by Paula Guran
“Or what to set right.”
“I don’t feel either impulse,” Parker said.
“Oh no? Then why are you going to meet your true love on the Pier?”
“Because I said I would.”
“When did you make that promise?” Belinda asked.
“I . . . I don’t remember.”
“Well, I think it’s terribly romantic,” Jane said.
Belinda nodded. “And a bit sad.”
“Bittersweet,” Jane said.
“Bittersweet,” Belinda agreed. “Exactly.”
“You don’t know that,” the solider said. “What makes you think she won’t come?”
“Well, if you’re one of the Stanton Street Pauls,” Jane said, “it has to turn out sad because they moved away ages ago. That means your going away and dying and all happened ages ago, too. So even if your true love is still alive, she’d be really old.”
Parker smiled. “Old? As in her mid-thirties?”
“No, really old. Like in her fifties or something.”
“She might be too old and decrepit to come,” Belinda said. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Parker told her. “But she will come.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I promised her and she promised me.”
The two girls exchanged a worried look, then Jane sighed.
“Well, come on then,” she said, taking his arm once more. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting, should we?”
The soldier let them lead him off again, one girl on either arm. He tried not to gawk at their surroundings as they walked, but it was hard to stop. Everything had changed—drastically. The buildings were impossibly tall, all metal and glass. There was so much traffic, the vehicles all so sleek. And the crowds of people, hurrying, chattering into their cell phones, dressed in an array of styles that bewildered the eye . . .
Except . . . except . . .
It was all familiar as well.
They were walking down the sidewalk of this busy street with traffic rushing by, the tall buildings on either side. But at the same time they were walking through an older version of the city. Many older versions that flitted in and out of his awareness. One moment a modern bus was pulled up at a stop. The next it was an old streetcar. Then there were only horse-drawn buggies slowly passing by, the horse hooves clopping on cobblestones. Then it was a dirt road. Then a field and they were following a narrow game trail.
Then, just as abruptly, the modern city was back.
“Which one are you now?” Jane asked.
He looked at where she walked on his right, arm linked with his.
“What do you mean?”
“You keep changing,” she said. “Your hair goes from short to long and then back again.”
“And your skin changes color.”
“And your uniform changes, too.”
“Sometimes you’re hardly wearing anything—”
“—and then you’re smartly dressed again,” Jane said.
“How do you do it?” Belinda asked.
“I don’t know,” the soldier said. “I’m just me. Parker Paul.”
Except that didn’t seem to be the right name. Parker had died in the trenches in France during the Second World War. While he . . . he’d died in the desert. He’d been part of a combat patrol, west of the city, when their attacker detonated explosives directly under their vehicle . . .
No, he’d died in a jungle, cut down by a sniper . . .
He’d died in a forest of pines and cedars, struck by an arrow that had come whistling from between the trees, the bowman unseen . . .
He’d died at sea, when a broadside struck down their mast and he’d come tumbling down from the crow’s nest . . .
He’d died in a gray uniform, fighting his brother who wore the blue . . .
He’d died under the clubs of another tribe’s warriors . . .
He’d died . . . he’d died . . . he’d died . . .
But he was still Parker. Or at least Parker was still a part of him.
He brought them all to a halt again.
“It’s not so far now,” Jane assured him.
Belinda nodded. “We really do know where we’re going.”
“It’s not that,” he told them. “It’s . . . there’s something wrong with me. I’m too many people, all at the same time.”
“Maybe you’re the unknown soldier,” Jane said. “There was probably one in every war.”
“More than one,” Belinda added.
Jane nodded. “Sadly, that’s true.”
Parker shook his head. “No. If I concentrate, I know who every one of these people inside me are.”
“Then maybe you’re the well-known soldier,” Belinda said, then added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make that sound like a joke.”
“She didn’t,” Jane said.
The soldier nodded. “I know.”
They began to walk again. In the far distance, they could finally catch glimpses of the lake, a shimmer of water between the canyon of buildings on either side of the street.
“How did you know I was a ghost?” the soldier asked after they’d gone a few more blocks.
“We just did,” Jane told him.
Belinda nodded. “It’s what we know.”
“Who’s human and who’s not.”
“Do you meet a lot of people who aren’t human?” Parker asked.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Though maybe not,” Jane said. “Do ghosts get surprised?”
“That’s right,” Belinda said. “You don’t hear of ghosts hanging a-
round because they’re surprised. They’re usually sad or angry or lost or something.”
“You surprise me,” the soldier said. “Every time you open your mouths.”
They walked in silence for a few moments, the girls opening and closing their mouths with great exaggeration.
“How many times were you surprised?” Jane asked after a half block of that.
“You’re very strange girls,” he told them.
Belinda grinned. “Says the ghost.”
“If you think we’re strange,” Jane said, “you should meet Gina. She collects bobby pins.”
“But only ones she finds on the street,” Belinda said.
“And then she arranges them in patterns on the tar of a roof that overhangs the alley where we were born-ish.”
“She says ‘born-ish’,” Belinda explained, “because that’s the easiest way to describe how one day we were just there.”
“When the day before we weren’t.”
“I still think you’re stranger,” Parker said.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Jane asked.
“It’s neither,” Belinda said before the soldier could reply. “It just is.”
“You mean like there’s no box to fit us in?”
“There could never be a box to fit you in,” Parker said.
“I don’t know,” Jane told him. “I’ve seen some big boxes.”
“I meant metaphorically.”
“I knew that,” Jane said, then stuck out her tongue at him.
Belinda suddenly stopped, bringing them all to a halt. She reached up and straightened the soldier’s tie.
“We’re almost there now,” she said, “and you need to look your best.”
Parker looked up and saw that they were only a couple of blocks from the street that ran parallel to the lake. The two girls industriously brushed dust—real and imagined—from his jacket while he stood and stared. He didn’t recognize any of the stores on this street, but he knew the shapes of the older buildings. And he knew the old hotel he could see down by the shore front. The Pier would be to its right, hidden from sight at the moment by the buildings on the other side of the street.
“Are you nervous?” Jane asked.
He shook his head.
“Of course he’s not nervous,” Belinda said. “He’s a soldier. They’re brave and never
get nervous.”
“That’s not true,” he told them. “I’m always nervous in battle. Sometimes I get so scared I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold my rifle.”
“But you do.”
He nodded. “You have to. The men you’re with are depending on you. At that moment, the reason you’re there, the reason you’re fighting, doesn’t mean much at all. You just want to get the mission done and survive, protecting as many of your companions as you can.”
“Hence the brave part,” Belinda said.
“I suppose.”
Parker felt uncomfortable. There was nothing glamorous about war. Time spent on the front lines was an even mixture of boredom, fear and the horror of combat. You didn’t remember to appreciate the boredom until the night was filled with mortar shells and bullets.
He wasn’t sure how to convey that to his two young companions. Wasn’t sure he even wanted them to carry the burden of the knowledge.
“You’re not our first soldier,” Jane said. “That’s how we know you must be brave.”
Belinda nodded. “You’re not even our first ghost.”
“Except the others never talked to us.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I guess we didn’t meet them on Halloween.”
“I need to go,” he said.
Jane gave his sleeve a last brush with her fingers.
“Of course you do,” she said.
“Do you mind if we follow?” Belinda asked.
“We won’t come too close.”
“And we won’t interrupt or eavesdrop or anything.”
“We’re very good at not being seen.”
“Or at least, people don’t see us unless they need to.”
“What does that mean?” the soldier asked.
Belinda shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just that if a person’s open enough, and seeing us can make a difference, then they often do.”
“And for some reason,” Jane added, “it makes them feel better.”
“Well, I know that feeling,” he told them.
“So can we tag along?” Belinda asked.
“We’ll be ever so . . . ” Jane looked at Belinda. “What’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Inconspicuous.”
Jane nodded. “Exactly. We’ll be so totally inconspicuous that not even a super secret agent spy-type satellite could hope to conspicuous.”
Parker laughed. “Of course you can come. I’d like you to meet Angeline.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Belinda said, linking her arm with his again.
Jane did the same on the opposite side and they continued down the last couple of blocks until they finally reached Lakeside Drive and there was only the wide street and lakefront hotels between themselves and the lake. Wolf Island was half-hidden in mists, but they could clearly see the Pier and the ferry that was just leaving port on the far side of the long wooden and concrete structure. The wind blowing in from the lake held a faint echoing scent of fish and weeds.
“At least that hasn’t changed,” Parker said.
“Do you mean the Pier?”
He nodded. “The Pier. The restaurant at its far end. The ferries. The island. It’s all the way I remember it—or at least, more so than the walk we just took to get here.”
They crossed Lakeside and walked in the shadow of the hotels until they reached the parking lot in front of the Pier.
“But they didn’t charge to park your car back then,” the soldier said as they walked by the booth where a man sat waiting for customers to be either entering or leaving his lot.
“Everything costs money now,” Jane told him.
“It would have back then, too,” Parker said. “If they’d only come up with the idea and thought they could get away with it.”
“Do you see her?” Belinda asked.
They stepped from the sidewalk onto the Pier and Parker shaded his eyes to look down towards the restaurant. A radiant smile woke on his face.
“I’m guessing you do,” Jane said.
She and Belinda disengaged their arms from his and let him go on ahead. They watched him approach an old woman in her sixties whose own face lit up as he reached her. They embraced.
“I knew it was going to be sad,” Jane said.
Belinda nodded. “She’s so old and . . . ” She peered more closely. “Oh, my.”
“Yes, she’s a ghost, too,” a voice said from behind them.
The two girls turned to look at the man standing behind them. He was tall and handsome and also dressed in a soldier’s uniform, although his was more contemporary than Parker Paul’s and his skin was a dark brown where Parker’s was pale.
“Do we know you?” Jane asked.
“Only a piece of me,” the soldier said.
Belinda looked back down the Pier to where Parker and Angeline walked towards the restaurant at the far end.
“The piece that was Parker Paul?” she asked.
The new soldier nodded.
“You’re not a ghost,” Jane said.
He nodded again.
“But you’re not human either. Who are you?”
“Most recently, I was Tim Sanders,” he said. “But I’m Parker Paul, too. I’m Nadiv Levy, Dasya Rao, Akio Yamamoto, Asgrim son of Bodvar, Zerind Nagy, Bobby Whitecloud, Emilio Sanchez, Tai Phan, Jason Smith . . . ”
He changed as he spoke, becoming each man, showing a wide variety of races and uniforms. Occasionally, there wasn’t even a uniform. Just a loincloth. Or a vest and leggings made of animal skins.
He let his voice trail off.
“You’re all the soldiers Parker thought he was,” Belinda said.
“I am.”
“But if he’s a part of you,” Jane said, “how come he’s walking down the Pier with his true love? How’s that even possible?”
The soldier shrugged. “His duty’s long done and love is stronger. So I let him go.”
“So he does get a happy, romantic ending,” Belinda said.
“He does.”
“Except she’s old and he’s not.”
“You don’t see her through his eyes.”
“But you do.”
“Easily.”
“Because he’s still a part of you,” Jane said.
The soldier nodded. “And so long as there are wars, I’ll be other soldiers with other names. We fight and die and then we’re born to fight again. It’s been like this since the first time one tribe of early men fought with another and will go on for as long as men wage war against each other.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
The soldier gave her a sad smile. “It’s not something I would chose. It’s just the way of my world.”
“So you never get a happy ending,” Belinda said.
He shook his head.
“We’re more alike than you think,” he told them. “We both carry the stories of the world. The difference is, mine are born on the battlefield.”
“And now your story’s part of ours,” Jane said.
“I hope it’s not too dreary.”
“Well, it’s sad,” Belinda said, “but that’s the thing with stories. You don’t get to choose what kind you find.”
“And maybe, if they were all happy,” Jane said, “a person wouldn’t appreciate how good they had it when their story was good.”
Belinda sighed. “That’s a dumb reason to have a sad story.”
“I know. It’s just a theory.”
“I don’t know why there are sad stories,” the soldier said, “or why there have to be wars. You’d think that eventually people would realize that we’re all the same under our skin. That the enemy that we hurt is no different from our own brother or son.”
“You’d think,” Jane said.
“But I’m happy to have met you,” the soldier told them. “Now I have the cheerful memory of the pair of you to sustain me the next time I’m viewing an enemy through the site of my rifle.”
“I suppose,” B
elinda said, not particularly comforted by the idea.
Except why did he have to go to these wars in the first place? Couldn’t he just refuse? And if he did, then who would fight the war? No one. So it seemed very much up to him.
She wondered what the polite way to tell him this was, but before she could say anything more, he faded away with a ghostly “farewell.” She looked back down the Pier and saw that Parker and Angeline were gone as well.
“This,” she told her companion, “has been a particularly weird day.”
“It has,” Jane agreed. “And we never did get to meet Angeline.”
Belinda nodded. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter, because at least Parker did.”
Jane smiled. “He did, didn’t he?”
“I liked him,” Belinda said with a touch of wistfulness in her voice.
“What wasn’t to like?”
“Well, he was dead, for one thing.”
“That wasn’t his fault.”
“And he already had a true love.”
“Maybe you’ll find one, too.”
Belinda’s features brightened. “That’s true. I should go look for one right now.”
Jane took her hand.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
Hand in hand, they turned their backs on the Pier and the lake and walked back into the city, where the thousands and thousands of stories they hadn’t met awaited them.
And maybe a true love, too.
NIGHT OUT
Tina Rath
As Muriel says in this story, everyone needs an evening out sometimes. One of Muriel’s special nights happens to be Halloween. To say much more at this point would spoil Tina Rath’s brief tale, but I’ll add a note at the end . . .
Mrs. Padgett gave a final glance round the kitchen, mentally ticking off her list of tasks: Cat’s tray? Filled with clean litter. Cat’s bowl? Filled with fresh food. He wouldn’t eat anything, of course, but she had to be on the safe side. Casserole? In the oven, keeping warm. Fruit salad? In the fridge, keeping cool. And some plain yogurt to go with it, not cream. She had read, somewhere, that cream was bad for you, though her own mother, still very much alive, and a force to be reckoned with, had eaten a bowl of porridge with cream (and white sugar) every day of her life. Or so she said. Perhaps there was some ingredient in porridge that cancelled out the evil effects of cream . . .
Mrs. Padgett brought her mind back firmly from scientific speculation, and checked the bread bin. A whole fresh loaf. Good. But could that be all? Doubt paralyzed her for a moment. How could she be sure that she had thought of everything? But then she gave herself the mental bracer that had proved so effective in the past.