by B K Nault
“You got it.” She addressed Morrie. “You want your usual?”
Something flashed behind Morrie’s eyes, and he said in a deliberate tone, “You must have me confused with someone else, I’ve never been here before.”
Eyes narrowed, she continued to study his face. “Okay, hon, my mistake.” But she continued to study him while Harold asked for toast with his meal.
When she’d left to clip their order to the metal spinner over the grill, Morrie slid out of the booth for the restroom.
“We’d have to drive all night to get home.” Pepper yawned when they were alone. “Would you mind if we get a couple of hotel rooms for a few hours?”
A shower and soft bed sounded really good to Harold. “I don’t want to be selfish by making us drive all the way back.”
Pepper chatted about something or other, and Harold tried to concentrate on what she was telling him, but something else was bothering him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about Morrie’s behavior, his reaction to the waitress, was odd. Ever since they left the compound, Morrie had seemed different. But then again, their lives had been threatened and so much had happened, why wouldn’t he seem changed?
Morrie slid back in beside Harold.
“Excuse me.” A woman in the booth across the aisle was calling to them, and they turned to her. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.” Bright eyes shone at them from underneath a halo of neatly combed white hair. “My husband, Ralph, and I just toured the underground house in Fresno today. My husband recently had a by-pass, and he was able to walk around the tour no problem.” She tipped a butter-smeared knife toward Harold’s sling. “You should have no trouble at all. It’s very interesting. If you’re going to be staying, you should see it while you’re in the area.”
“Thanks, we’ll think about it.” Pepper raised a brow at Harold. “How cute is she?”
“I’ve read all about the gardens.” Harold’s obsession with Yosemite and its surrounding environs included even the most obscure places of interest.
“Morrie, if you don’t mind, we’re going to find some rooms tonight and go back tomorrow.” Pepper’s speech had slowed. Sometimes her fragile health couldn’t keep up with her zeal for life.
By the time their table was cleared and Pepper had gotten up to pay the check, Harold was almost asleep sitting up.
“You know,” Morrie told him when they were alone. “She was very worried about you. You are lucky to have her for a girlfriend.”
“She’s not my—”
“We should find something fun to do before we drive back. She deserves that don’t you think? Considering what she’s been through recently.”
Morrie’s point struck harder than Gus’ boot. “Of course you’re right. Why don’t you take her on that tour tomorrow, and I will stay at the hotel with Glenda?”
In the car, Morrie piped up, “If you want, I will go with you in the morning. Maybe end this trip on a high note?”
Pepper glanced over at Harold. “Would you mind, Harry?”
“It was his idea,” Morrie told her.
“That’s so nice, sweetie.” She started the car. “I would like that very much. Maybe you’ll even feel like going with us.”
They found a chain motel near the interstate. Harold took a pain pill and was grateful to lie down. He didn’t stir until a soft knock at the door the next morning woke him.
Harold ambled to the door, and Pepper breezed in wearing a fresh skirt and new peasant blouse as if she had packed a steamer trunk for an ocean crossing. Refreshed, she smelled like the floral shampoo Harold had grown to expect, along with the heat that rose within whenever she was near him. Lavender maybe?
“I checked with the manager, and we can leave Glenda in the room until noon.” She waved a brochure for the Forestiere Underground Gardens under Harold’s nose. “If we take it slowly, can you manage to go along? Please, please, please?”
Small knights on horseback ran up and down his side, piercing their swords between his ribs whenever he breathed, and his head throbbed dully. “Sorry. I’ll stay here with Glennie while you and Morrie go.” The doctor’s instructions to rest trumped Harold’s desire to take the tour. “As much as I’d like to go.”
She watched his hand move up and down the bandage. “When was your last pain pill? It’ll make you feel better whatever you decide.”
Resigned, Harold knew she wouldn’t easily give up, and he enjoyed her attention. But he couldn’t go, and besides, he had work to do. “I have three days until the interview, and I want to design several new PowerPoint charts. I also need to call my cell phone carrier.”
“Workaholic.” Pepper feigned a pouty face, but softened her scowl when he winced for her. “You need to eat no matter what, and Morrie’s already in the breakfast bar. Get dressed and join us. We’ll be there for another twenty minutes.” She tossed the brochure on the rumpled bed.
When he didn’t join them, Pepper returned with the dog, who sniffed around the room and settled on the other bed. “Brought you this from the breakfast bar.” Pepper set down a banana and container of yogurt, then stopped in the small hallway, her hand on the doorknob. “I walked her so she should be okay until we get back. Call downstairs if you need anything. I wish you could go.”
“Me too. And I will.” When she’d gone, Harold ran the toothbrush around his teeth, and sat on the bed to tug on his jeans. He might be an invalid, but he didn’t have to lie around in his boxers all day.
****
Lying sprawled on the other bed, Glenda’s feet paddled and tiny yips came from her throat. Harold read the brochure the woman in the diner had given them. He was disappointed he couldn’t go.
“These underground living quarters and gardens are the realization of a dream. Baldasare Forestiere came to America from Italy to escape an abusive father.”
Abusive fathers seemed to inspire odd behaviors.
“One might consider these hand-dug rooms a metaphor for a life lived under iron rule. He built this escape from not only the hot sun where he toiled as a day laborer in the agricultural fields nearby, but also a reflection of the catacombs he’d admired as a boy, in his homeland.”
Harold studied the pictures and imagined Pepper traipsing through the tunnels at that very moment. A burble in his gut made him realize he didn’t care about the underground gardens or even the quirky Italian who chose to live the reclusive life under the surface. He missed the woman who’d brought him on this wild adventure. With a whimper, Glenda sat up and flopped her tail against the bedspread. Harold checked the clock and pulled himself up as well. “Let’s go outside for a walk.” He sat on the edge of the bed and slipped on his flip-flops. “Your mistress should be back pretty soon, and we’ll go back home.”
Pepper and Morrie soon returned, and they were back on the road headed south. The breakfast Pepper had brought for him and the rest inside the cool hotel made him feel almost normal as the miles passed beneath the car while they told him of their morning exploring the tourist attraction. Harold asked questions about what they’d learned, and Pepper made him promise to return with her someday so he could see for himself.
“I promise,” Harold agreed. “It sounds like his hard work should be admired.”
“So sad he never found anyone willing to live down there with him.”
“You’d have to be a special kind of odd to want to live with a guy who spent his spare time digging tunnels under the surface of the earth.”
Special indeed, Harold thought, watching Pepper from the corner of his eye.
“Glenda needs out, and I have to stretch my legs.” She turned the wheel and bumped over a dip into a rest area.
They took turns using the bathrooms, and then Pepper handed Morrie Glenda’s leash. “Would you walk her? Harold and I have something we need to take care of.”
Glenda lunged, pulling Morrie across the lot like a skier behind a speedboat until they disappeared behind the restroom. “Heel!” came
from behind the building. “I got this!”
Pepper lifted Harold’s arm and laid the keys in his hand. They were heavy. Warmed from being in her pocket. “What’s this?”
“I am giving you a driving lesson.” She went around the car. “If we don’t accomplish anything this trip, at least we can get you back behind the wheel.”
Harold shook his head. “Oh no, you read the warning label on my pills. Do not operate heavy machinery.” His heart thrummed under his stained shirt.
“We’re not driving the Indy 500, you’re just going to take the wheel for a little bit. Time you get over your fear. Or whatever it is that’s got you so scared.” She tipped her chin in that way she had of looking at him that melted him. “Come on! Chicken?”
He held a hand to his forehead. “I’m kind of dizzy still.”
“What is it, Harry? Why are you so petrified to drive?” She’d dropped the teasing tone, and it was her genuine concern that really chipped at his resistance.
“I don’t think you want to hear the whole sordid―”
“Yes. Yes, I do, now tell me everything. Glenda was cooped up all morning and needs her exercise, and we’ve made good time so far.” They watched the pup towing Morrie along a trail, her tail whirling the air.
After the past couple of days, it felt good to laugh, even though the cracked rib made him wince. “Tell me more about the gardens. Can you imagine digging all those tunnels by hand?”
She described the intricate tunnels and underground rooms. Pepper cut him a look. “It would be a real adventure to live underground, wouldn’t it?”
“Stranger than fiction.” He leaned against the fender of the car, slightly woozy.
“So?” Pepper twirled across the sidewalk, bracelets clattering in tempo. “It feels good to move around, stretch and bend.” She did a few yoga moves Harold couldn’t recall the names of. “Sometimes you just have to follow your dream, Harry. When will I ever convince you of that?” She stopped in front of him, his gaze averted when she tried to get him to look at her.
“What happened, sport? Never master the old parallel parking?” She playfully tugged his hand, but when Harold pulled back, her smile drooped. “Sorry, did I hurt you? I didn’t know you were in that much pain.” She led him toward a picnic table, pushed him gently down onto the seat, and sat next to him. “Let’s just rest.”
Harold sank onto a bench and leaned against the concrete table shaded by a generous sycamore tree.
“I’ll be right back.” Pepper hurried down the sidewalk to a food truck that had just opened up, and stood in a short line. In a few moments, she was back with a bundle of tinfoil-wrapped dogs. “Couldn’t resist. I got you one, but I didn’t know if you were a mustard or ketchup guy, so I brought both.” She pulled a handful of plastic packages from her pocket and proceeded to unwrap hers as if she hadn’t eaten in days. When she saw him fumble, she took over opening the packets for him. “Here, let me.”
The earthy tang of the spicy mustard bombarded him, delving under the cairns and boulders beneath which he’d buried childhood images. As aromas often do, memories of his past became a film reel that played out, slapping and spinning in his mind to the end of the images he could recall. Maybe it was the pain that broke down his resistance, but for some reason remembering events that had forever changed his life had him woozy.
“What is it? You don’t like hot dogs?” With her mouth full, the words were muffled. Pepper watched him push away the meal. “They have nachos as well—”
“It’s not that.” Harold took a few moments to gather the words and order them so they’d make sense. The dreams and nightmares flickered past in blurry images, black and white, sepia, and then full-blown Technicolor.
“I can get you a pack of relish too.” Pepper’s voice trailed as she turned so she could see his face. “Honey, what is it? Are you feeling all right? Here, drink some soda.” She popped a cola and held it out to him.
The bright syrup burned saccharine sweet down his throat. He didn’t want to worry Pepper. More than that, he didn’t want to have this conversation. Not here, not now.
“Take a moment, honey. Breathe.” Pepper patted his shoulder. “You’re scaring me. What is it?” She started to lift his shirt. “Are you in pain? Should I call 9-1-1?” Her concern prompted a tenderness that reached his belly. “Maybe a rib slipped.”
He held up a hand, palm toward her. He was still unable to speak. Drawing a slow breath while the pain from that movement subsided, Harold closed his eyes. “I told you a little about my parents. About how my dad was always losing one job or another for some reason.”
Pepper nodded, her hand cool on his forehead.
“They were always arguing. One day I suppose he’d lost another job. Anyway, I only have vague memories…”
“It’s all right. Tell me what you can remember. Get it out there, Harry.”
“We were in a car. My mom was crying, I do remember that.”
“How old were you?”
“Three. I was three years old.” He knew the year. The math was easy. Recalling the images was torture.
“Just a baby,” she whispered. Her relish breath warmed his ear, and she put her cheek to his shoulder. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“From out of nowhere, a huge boom!” He resisted throwing his arms in the air for fear of tugging his bandage loose. “Another car.” He slammed the back of his hand into the other and sucked in air at the jolt of pain from his bruised ribs.
“Oh, honey.”
“That was the last time I saw either one of them.”
“Were you all in the car? Were you hurt? They were killed?” She peered into his face and wiped away the tear he didn’t realize he’d shed.
“No, just my mom and I were in the car. Grandma Destiny said she was leaving him, and he was enraged, and drove his car into us. A Chrysler LeBaron.” He met her gaze. The image of the car in Gus’s shed flashed before him. Now he knew why it seemed familiar.
“You must have been so scared. And here I am forcing you to drive. You’ve been traumatized since you were tiny.”
“I can still feel the cold vinyl on the back of my legs.” Sticky and gritty from a day at the beach.
“I waited for my dad to come get me. But he never did.” The rest had been hidden behind a thick cloud that gradually parted, revealing the life he’d lived with a grandmother who hated his father for killing her only daughter. He leaned his head into his hands.
“Here, have some of your lunch,” Pepper insisted. “And let’s get you another pain pill.”
He bit off the end and examined the food that jogged his memory and turned over in his stomach.
“What is it about the hot dog, Harry?”
The swallow went down thick. “We’d left the house in such a hurry, and I was hungry. I guess I kept nagging her so she pulled over to the Pinks stand.”
“The one on La Brea?”
“But I guess she didn’t have any money because we got in line, but she started crying when we got to the front, and had already ordered. People in line started passing money up until she had enough.”
“Kindness of strangers.” Pepper’s finger traced his arm. Her softness pressed into his good side. “You have a good memory. For being so little at the time.”
“So we carried our food back to the car, but she didn’t eat, she just started driving again. I was eating mine when—”
The pictures were in sharp focus. As if he was still sitting in the backseat, a mouthful of dog, mustard dripping down his chin. There came a bang with the intensity of sound unlike anything he’d experienced and would never forget. His small body slammed against the constraints of the seatbelt as the car spun wildly. His mom’s screams filled the vacancy of the air left empty of all other noise. “There was silence then. And blood. There was so much—”
Pepper scrubbed his back as if she could erase the memories. “Oh, honey.” His sobs wracked and tugged the constraints of his bandage. His soul heav
ed with the rawness of his loss as if it was yesterday.
“It was my—they said it was my father…they told me he drove the LeBaron into her car…”
Pepper held him, and he let her embrace hold him up. He could see once again his mother’s mangled body being lifted onto the gurney; he was inside the lurching ambulance screaming through the streets, bumping and turning, a paramedic holding him in her lap as he tugged his mother’s arm while tubes and people swarmed her, blocking her from his view. Her son, whom she only wanted his father to love.
“That’s more awful than anything a child should ever have to go through.” Pepper dashed a hand under her nose, the tears racing down her own face. “Why would your dad—” She stopped.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. My grandma said he was going crazy, and he finally lost it. She exposed the maniac in him by leaving.”
“Mad enough to kill his wife and harm his child? He could have killed you.”
“I know.”
“Harry.” Pepper’s voice jigged up and down. She had both arms around his shoulders now. “Don’t you ever suggest you’re anything like him. You’re nothing like that beast.” She rocked him slowly, back and forth, his back hitting the concrete, but he cherished the comforting movement. “Think of a happy place, now. What’s a happy childhood memory? You must have some.”
“The next thing I remember is waking up in my grandma’s house and begging her to take me back to get Hans and Fritz. And she did.”
“Who were they?”
“My dad and I had gone to Venice beach, and we saw a guy selling turtles out of a cardboard box. Red-eared sliders. He let me pick out two and helped me name them.”
“Why Hans and Fritz? Was your dad German?”
“He loved old comics, and the Katz…” A jolt ran through Harold’s entire body as he realized what he had just said. “Katzenjammer Kids,” he mouthed.
“What’s that?” Pepper blew her nose into a tissue.
“That’s what Vince was trying to say. The password was Katzenjammer.”
****
Walter knelt and scraped the small wooden box across the boards until it was in a shaft of light. The hinges had worn thin, one of them twisted to the breaking point, but he still winced when it finally let go, as if the metal had been holding onto the fragile pieces of his past. Nothing had gone right yet. The handoff was screwed up when the police shooed him off before he could explain. When Harold had found him, he knew it was a sign. He could explain to his son what was hidden inside the body of the Kaleidoscope.