Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  “Your honor,” I was shouting. “Opposing counsel opened the door when he stated that my client was subdued with extreme prejudice and implied that there would be a blood bath had he not been subdued. Counsel implied that my client would kill everybody right now in the courtroom if he could just get to the cratercross. That goes to my client’s state of mind in forming criminal intent!”

  “I’ll allow one last question of the witness before the jury deliberates,” the judge said from the darkness. “The door was indeed opened. The system has shut down, so anything that is offered into testimony cannot and will not be part of the permanent record.”

  I didn’t care. I had to know something. “Opposing counsel says you were still trying to kill everyone, even after you were shot by Pat Chino,” I said to Marley. Was he actually further away now? My bladder was exploding in front of everyone, I don’t think I was even wearing underwear, much less pants, but I kept talking. When was the last time I had gone to the bathroom? “Counsel also implied that you would kill everybody right now. You just shouted that such an action was impossible. Why did you say that?”

  I had just asked a question I didn’t know the answer to. The one question too many. The courtroom was gone except for a spotlight on Marley. Something else was fading in around us, a door was literally opening, but I couldn’t yet tell what was on the other side.

  I could still see Marley smile, as if the spotlight kept pointing at his head. “Dad, I love you,” he said.

  “I love you son.”

  Suddenly, there was a burst of flame, and the skin around my son faded away in the flames. His head was now a skull, devoid of flesh. At that moment, I wet my pants, right there in the middle of this courthouse, wherever it was.

  “Dan!” Luna shouted from the far corner of the room.

  “Dan!” all the others shouted.

  I didn’t look at them. My eyes were on Marley’s skull, which disintegrated in front of me, until all that remained was a Cheshire smile.

  “It would be impossible for me to kill anyone after I got subdued, after I got shot,” the Cheshire smile said. “I couldn't kill anyone then, and he knows I can't kill anyone now, because I am already dead.”

  There was a final burst of flame, the smile disappeared in the darkness.

  “We don’t need to retire,” Gollum said from the empty air. “We find the defendant Marley Cruz Shepard ‘innocent,’ well the proper term is we find him ‘not guilty!’”

  The courtroom walls vanished, and the sign said promised land vanished after that. New walls faded in from the sky, but I still saw the afterimage of the flames. Then the after image vanished as well.

  “Dan, you’re alive!” my mom said.

  “What’s happening?” The first thing I saw was the lanyard of an orderly who was adjusting the bed pan. It was a bright blue and red ribbon for the Kansas Jayhawks.

  Was I in Kansas?

  Is this what Wichita looked like?

  No, it wasn’t Wichita, Topeka, or Kansas City. Out the window, I recognized the Sandia Mountains. I was in Albuquerque. If the courtroom had felt like black and white, I was now in a world of color, too many colors.

  I must be in a hospital room. The Kansas Jayhawk lanyard was attached to a Presbyterian Hospital ID badge. That mechanical sound I heard during my hallucination must have been a helicopter airlifting me from somewhere.

  It had all been a dream, but when had the dream started? I was in a hospital gown. I realized I had wet myself, but thankfully I was hooked up to a catheter. The people in the room around me hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. They were just happy to see me. I sighed with relief.

  My mom patted my head, wiping sweat from my brow.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “Presbyterian Hospital. You’ve been out for a few days,” she said

  “But I’m not Presbyterian,” I said, confused.

  “Your doctor, Dr. Freeman, is Baptist, so don’t worry,” the Kansas Jayhawk said, “I’m Catholic.”

  Dr. Freeman, a large African-American man smiled at me and greeted me. He’d been the baritone. The hospital room grew more crowded by the minute. I had more friends and family than I had ever realized. A few more people came into the room and congratulated me for surviving. Jane Dark was even there in an oversized green Dartmouth sweatshirt, her hair now untied. She was clearly off duty.

  “What I said to you wasn’t personal,” she said.

  What had she said? I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about the dream, or our last day in court when she asked for sanctions against me.

  I recognized the judges––Brady, “Eastwood,” Most, and Comanche. They were out of their robes, as if this was an off-duty call. I think each of them owned a ranch in their former lives. In their western outfits they looked grim, like the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

  “Glad you’re alive,” each said.

  When Judge Most shook my hand, I told him, “I’ll miss you most of all.” That was a play on his name, and on what Dorothy said to the scarecrow. He just stared at me. I then realized that she said that to the scarecrow while she was still dreaming. I was so confused.

  “Hopefully, we can come to a resolution of the other matters,” Comanche said.

  Other matters? The judges left before I could ask about other matters. So, the disciplinary complaints were real? Damn it! I didn’t know if I wanted to leave the hospital to go out to the real world. More well-wishers came in, but I didn’t recognize them.

  Out in the hallway, I recognized Sir Nathaniel talking on his cell phone. He was shorter than he had been in my dream, but he was just as bald without his barrister wig.

  “Tell Luna, I need to talk to her about the funeral when she’s done,” he said to the Kansas Jayhawk. The Jayhawk closed the door. I wondered why Sir Nathaniel needed to talk to her about a funeral. I was clearly alive. And, why would he care anyhow?

  The door was now shut, and I was finally alone with the immediate family: my mom, Luna, Dew, and Denise. Team Marley. When I looked at Dew, she said, “I’m so glad you’re alive, Dad.”

  I had been her father for a few years at most, a long time ago, but it felt good to hear her say the D-word. “Dew, thanks for being here.”

  I looked to my left, and Denise was there. She touched my hand. “Dan, I’m so glad you’re back. I was so worried, that you were going to die, just like . . .”

  Then I saw Luna, who was wearing black without any turquoise accents. She didn’t have a lanyard anymore. Had she been fired? Still, she gave me a hug. “Don’t you have to get back to work?” I asked.

  “Looks like I will be spending more time with you,” she said. “I was fired after the explosion and lost my house.”

  So, the explosion was real as well? I was starting to wonder if this waking up was actually a good thing. Wasn’t that like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix? I had taken the wrong damn pill, the red pill, the reality pill.

  I was kicking ass in my dream at the end, and now I had been thrust back into the real world and I was the one getting kicked. It wasn’t all bad, was it? At least I would see my son again, right?

  I expected to see Marley next to Luna, but there was empty air where he should have been standing. In the next moments, I kept looking out at the empty corridor, but the whole building was strangely silent.

  Luna took my hand and said nothing. I looked at her. Somehow, I knew. No one else was coming through the door.

  Finally, I said, “He’s really dead, isn’t he?”

  PART III

  CONSEQUENCES

  Chapter 30

  Marley’s Ghost

  Thankfully, hospital stays from auto accidents caused by exploding rockets were covered by my health insurance. Other than persistent headaches, I had healed well. I would have a permanent scar on my left cheek from going through the window, reminiscent
of Tony Montana in Scarface.

  Emotionally, of course, my condition was another story. With every knock, I kept waiting for Marley to walk through the door. Scrooge had been haunted by Marley’s ghost, but where was my Marley when I needed him?

  Luna, Denise, and Dew rotated sitting by my bedside during my convalescence. Luna was constantly on the phone, negotiating her exit from Dragon Moon or whatever the corporation was now called. They had already served notice of eviction, now she wanted to preserve some dignity. She looked twenty years older due to the ordeal, as she had let her hair go to its now natural gray.

  Luna had already lost ten pounds of body weight in tears alone. Now, whenever she looked like she was going to tear up, she’d find something else to occupy her attention—an email, a text, or some legal document. Work was the only thing keeping her from a nervous breakdown.

  “Are you all right?” I asked several times a day.

  “I’m like the barracuda you keep joking about,” she said the last time, pointing to her barracuda purse. “I have to constantly keep moving to survive.”

  “I thought that was a shark.”

  “Have you ever seen a live barracuda float absolutely still in the water?” she asked.

  She had me there.

  “Why not find something to do in your post-corporate life,” I said. “It isn’t rocket science to know that you’re no rocket scientist. Be a lawyer. You were good at that.”

  “We’ll see.”

  When it was her turn at the bedside, Dew discussed her future and whether to stick at NMSU or try to get back to law school on one of the coasts. I gave her my best advice on how to balance her life, love, and law. She still wanted to rule the world someday, but I suggested she have more realistic expectations.

  “Just be yourself,” I said.

  “I have no idea who I am,” she said. Every day she wore a different style, from preppy to punk and back again as if trying on different lives.

  “Maybe you should go on a vision quest,” I said. “Find the real you.”

  “Suppose I find the real me and I don’t like myself?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m dealing with right now,” I said. “I’m not a big fan of myself either.”

  Denise didn’t say much during her occasional hour, but she constantly looked out the window, toward the Sandia Mountains, as if she was on the verge of giving me a message from the great beyond. If anyone knew how to find Marley’s ghost, it was Denise.

  I told her about my dream, that I was defending Marley for the incident at Caldera.

  “I know,” she said. “I could get glimpses.”

  “You can do that?”

  She didn’t want to talk about it, and we sat in silence for a moment. “So what did the dream—or whatever it was—mean?” I asked her.

  “Perhaps he was trying to communicate with you,” she said.

  “I saw you. You could see me. How were you able to be in the dream?”

  She shrugged. “I can do things like that. Sometimes.”

  I described the dream, where Marley testified about his version of the shooting, and she nodded. “That’s pretty much the way it happened. I was there. In real life.”

  “One thing,” I said. “I had always thought he was telekinetic, because whenever I observed him under stressful situations, it was like a wave of energy would get released.”

  “Why do you think the rocket exploded?” she asked. “The rocket exploded at 6:16 and Marley died at 6:16, like a few seconds later. I checked that online. Then again, maybe it was just coincidence.”

  Using my phone, I checked the time of Marley’s death with the time of the rocket explosion which came at the same time. What was the speed of psychic energy? Was Marley mad at his mother for missing his show? Had Marley’s death caused some kind of explosion?

  • • •

  When Doctor Freeman in that baritone said I was indeed good to go on a sunny October afternoon, I was a little unsteady as I walked out the hospital door. It took us almost an hour to find Luna’s vehicle in the seven levels of the hospital’s dark parking garage. I almost abandoned all hope that we would ever exit there.

  The vehicle had some tiny dents from falling rocket debris, but was otherwise fine. If possible, it was even darker inside the car, and the lights wouldn’t turn on. Denise must have used her magic, because on the third time turning the key, she resurrected it.

  “How do we get out of here?” Luna asked.

  “Go to the light,” I said.

  It wasn’t much lighter outside the garage. The sky was gray, the clouds low. “Seattle called and wants its weather back,” I joked lamely.

  No one laughed.

  Albuquerque seemed much more crowded and built up after my forays across New Mexico over the last few weeks, and in my dreams.

  Denise drove me home on that cloudy afternoon. Luna sat with her in the front, and I sprawled out in the back, stretching my legs.

  So much for her psychic powers. Denise had trouble finding my house, even with the GPS. “You don’t seem to be in the system,” Luna said, until I finally pointed out the house. It was blocked by some construction trucks.

  “I do exist,” I said. “Or my home does. Is someone else in there?”

  “I have a surprise for you,” Luna said as she opened the door to my home in the hills.

  My former client Tyler was there, along with a crew of three workers. Had I represented any of them on misdemeanors over the last few years?

  The crew had been “remediating” the bathroom from the mold damage. My mom had let the mold build up and I hadn’t done remediation when I took over.

  “How much am I paying you?” I asked Tyler.

  “She’s got it,” he said, pointing to Luna.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You have a lot of things in your life that need to be cleaned up right now, and mold should be the least of your worries,” she said. “I made a claim on your homeowner’s insurance, and believe it or not, it was covered. Since you got that insurance way back when we were still married, they thought I was your wife.”

  That wasn’t the only surprise. Far from it. Luna pointed to the door to the garage. When I checked inside, I saw my Lincoln MKZ in there, only slightly worse for wear.

  “I also handled your insurance claim and had the windshield replaced,” she said. “And some body work as well. That time, I didn’t say I was your wife, but I was your attorney.”

  I had forgotten how amazing Luna was at finding solutions to problems for everyone but herself. “How can I ever repay you?” I asked.

  “Check your guest room, and you’ll see.”

  I opened the guest room door, to find that Luna had moved two big leather suitcases in. Dew and Denise had set up cots in what had once been my home office.

  “You’ve got a family again,” Luna said, sitting down on the bed. “We’ve got nowhere else to go. The company owned the house, and I am getting evicted. As I said, this barracuda has to keep swimming upstream to spawn.”

  “That’s a salmon, and I think you’re past your spawning stage,” I said, still standing by the door. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “First, we need to make sure you’re still a lawyer after the disciplinary hearing this week.”

  “Did I hire you to be my lawyer?”

  “I hired myself,” she said. “You need me right now.”

  “I do.”

  “And I need something to keep my mind off life right now or I’ll drown.”

  As I walked back into the living room, I saw something on the counter. “Is Marley in the urn?”

  Luna came back to the room, as if worried I would tip the urn over. “All that’s left of your son is in a Navajo urn.”

  “Did I miss the funeral, or cremation, or whatever you call it?�
�

  “You were still in a coma, and we wanted to take care of it as quickly as possible.”

  “Was it a nice ceremony?”

  “It was beautiful. We had some readings, and he kept a diary that the school sent back. We read some things he wrote. On the earlier pages he talked about his hopes and dreams of us being reunited as a family. He really did love you, even though you had just come into his life.”

  “I wish I could have done more. He never should have gone to that school.”

  “He made his choice. I could have stopped him, but he thought he could take it. He was lying to himself.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I still don’t know what was real and what was my imagination in that dream, but I feel that Marley was trying to send me a message.”

  Luna and I said nothing for the next hour as we sat in the living room on two of my mother’s stylish six chairs and stared at the urn. I kept waiting for it to move, to show me a sign. But nothing happened. Luna finally wiped away a tear and went to her room. “I’m back on Crotaladone,” she said, referring to the heavy duty anti-depressant. “Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

  Crotaladone was too powerful for mere mortals and was no longer made in America. You had to go to a Mexican pharmacy to pick it up. It didn’t just require a doctor’s prescription, it required approval from the state department. I saw a crumpled form. Luna must have pulled some heavy diplomatic strings to get it.

  I opened the refrigerator to grab a drink and found it fully stocked. While she might be back on Crotaladone, she was off calcium in her orange juice again. I felt a pang in my gut. We no longer had a growing boy.

  As for me, I nearly overdosed on generic Benadryl that night, and didn’t have any dreams. A drizzle had started up in the evening and kept on through the night. I hoped it was washing away my sins.

  Unfortunately, even Crotaladone wasn’t enough to soothe Luna’s soul. She alternated between snoring and sobbing. I had once called her asnoreable, and just hearing another person in the house was comforting. However, I heard her wake up several times in tears. Marley’s death had hurt me, but it hurt his mother even more.