by B K Nault
Early Tuesday morning, Harold was back in line at Morrie’s cart, but froze when his friend asked brightly, “Another bagel today?”
“No. No bagel. Never again.” Harold telegraphed a warning. Don’t ask questions; don’t let’s get into it now. He was already three minutes past his intended time to get this over with.
Coffee in hand, he strode toward the grungy plein air bedroom, willing to sacrifice a few minutes for the common good so he could inform the beggar what society expected. His loafers’ loud report on the concrete sidewalk had apparently already woken the man, who sat up when Harold stood over him.
Before Harold could begin his speech, the man spoke. “Hey, mister, come closer.”
Harold decided he’d listen graciously to the apology and all would be forgiven. He stood as close as the foul aroma would allow. “Yes?” He waited, his toe tapping to indicate this better not take long.
“Here.” Instead of a plea for forgiveness, though, the guy was trying to get him to take the grease-stained and wrinkled brown paper bag from yesterday’s bagel offering. “Take it!”
Stomach churning, Harold couldn’t imagine what vile or illegal substance lurked inside today. He swallowed back a dry heave and rocked back on his heel. “What is it?”
“I need you to keep this for me,” the transient gruffed, eyes flicking back and forth. “Unless you think you’re too good to help out someone like me.”
Harold tried not to let his disgust show. Soften the edges, Clyde had advised.
“Take it.”
Harold couldn’t imagine what was happening.
Gnarled fingers, knuckles thick from hard labor, gripped the sack, its top rolled over several times. “It’s very important that you keep it…safe for me.”
Probably some kind of drug paraphernalia. Harold was not about to let him foist the like on him, and was glad to see a pair of uniformed cops approaching. “Nu-uh.”
“I’ll show you what it is.” An arthritic hand reached in the bag and Harold stiffened until a gold cylinder about the size of a chubby fountain pen appeared. The man started to lift it to a rheumy eye, but a couple of joggers passing seemed to startle him, and he crammed it back in the bag and thrust it toward Harold.
The officers stopped a few yards away to give some tourists directions.
“On the outside, it’s a kaleidoscope. When you hold it up to your eye, you can see pretty things.” The wool cap was pulled low, and his bilious eyes darted side to side beneath the frayed rim. Something greasy glinted in his thick beard.
“I know what a kaleidoscope is.” Harold didn’t move to accept it.
“Then go on, take it. Please.” Pushing back the blankets, the drifter rolled over, preparing to get up. The officers moved toward them. His coveralls and work boots were sturdy compared to the clothes most of the other street people wore.
None of this seemed worth a confrontation, and to get the chore behind him, Harold accepted the bag and removed the object, imagining germs crawling its length and onto his thumb and forefinger. It was heavier than it appeared. Something internal changed the center of gravity, throwing off its balance. “This has something in it.” Probably crystal meth.
“Of course it does. Go on. Hold it up to your eye and spin the dial.”
“I know how it works.” If it was a drug mule, the spinning parts wouldn’t function properly. He spun until a colorful shape blossomed. “Why don’t you just give it to one of those officers? I’m sure there’s a lost and found bin in the precinct.” He held the device, now warm, to the man.
They were standing now, eye to eye. “It’s not lost,” he hissed, shoving it hard into Harold’s chest. “Please.”
The police were approaching, making a sweep of the sidewalk. “All right, it’s daylight. Everyone up.” The taller officer was toeing the blankets, urging sleeping forms to their feet. They were standing, rolling their blankets, the officers supervising.
Streams of suits and skirts, sepia silhouettes bumping and jostling toward their granite cubicles, muttered impatiently as they brushed past. Their terse “in the way, buddy” and “’scuse me” remarks prodded Harold to step off the sidewalk onto the wet grass. He recalled something the priest had said. “Sometimes God asks you to do things you won’t understand.”
“All right. But why me? Why don’t you just keep it?”
Scanning back and forth like he was expecting the mothership, the derelict waggled a finger. “I have something important to tell you. This is not your normal Kaleidoscope…”
The other policeman stepped over. “This man bothering you, sir?”
“No officer. Not exactly.” Harold had an urge to hide the ’scope behind his back, but that would incite undue suspicion. “I dropped this, and he picked it up.” He held up the ’scope.
The officer nodded, gesturing at the vagrant. “Move along, you know the rules. These people can help, so you don’t have to sleep outdoors.” He handed over a pre-printed slip of paper that disappeared inside a coverall pocket, and left Harold standing toe to toe with the guy while he assisted the others.
“I’m trusting you.” A gush of stale breath curled Harold’s nose hairs. “It’s up to you now!” He leaned over to gather up his things to keep ahead of the officer’s commands to move along.
Cool damp from the dewy grass penetrated through Harold’s thin trouser socks. The officers were making short work of clearing the area and in moments, he was standing alone. He tossed the greasy bag into a nearby trash bin, slid the ’scope into his breast pocket, and hurried across the park. “What a kook,” he muttered under his breath. “At least the city got my message about cleaning up the park. It’s about time.”
Chapter Five
Walter huddled inside a carrel. The librarian had warned him, as she did every time he arrived, not to camp out in the stacks. As always, he’d grunted his assurance he’d be gone before closing. Flipping the ancient microfiche machine, he leaned in, then back. His vision was getting so bad, soon he’d no longer be able to see the print to read the newspaper articles at all. Just as well.
At twenty minutes to five, Walter switched off the machine, returned the plastic cylinder to the circulation desk, and ambled over to the bus stop. Checking left and right, he made sure he wasn’t being followed as the airbrakes sounded and the bus door swooshed open.
So far, the only thing that had gone right that week was successfully turning over the Kaleidoscope. Even though the handoff hadn’t gone as well as he’d planned, it was in the proper hands. Safe hands. Now he would have to find a way to communicate its import without tipping off the wrong people. With the cops nearby and the haste he’d had to turn it over, there had been no time to explain. Somehow, he had to find a way to get in touch with the ’scope’s new guardian before it was too late.
Walter watched the buildings slide by, his own face reflected in the shop windows, peering out at him from the bus. The beard would have to go. The hair color would need to be changed. Again.
After decades of trial and error, research, and fine-tuning, he was almost hopeful that before he died, he would be able to prove his innocence now that the work was finished.
Unless they caught up with him first.
At the church, he didn’t go inside right away, but used the last hour or so of daylight to work in the small vegetable garden Father Tucker had let him plant. For two summers, the kitchen that cooked meals for him, the priest and any visiting dignitaries, as well as the community free meals on Wednesdays, had enjoyed tomatoes that climbed cone trellises, radishes, squash and fingerling carrots he’d coaxed from the twelve by twelve foot allotment. From his dank, dark room, Walter cherished being outside, even if the LA basin smog filtered the sun’s rays on days the winds were stagnant.
He yanked up a few weeds and tossed them in the compost, then went inside the small greenhouse that was more of a lean-to against the parking lot wall. He’d harvested seeds from the past year’s crops, and, added to his reserve of
purchased and donated seeds, he had enough to plant an area two to three times larger than the current bed. His long-term plan had been to find someone willing to allow access to land behind their home or in a vacant city lot, but with the church’s closing, he didn’t know where he was going to use the seeds.
He organized and straightened the tools, checked the soil to ensure the seedlings were moist, allowed himself one last admiring look before re-latching the rabbit gate, and then he went inside as darkness fell on the city oasis.
Then he recalled Luke’s suggestion. Yosemite it would be.
****
“Good morning, mon!” Rhashan paused, hand on the divider next to Harold’s desk. “Say, wot’s this?”
Harold chided himself for setting the Kaleidoscope in full view as Rhashan picked it up. He was primed for the next step in his plan; the toy was an interruption.
“Mind if I look?” Rhashan emitted a low whistle as he spun the dial and then froze, his breath rushing between the gap in his teeth. Slowly, he lowered the ’scope and laid it on the desk like a fragile vial of nitro. “Where you git such a t’ing?” He backed up into the mail cart, catching it as it tipped, spilling the contents.
“It’s just something I’m keeping for a…friend.”
Rhashan’s complexion swirled from espresso to latte, his focus on the drawer where Harold dropped the Kaleidoscope and closed it out of sight.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen…” Harold didn’t believe in ghosts, and he hated the cliché, so he allowed the question to trail off, but Rhashan didn’t seem to be listening anyway. “Can I get you a drink of water?” He stood.
It would cut into the time he’d allotted for the Trevathan account, but Harold could hardly let Rhashan stand there, mouth agape. “Here, sit.” Harold realized the man wasn’t going to allow him to maneuver him any closer because of whatever evil he perceived lurked in the drawer, so he rolled the chair behind him and pushed down on his shoulders. He snagged a cone cup from the cooler, filled it and returned to Rhashan, who perked up a little once he’d managed a sip.
Crushing the paper cup in his large hand, Rhashan stood, the chair walloping the wall. “Mr. Harold, I wouldn’t have figured you for someone who played wid other people’s mind.” Colorful beads strung along his dreads clicked together as his head shook side to side. “But whatever you’re trying to do wid that t’ing, you’re dabbling in something you shouldn’t.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harold was getting a little impatient with all this talk of warnings and being careful. “It’s just a toy.” Perhaps Rhashan didn’t understand how the glass slid around to vary the images and so he and started to explain the mechanics.
“Oh no, it’s more than dat.” Rhashan’s silver-ringed finger pointed. “Tell me what you see inside.”
To prove a point, Harold removed the ’scope from the drawer and put it up to his eye. “I see colors and shapes that change when you—”
“Oh, no, mon!” Rhashan jumped back, hands up, when Harold held it back out to him. The metal had warmed, and something shivered from within.
“What do you think you saw?” Harold was worried about the time, but he couldn’t let Rhashan think he was trying to trick him, or that he was into magic arts or anything as lame as that.
“I see myself.”
Harold blinked, sorting through the possibilities. The harsh fluorescent lighting might have caused the enigma. “You see…” He held it up to demonstrate. “The shapes could have fallen into an image resembling just about anything. You’re wearing the same shades that appear inside, right?” They looked down at the tie-dyed shirt. “That’s all it is, a reflection—”
Vigorous bead-clinking. “Dat not it. I see myself in a black robe and…” Rhashan held a flattened palm inches above his dreads. “What you call this hat when you graduate?”
“Mortarboard?”
“Yah, mon! I see that.” Something dashed behind Rhashan’s dark eyes.
Harold turned the ’scope over while he mulled what was going on, and then it occurred to him. Probably been smoking wacky tobacky. “Well, that’s interesting.” He twirled to take his chair back, signaling the discussion was over.
Rhashan put hands to his cart, but he wasn’t interested in leaving yet. “You have college degree in software design, don’t you, Mr. Harold?”
He didn’t have a chance to suppress a snort. “Of course, and my masters in forensic coding as well.” That should impress him.
“In my country, Jamaica, I was valedictorian in my high school.”
Harold tried to hide his surprise, but he wasn’t very good at acting. “That’s…wonderful. How did you end up…” He started to say “in the mailroom,” but Rhashan knew where he was going.
“You wonder how I end up here.” Rhashan was pensive, an unusual condition for someone who was usually jolly to the point of annoying. He riffled through the line-up of documents and envelopes on his cart, re-sorting the chaos from the spillage. “I mess up. I was going to UCLA. For agriculture. “
Harold had to lean back from his desk to hear the man, who slipped into some kind of trance. “But I partied, flunked out, and then I got my girlfriend pregnant.”
Harold waited, and when it appeared the story had concluded, he assumed he would move on, but Rhashan remained motionless. His monitor flickering angrily for his attention, Harold resisted going back to work. He could be sensitive to someone else’s needs when he wanted to.
“So I marry Leesa and find this job.” Rhashan’s fist dragged across a wet cheek. “And she almost have her master’s degree while I work here. You want to see them?” Before Harold could protest, Rhashan pulled out a picture, and held it in front of Harold’s nose.
He pushed the photo into the sweet spot of his glasses. She was a smiling woman in her early twenties, the breeze lifting her long blonde hair from her shoulders. He examined the composition. The shoreline undulated behind the woman sitting in the sand, a young child on her lap, curly ringlets forming an aura around his face, backlit from the sunset. The composition and lighting were exquisite.
“And dat our boy, Dante.”
Harold murmured appreciatively, then counted to five. Some personalities find their manager’s attention to family and home increases trust and camaraderie, his management book advised techniques he could use and not appear to be rude. He handed the photo back.
Rhashan’s thumb rubbed up and down the edge before he replaced the picture into his wallet. “Anyway, you have the potential for good or bad in that t’ing there.” Rhashan met Harold’s gaze. “In my childhood culture, people put faith in many different t’ings.”
Bristles prickled Harold’s neck hairs. He was hardly dabbling in the occult, if that was the implication. “I’m sure what you saw was already something in your subconscious.”
“Maybe you’re right, mon, but the feeling of irie I have from this is unmistakable. You know dis word?”
Harold pecked at the keyboard and jammed the keys, then deleted the nonsense he’d entered hoping the man would move on. “It means you feel good about something.”
“Whatever you have in here, mon.” Rhashan thumped his chest. “It comes out here.” His wide-spread hands filled the space with leather, beads and his surprisingly delicate hands. “If seeds in the lifeless dirt can turn into beautiful roses, or tomatoes, or what-not”—his impromptu philosophizing filled the cubicle. He peered somewhere into the distance—“what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”
Harold’s gaze traveled up Rhashan’s arm to an upturned palm. Was the guy praying? Or reciting fortune cookies?
“You know G.K. Chesterton?”
Surprised, Harold nodded. “He’s the Catholic philosopher.” But allegory and metaphor often flummoxed him. Seemed like glorified navel gazing. “How do you know him?”
“Beauty, complication, laughter…love. Truth.” Rhashan regarded Harold. “You can fi
nd it in the most unusual places if you are looking. I read, mon. Surprised?”
Without further pontification, the cart pushed forward, and Harold realized Rhashan was leaving. “Wait!” came out a little too loud.
“Yeah, mon?”
“What will you do with the…the prophecy you received?” If that’s what it was.
Rhashan shrugged. “I wait for answers, sir. I wait for answers.” His chin lifted, the beads clacked. “The question is, what will you do?”
Turning the device absently in his hand, Harold considered the challenge. Twelve minutes ago he’d believed the man was a slacker, who worked the bare minimum so he could spend the rest of his time doing God knows what. Had the colors really spun into a prophetic image?
Harold turned over the Kaleidoscope, inspecting the precision detailing and excellent workmanship. Whoever had crafted it had an eye for beauty, a talent for working with metal and glass. He sighted down the shaft, admiring the tessellations of hues that fell into place. Then when he turned a dial, new images appeared. Green, gold, blue, teal and purple. It was stunning.
A memory suppressed long ago squirmed its way to the surface. Once, Grandma Destiny had taken him to the Los Angeles County Fair, where he was fascinated by the fortune-teller. Grandma equated her trance to a drugged stupor, and convinced him anyone who claimed to speak with spirits in another world was delusional. Whenever he smelled cotton candy, images of the creepy woman’s angular arms, her freckled finger beckoning him recalled that day. A crystal ball sat dead center of the heavily draped round table in the tent that evoked the legends of Scheherazade. His grandma had yanked him from the tent’s dim interior before she could add to, “Your life will unfold before you as an undulating sea, generations before and still to come will herald you.” The crone kept his quarter even though he didn’t get the whole ten-minute reading. He wanted her to tell him if his mother could be reached from the beyond. Sandalwood incense still made him sneeze. Was Harold and herald a play on words, or was it some kind of power of suggestion and good guessing, as his grandma insisted about the fortune-teller’s game?