The Kaleidoscope

by B K Nault

  “I—I—” Harold fumbled for a response despite his newfound bravado.

  “You three some kind of nutty cult? Git yer crunchy granola selves outta here and leave me be. Ain’t no such thing as a magical—”

  “We aren’t here to hurt you, sir, and I protest your rudeness!” Pepper scolded him, finger wagging under his grizzly chin. Crumbly detritus clung to the wiry mess.

  Eyes aflame, Gus grabbed for the ’scope, but Harold reared back, almost clocking Morrie, who reached up and took it from him.

  Glenda barked, jumping up on Gus’s legs to protect her mistress, and Pepper yanked the ’scope away from Morrie and gave it to Gus. “See for yourself!”

  Harold held his breath.

  Gus turned the Kaleidoscope over, fingering along the shaft. He cut a quick glance at them, lingered on Harold’s face, then lifted the device and sighted in it. “I don’t see anything special about it.” He dropped it to examine every inch, returning it to his eye once again. “You people been smoking weed, there’s nothing magical about this.” He started to slip it in his pocket.

  “That’s not yours, sir.” Pepper tried to reach for it, but Gus pushed her away as if she was a pesky gnat. “This device does so have special powers,” she insisted. “Harold has already registered it with the National Association of Metaphysical Objects, so don’t even think of trying to steal it from us. Right, Harry?”

  Harold blinked at her and wondered where she came up with this stuff. He reached out to steady her as she had suddenly gone wobbly. “You okay?”

  “I knew it. You people are crazy.” Gus squinted at each one in turn, and Harold considered maybe that would be a good impression to leave him with. Gus turned to Morrie. “And what do you have to do with all this? Don’t give me the looking for a long-lost cousin baloney. I can tell a liar.”

  “We have been nothing but honest with you, Mr. Gus. Morrie is searching for his cousin, and Harold’s Kaleidoscope guided us here. That’s the truth. Perhaps you’re the one that is lying.” Pepper tugged Glenda’s leash, and the dog planted herself between them.

  Now she’d done it. Harold just wanted to get the ’scope back so they could escape in one piece.

  “Now return my friend’s Kaleidoscope, and we will be on our way.” Pepper pulled away from Harold’s protective hand and drew herself up.

  Gus held out the Kaleidoscope, but he held it so tight Harold had to yank on it, and Gus forced Harold forward, so close Harold could smell peanut butter and coffee on the man’s breath.

  “You should put this in a safety deposit box. Someplace safe.” The mountain man’s eyes held an intensity that reached inside Harold’s soul and rattled something latent, something almost forgotten.

  “We need to go. Now.” Harold yanked back, loosening the man’s grip. He wasn’t taking no for an answer this time. “Pepper?” He checked behind him.

  Instead of following him to the door, though, she dropped onto the couch, head in her hands. Harold recognized the signs and hurried to kneel in front of her. “You got anything she can eat? Maybe fruit juice of some kind?” Her cheek had grown clammy, her brow glistened.

  Gus stood motionless. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Low blood sugar, she needs something to eat. Hurry!” Harold didn’t feel the need to explain Pepper’s physiological challenges. “Or maybe call 9-1-1.”

  “No!” Pepper protested. “I’ll be all right.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Morrie asked.

  “The chemo threw off her blood chemistry. It’s my fault, I never should have agreed to this trip.” Harold wanted to desperately to see her smile at him. Anything to show she was feeling back to normal.

  Gus spoke from behind him. “How about a power bar?” He hurried over to the kitchen cabinets and shifted tin cans and boxes around. He came back and tossed a foil-wrapped granola bar into Pepper’s lap. Harold opened it and helped her take a bite, waiting for her expression to improve, her eyes to brighten again.

  Just then, noises outside prompted Glenda to a low woof.

  “Who’s that?” Gus said as if they knew. “Someone else with you?”

  Morrie peeked through soiled gingham curtains, circa 1950. “Just some hikers.”

  Gus went outside, and Harold urged Pepper to hurry and eat so they could leave.

  “I need a minute.” Her eyes had rolled back in her head, and she sagged into the couch.

  They could hear Gus speaking with someone outside.

  Pepper pushed Harold away. “I have to use the bathroom.” She handed him the uneaten food, and Harold helped her up. He sat down and rewrapped the bar while she crossed over to the closed door. As she stepped through, the screen door creaked back.

  “Stay out of there!” Gus bellowed. The veins popped from under his grizzle.

  Harold, who had been perched on the edge of a tattered recliner, almost fell over backward. “She just needs to use the ladies’ room.” Something in Gus had released a primitive rage.

  Gus raced over and yanked her back from the room she’d stepped into. He spun her around and shoved her toward the front door.

  “Get out of here, now!” Gus hollered at them, pointing into the yard. Glenda sprang toward him, and he shoved her roughly through with the tip of his boot. She squealed in protest.

  Morrie ducked under Gus’s outstretched arm. “Let’s go!” He clattered across the porch.

  Harold wasn’t about to be bullied into letting Pepper fall. The Kaleidoscope was important to him, but this woman was becoming his world.

  “Git off my property now, alla-you!” Gus exploded, posturing chest-to-chest against Harold.

  “Hurry!” Morrie stood at the bottom of the steps, gesturing wildly.

  Harold let go of Pepper’s arm and placed himself between the madman and her frail body. He urged her out the door in front of him toward Morrie. All the while, Glenda barked, biting at the madman’s ankles, growling through her teeth as she clamped onto his dungarees.

  “Sit!” Gus commanded, but this time she ignored him. He lifted his leg, and with it, the dog, who hung on, dangling. Before he could swing wide and flick her off, Harold pulled her loose. The fabric ripped, and he tossed the dog to Morrie at the bottom of the steps, who caught her.

  Then Harold cocked an arm to swing an upper cut at Gus’s jaw, but the older man was quicker, and Harold caught a punch to the shoulder that hurled him backward. His skull exploded in piercing pain as it struck the doorjamb. Harold dropped to the filthy floor, dizzy and stunned.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You heard me, git out!” Gus towered over Harold, but Glenda snarled, charging straight for his now exposed leg. Lips back, teeth bared, she tried to clamp on again. “Stop it, you mangy cur!” Gus glared at the dog, and Harold grabbed for his foot so he couldn’t kick her as she bounced around, yipping high-pitched warnings. He’d placed himself directly in the line of fire, and took the brunt of Gus’ bootkick to his own side in a sickening crack.

  “Oof!”

  Glenda ran to Pepper, who was screaming to her from the yard.

  Morrie appeared at Harold’s elbow and jerked him to his feet, but Harold’s knees wouldn’t comply. The pain scourged through Harold as Morrie maneuvered him so Harold’s arm was over his shoulder, and he wedged his stout body as a human crutch to hurry him across the porch and down the step.

  Pepper encircled his waist from the other side, and they passed the garbage fortress, behind which the man still shouted warnings, a rat in sewage of his own making.

  Harold stumbled in the ill-fitting flip-flops as he tried to keep their pace and lost one in the high weeds, wincing as something bit into his tender sole. Pepper let go and ran back for the shoe. When she lifted his leg to put it back on, jolts from the rib-blow zinged through his body until he almost passed out. The dog circled them, a satellite orbiting the galaxy of pain and confusion of Harold’s world.

  “Glenda, car!” Pepper commanded, and the dog bounded into the ba
ckseat with Morrie.

  Harold slumped into the front seat, still unable to fill his lungs.

  Across the yard, Gus filled the doorway. “Git yer danged selves out of my sight afore I kill you all and feed you to the bears!” He fired a shot into the fir trees.

  Pepper started the car and jammed it into reverse. The car fishtailed until the tires spun in the loose dirt, then found purchase, and they bumped and jolted out of the clearing. Harold fell sideways against the door, gasping and squinting from his good eye. Through the blur, he saw a 1978 Chrysler LeBaron peeking from underneath a torn tarp. He wiped at his cheek, warm liquid oozing down his arm, and a blanket of darkness settled over him.

  ****

  “He’s got two cracked ribs and a mild concussion. We stapled a laceration, but it wasn’t as bad as all the blood might have suggested. He’ll be pretty sore for a few days.” A murky voice Harold didn’t recognize was talking about him. The dull, throbbing pain confirmed the madman and his mountain squalor was reality, not a nightmare. He squinted up into a room lit from every direction with impossible brightness, and closed his eyes again.

  “We gave him some IV pain medication, and I’ll send a prescription to the pharmacy downstairs. Here’s a kit to remove the hardware when he’s healed.”

  Harold reached up to palpate the bumps on his scalp, almost choking on the bile in his throat when he recalled the blood. Footsteps, and then a thin drape parted, and Pepper appeared. “Hey, Superman, you’re awake.” Her gentle smile was better than any painkiller Harold could imagine.

  “How’s Glenda?”

  “She’s fine. Morrie’s with her. They wouldn’t let her inside.” She poured a cup of water from a plastic pitcher. “You probably saved her life. That brute could have killed her.”

  Harold let her help him sip, trying to remember all that had happened. “We didn’t find Joseph, did we?”

  “No, we found us a hornet’s nest, though.” Pepper tipped water onto a cloth and wiped Harold’s brow with comforting coolness.

  Harold moved to find the ’scope, but the pain made him gasp, and besides he wasn’t wearing trousers. “Are you okay? How long have we been here?”

  “A couple hours. Morrie and I ate something in the hospital cafeteria while you were in X-ray. Are you hungry?”

  “Where’s the ’scope?”

  She lifted her purse strap from her shoulder. “In here. Don’t worry, it’s safe. They emptied your pockets and gave me your wallet, too.” She wound her fingers around his, careful to avoid the monitor on his finger. “You don’t mind, do you? I have to tell you something about—”

  “I’ve got your discharge papers, sir.” A nurse came in and began disconnecting Harold’s IV. “You can stay in this bed for another hour or so if you feel like you need to, but the doctor said you do not need to stay overnight. He’s sending you home with some painkillers, and I have a sheet that explains how to care for your head wound and wrap. You should probably see your primary care physician when you return home.” She lifted the bed sheet, checked his side, then his head, and after a tug or two, smiled at him. “I also need to let you know we’ve alerted the authorities, and you can expect a call from the local police. Your friends testified there was a gun discharged.”

  “I understand,” he panted, recovering from the brisk exam.

  “Wait here for a wheelchair before you leave the premises. Any questions?”

  When she’d gone, Pepper helped Harold sit up. He clamped an elbow against his side, thick with bandages, as if the support would erase the pain. While she shook out the legs of his trousers, he had an urgent need for the restroom.

  “Hang on, I need to go in here.” He let her help him into the small room and when he was finished, Pepper was ready with his bloodied shirt, but after a few yelps of protest, she gave up and draped it over his shoulder and buttoned it at the neck.

  He doubted he could put on his pants. “What were you starting to tell me when the nurse came in?”

  “I need to tell you what I saw in the old man’s room.” She spoke in a hushed whisper while holding his pants open for him to step into.

  “What?” He gripped his own thigh to hold his shaky leg steady while she dressed him.

  “It was creepy.” She tugged the garment over his knee. “There was a whole wall covered in articles and pictures, like those creepy shrines in slasher flicks. Old yellowed newspaper clippings and pictures and maps. And a table with tools to make I don’t know what with. What do you think he’s up to, Harry? You think he makes torture devices?” She didn’t seem bothered by the intimacy of her hand on his zipper, and slid the button through the hole. “We have to tell the police what I saw, Harry. That man is messed up.” She was nose to nose with him, and if he wasn’t so tortured with pain and dizzy from the medication, Harold might have kissed her right there in the hospital.

  “What do you think, Harry?”

  “I think I need that wheelchair.” He sat back down and tried to imagine what the ride home to LA was going to be like, since he couldn’t take a full breath without wanting to cry.

  ****

  The pain medications turned his head to mush, and his vision swam through the heat mirages rising from the road ahead as they drove south. The police officer had stopped in to take their statement soon after Harold was dressed, so they were able to get on the road before midnight. Passing headlights drilled into his brain, and he shut his eyes against their daggers.

  “Harry, when was the last time you took a sick day?” Pepper’s question came through to him as if a cotton blanket hung between them.

  Jaw clenched, Harold murmured, “If you’re suggesting we spend any more time looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found—”

  “Harold is correct,” Morrie agreed. “We should get him back home. The pain must be unbearable.”

  Pepper nodded, her shoulders rounded over the wheel. She stared at the road ahead in a trance. They had all had a long afternoon since the battle at Gus’ mountain.

  She switched the AC on, and the cool air revived Harold. “Do you have my cell phone?” He patted the empty pocket where it usually rode, but he couldn’t bear to check the other one.

  Pepper tugged her purse onto her lap and rummaged, one hand on the wheel, the other scooping through the contents. “Here’s your ’scope.” She gave it to him. “I don’t remember seeing your cell.”

  “We better call your provider and report it missing,” Morrie advised.

  Perfect. Now the motion of the car was making Harold queasy, and his phone was gone. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Whatever had made him agree to this trip was long forgotten. The rhythm of the wheels and motion of the car soon lulled him, and Harold was dozing when the car slowed to pull off.

  “I’m drowsy, I need coffee, and you’ll need to eat something with your next pain pill,” Pepper announced, parking near a brightly lit restaurant. Several lifted pickups, a couple of RVs, and a police cruiser were already in the lot of an all-night diner.

  Of course she was right. Harold had only been thinking of himself as he longed for his own bed. Pepper had been taking care of him all day long, and it wasn’t fair to expect her to taxi him home without stopping. He managed to get out without too much trouble, and followed them inside after he stood for a moment, hand on the car to steady himself. Over laminated menus, the waitress took their drink orders and Harold tried to focus, glad the room had stopped pitching and rolling. It did feel good to be out of the car, and the smell of grilling onions reminded him how hungry he was

  “I’m having a burger. What do you want, Morrie?” Pepper set aside her menu.

  “I’ll have chicken soup.” Morrie peered out the window, and Harold settled on a bowl of soup as well.

  “I know things haven’t turned out like we thought they would.” Pepper covered Morrie’s hand with hers. “We’ll get Harry back home, and then you and I can come back some weekend and keep asking around.” Her gaze found Harold’s from acr
oss the table. “You look pretty good considering what you’ve been through.”

  “Morrie, I hate to say this.” Harold measured his words. “But maybe you’ll just have to accept you might not find your cousin. Crazy Gus just convinced me some people don’t want to be found.” The last thing he wanted to do was hurt his friend. Morrie’s face changed from hopeful to hopeless, but someone had to be honest with him. Like ripping off a bandage, he must be the friend to help him face the hard facts. And if anyone knew about people living outside the norms of society, Harold did.

  “Have you tried searching on hiking blogs?” Pepper swiveled to look at Morrie. “Maybe you can find someone who knows of him. I’m sure it’s a fairly small community when you focus on the full timers.”

  Morrie held up a hand. “No. You two have done enough. And you’re right, I am going to let it go.”

  “Give me the picture.” Harold held out a palm. “Pepper will check out the hiking blogs, and I’ll post it for you.” Morrie had never mentioned having any particular expertise with computers.

  “No!” People at the surrounding tables turned at Morrie’s outburst. “You’ve already done enough.” He drew back and started again. “And now you’re injured. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Maybe it was the concussion, but Harold couldn’t figure out why Morrie was so resistant to being helped all of a sudden.

  Then Pepper suggested something he hadn’t considered. He’d been too scared. “All I can think of now is how lucky we were to get out of there. I hope the police find him and lock him up! I hope your cousin, and anyone else who may have crossed him, hasn’t been seriously hurt.”

  “I doubt it. I think he was all bluff.” Harry watched Morrie for a reaction. The man remained pensive. Harold couldn’t read anything else into his expression or body language.

  “Y’all decide what’cha want?” The waitress appeared, pencil poised.

  “I’ll have iced tea and a burger well done. Can you substitute fruit for the fries?” Pepper asked her, but the waitress’ attention was focused on Morrie.