of the day’s travel woes, my spirits picked up. Soon I was hooting and grinning and exchanging reflections about traffic and gravity with the stuck commuters as I hopped past them.

  I was distracted momentarily by a lone cow making its way at a leisurely pace towards the road. As I came up behind a light blue convertible, the cow stuck its head between the rails of a roadside wooden fence. She munched away on a wad of greenery, doe-eyed and persistent.

  On the center of her forehead was a great black spot in the shape of a mushroom.

  I whooped with pogo adrenaline and in appreciation of the magical salutation, took another bounce or two before my attention was grabbed by a new delight. There was a dark-haired woman sitting up on the top of the back seat of the open convertible. She had her head tilted upwards, her body beginning to shift in profile to me. A gentle breeze flipped at her blouse, revealing it to be completely unbuttoned. I gulped in fascination, soaking in the sight of her wonderful naked roundness. A soft, white dandelion seed ball fluttered towards her, catching in her hair.

  As I jumped and ogled my way past the woman, a bearded guy with sunglasses in the front seat was passing a pipe to the driver who, with a languid smile, told me the communal thing to do would be to get back in line like everybody else. The woman hollered at me as I pogo’d on by, “Hey, let me ride on your shoulders.”

  I bounced in place for a few hops. “We’d cause accidents all the way to wherever this line is going.”

  “Ha, ha, go on.” And she tugged her blouse to cover herself, suddenly shy, but still radiant.

  I bounced away past the next car and another, when suddenly I found myself watching the mushroom-marked cow stick her head through the fence again as I boinged up and down approaching the back of the blue convertible. The woman sat on the top of the seat, her ass pushed back onto the trunk, her body turning as a breeze picked up. The shirt flapped to the side, exposing her tits again, and I marveled at her and her carefree demeanor. The mellow wind spun a dandelion puff to catch in her hair.

  She spoke to me as I hopped by. “Hey, I thought you went on ahead. You’re not making very good progress if we passed you.”

  The guy in sunglasses said, “No way. About an inch an hour.”

  She made no attempt to cover herself, just rocked her body and hummed the words, “It’s a marvelous sky. We should have all flown.”

  I smiled hesitantly, wondering what had just happened. It had been instantaneous. One bounce, I had been forty feet in front of the car, the next, behind it.

  I continued on, past a dozen cars, trying to concentrate on my technique, when I went up near a red VW Bug and came down with my eyes glued on the dark-haired woman’s incredibly reappearing tits again.

  The cow swabbed her tongue around the same stalk of grass as the two times I had been here before. The fluff of dandelion repeated its dance, landing in the woman’s dark locks.

  I’m time-jumping.

  The woman gave me a funny look, startled to see me approach from behind again.

  The driver said, “Pogo dude can’t get enough of you, Emily.”

  Sunglasses laughed. “Man, this is getting holy. Man, this gig is going to be great. Can’t you just feel it? I mean the magic is starting already.”

  The woman frowned with concern as I bounced around in a circle before jumping off the foot petals.

  “I... I guess you’re like a magnet,” I stammered.

  She patted the space next to her. “C’mon, Pogo, you better take a break.” Then she ran a hand through her hair, giggling as the dandelion broke apart and scattered, tiny seed stalks decorating one of her nipples. “Just relax. Whatever road you were on, you’re cool, you’re here.”

  Distracted by frequent naked ladies, weed, music, and the massive crowd, I lost track of Emily and never even saw Chang or Clyde that weekend. Trying to figure out the implications of what had happened on the pogo stick, I buried myself deep into the festival’s claustrophobic buzz, drawing a curtain around me with worries of new disturbances in the tunnels. Lost in reliving and analyzing the odd happening, I didn’t hear but the first note and then the last one of the whole set by Santana. Uneasy that maybe I had been whisked away into a time tunnel, a fear of familiar demons and gods, broken portals and beach warfare, seized me.

  I turned to the people near me. “Have I been sitting here for a long time, or did I, like, disappear?”

  “You mean, like poof?”

  “Maybe, or a series of flashing jumps in and out of here.” I waggled my finger up, down, around, crooking it, popping it back straight, pointing it every which way.

  “Ha, ha, no, man. You’re still solid, but, man… I know, I’m gone,” answered a guy with a sunburst painted on his forehead.

  Then a woman wearing a vest covered with about thirty different peace buttons of multiple colors and sizes said, “Stay cool, man. We’re right here with you. Let us know if you’re starting to flip out. Do you want to go to the medical tent?”

  “No, I was just lost in my head for awhile. As long as my body was here, everything’s cool.”

  Holy jumping cow, if I have to choose between the hospital or the tunnels, what do I do?

  Chapter 54

  I spent the next few months hidden away in my parents’ studio, rendering small black and white drawings of the carved magical puzzle pieces that had completed the healing of Shadow Creature.

  I’m not going back to that life of dealing with immortals and demons.

  I drew feverishly, eighteen, twenty hours a day, reproducing as many of the hundreds of symbols I could remember. As much as I exhausted myself, I couldn’t purge myself of worries concerning the implications of the pogo stick incident.

  My hand hadn’t performed any miracles since the quest had been completed. The few times I thought I had seen into a tunnel, I had been uncertain and the sightings had faded. They could’ve just as well been tricks of shadow and light.

  Could it be that some aspect of my old ability is still with me?

  With each pogo jump weirdness, I sprung back to the same time. I’m positive it wasn’t just a relocation jump, because the cow chewing, Emily turning as the breeze picked up, and the puff of dandelion were precisely the same each approach. But each time the subsequent interaction was different. Different paths from the same point in time, yet cumulative somehow, because once past the initial jump-back, the occupants of the car had seen me before.

  I hoped it would never happen again. It seemed a continuing curse of all I had endured.

  The day I finally understood the truth of my newest dilemma was astounding enough in itself in that it brought together four of my old acquaintances.

  Four that had always been trouble.

  I had gone into New York in late October to show Daisy my fourteen hundred miniature drawings of magical symbols.

  “Deets, this is just a squiggly line, this looks the same, and my, a number three? This dog and these feathers are well executed, but you can do better than this. I mean, this one is a cartoon star. And this, a cigar? This is borderline conceptual art, which you know I think is utter nonsense. I say borderline because your talent shows through even in these simplistic line drawings. Maybe Warhol would call it pop, but think about this, you were once put in the same company as Hieronymus Bosch.”

  Discouraged by her reaction, and shruggin
g with uncertainty at her concerns, I placed the tiny pieces of paper back in their cardboard box and stuffed that into my old, well-travelled knapsack.

  “Your drawings in San Francisco looked like they existed in an exotic world never witnessed before. They were alive. The stars shone with true light. If there was a cigar in them, one could smell the smoke. My dear, dear Deets, I hope these newest works are just a passing phase.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where it’s all going now that it’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “Shadows, Teresa, my hand, time, maybe another universe. I don’t know.”

  “Deets, take care of yourself. Promise me.”

  “I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

  I began to walk aimlessly around the Village, wondering if I really was okay. Sliding my fingers over the stone feather for reassurance, I wondered who I was without the tunnel quest, without my dream of being with Teresa, and now, without support for the one thing I could always count on—my art. I felt as lost as never before.

  I sat on a cold wall of concrete looking out across Washington Square, thinking of the value of my actions, my love, my dedication; thinking of throwing the box of drawings in the East River, then jumping in alongside the trash and sludge and broken bits of my life. What was the use of it all? For my love of Teresa to turn into an obsessive delusion? To ease my heart with my talent, only for it to be dismissed as meaningless? To follow my spirit to help a fallen god no longer exist?

  If my life’s a joke to the universe, I don’t get it.

  “Hey, gloomy, I’d never thought I’d see you again.”

  Lola. She wore a beat-up army jacket with a Power to the People button on the lapel. A tie-dyed bandanna held her hair in place, and though she was as pretty as I remembered, one of her eyelids had developed a nervous tick.

  “Hey, Lola. Yeah. Bummer. But it’s good to see you.”

  “C’mon out of the cold. I got an errand to run, then let’s go have a beer.”

  “Uh, maybe.” I flicked my cigarette into an old rain puddle but stayed seated on the chilly slab.

  “Man, you’re really down. It’s me, silly. Remember?”

  I nodded, flashed on how our last time together had ended—in bed with Brenda.

  She snuggled and cajoled, trying to snap me out of my funk. “How could you forget...” She ran a warm tongue along my earlobe. “...the promise of our own private party I made to you years ago?”

  I hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. I was tired of being haunted by the consequences of fucking Cassandra in the tunnel and wanted to forget the nightmares it triggered—kids lost in time, her burning wings, giant squawking birds.

  Maybe Lola would sooth those memories, give me new ones.

  “Okay, you got some weed?”

  As we walked, she told me she had been at the “Bring the War Home” riots in Chicago and ranted about the revolution that was coming. As she angrily talked politics, it became obvious that she was part of a group of protesters that advocated violence against the government and corporate establishment. She related a story about how the crowd she was in had eluded a police barricade and set fire to three cars.

  “Man, the explosions rocked the streets. We were finally letting the pigs know we had it in us to change things. We’ll show them the goddamn rage they deserve.”

  My heart was with her cause, not her methods, but after the last few years I couldn’t judge the path the gods had set her on. I had tasted my own violence and knew it leapt forth when one felt trapped and desperate.

  I had killed my share of demonic beings. One. Enough.

  We slowed outside a brownstone.

  “Deets, I’ve got to drop something off here.” She hefted her knit handbag slightly.

  I started up the stairs with her.

  “Wait for me. I won’t be long.”

  Her eyes cautioned me not to ask why or insist on accompanying her. It made me uncomfortable, but I responded lightly, acting nonchalant and innocent.

  “No sweat.”

  I sat down on the bottom step and pulled out my pack of Kools, not wanting to get mixed up in whatever Lola was involved in. For a brief moment I thought I should split, but with her standing next to me, I was eye level with the tight V-stretch of her jeans at her crotch, and any thought of leaving was pushed far from my mind.

  As she bounced up the stairs, I could see the outline of a rectangular object pushing against the flexible weave of the bag she carried.

  About a minute after she opened the front door, a black Impala sedan pulled into a parking slot about halfway down the block. Two silhouettes sat ramrod straight in the front seat. My jungle survival and demon paranoia kicked in. I looked about and saw a man in a second floor window across the street. He was situated a few feet back in the room, but watching me.

  Oh, I gotta get out of here. Warn Lola and whoever she’s with. This is a bust.

  Then with an incredulous horror that bordered on the ridiculous, I noticed a bearded man in blue coveralls coming out of a nearby ice cream parlor. It was Federal Agent Orville in the same undercover costume he wore when he had crashed through the ceiling at the student union and when he was snooping around Phuong’s place. His gaze met mine, and though it had been two years since we had last seen each other, it took but a second before his demeanor grew hard as he recognized me.

  I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. Maybe because I had gotten away with vanishing before the cops in the California beach battle aftermath, or maybe in hopes that someone in the brownstone behind me would be alerted, but I stood up and mockingly half-waved at the poorly disguised fed.

  “Hey, Agent Orville. The beard—is it still fake? Or did you finally turn on, drop out, and grow your own?”

  He drew a gun from the oversized pocket in the bib area of his coveralls.

  “You’re going down this time, Parker.”

  A shot, another, then another, exploded from the house whose steps I stood on. The air seemed to warp in on itself from the three blasts in the confines of the narrow street and close buildings. The glass on the black Impala’s window shield splintered in a cobweb of cracks, and a gush of steam rose from the front grille. Two men rolled out of the car in confusion—tripping, skinning their knees, pulling their weapons as they skittered for cover.

  Orville opened fire at whoever was shooting from Lola’s command post. A peppering of bullets poured forth from the agent into the second floor window, shattering glass, cracking bricks and wood.

  More shots—louder—from a high-powered gun, joined the barrage.

  Bullets punched into a nearby parked car, and I flew to the ground, caught in a wicked crossfire. Somebody on Lola’s team was unloading a lot of ammunition from the second floor on my side of the street, another was popping off a very methodical, measured volley with a light caliber weapon from the first floor window right up the steps from me.

  Someone else, an agent, maybe Orville, was concentrating their fire at the car I was hiding behind. A tire blew out, then the world around me ripped apart with glass bits stinging me. I rolled up into a fetal position and pushed myself crab-like across the sidewalk, seeking any scrap of cover. A flash of silver thumped into my forehead, and then the side of my skull ruptured, flinging blood outwards. From my ear. A razor had sliced my ear in two or off or maybe even lodged in the side of my head. There was no way of telling, but when I instinctively reached up to protect myself, I drew my hand away quickly. Thin cuts covered my fingers.

  Suddenly, the whole row of houses, nearby stores, and the pavement itself jumped when a hollow concussion blew the front door of the building under fire off its hinges. Smoke roiled out. Hacking and coughing, Lola appeared, looking like solid soot. She jerked and crumpled as gunfire hit her, rolling halfway down the steps while bullets chipped the cement around her.

&
nbsp; The body of some long-haired guy was hanging half out the lower window. His pistol dangled from one finger and a red-soaked shard of glass was lodged in his throat. Flames appeared in the upstairs window where no shooter could any longer be seen.

  A gun was jabbed into the back of my neck, and an agent’s knee practically cracked my spine as I lay face down, still trying to hide or crawl into the cement to escape the pain of what was left of my ear.

  Chapter 55

  Sirens piercing, handcuffs pinching, radios squawking, hellfire crackling. Trucks, patrol cars, never-ending yelling. It all spun in my head. For a brief moment, I didn’t believe any of it. That disbelief was brought on when I saw nurse Elsa Pumpkin, looking as crazed and vengeful as the day she tried to strangle me, unload herself out of an ambulance, then, with medical kit in hand, walk briskly in my direction. Even after all the terrors I had faced over the last four years, I pissed myself out of pure fear.

  “Jesus, Parker, get out of the car,” Orville whined.

  “I need to take him over to the ambulance anyway. We’ll clean him up. His ear, not his bad potty habits.” She beamed in full demented ecstasy at the sight of me. That I was in pain only delighted her more.

  “He’s a dangerous criminal, ma’am. He’s in federal custody.”

  “Oh, I know, I know. Don’t worry, he’s not getting out of anyone’s sight.” Pumpkin turned my head roughly to better look at my ear. “Very stylish. Almost as pretty as this designer eye patch I’ve had to wear for years.”

  A six-inch-long section of a bumper had sheared away from a car and stabbed a jagged hole through the cup of my ear. The chrome was still lodged in place, half sticking towards the front, half protruding out from the back. To Orville’s credit, he hadn’t wanted to remove the piece, saying he was concerned he would slice off most of my ear.

  Paramedic Pumpkin removed the shrapnel smoothly, cleaning and bandaging my various wounds. Then she leaned into me and whispered, “Now you and I are going for a little emergency ride.” And she bumped her lead balloon tits against me while a grin of pure malevolent lunacy spread across her face.