Spring Fevers

by Matt Sinclair

  In the stampede to escape, Katie lost Molly. One second she had her and the next she was gone. It was the one thing Molly had cautioned her about—we have to stay together. Then she heard a sound she'd never heard before, a sort of thunk, thunk, thunk, like the dribble of a basketball. Thunk, thunk. And she realized what it was . . . the sound of clubs hitting skulls. She ducked and tried to run.

  Then there were more uniforms of a different color, and the National Guard could employ whatever means necessary to control a mob. The pop of tear gas canisters going off surrounded her, and she was quickly enveloped in the noxious fumes. She fell to the ground, then realized she couldn't get up, but worse, that no one cared. Peace and love were trampled under the crush of panic. She curled into a ball and covered her head. Her eyes teared and the pebbly texture of asphalt scraped her cheek. Then someone kicked her in the small of the back and she knew—she had to get up. Had to . . . Get! Up! And on a surge of adrenaline she managed to do it, but then someone grabbed her from behind and the cold steel of the handcuffs clamped around her wrists.

  There were too many for the authorities to hold them overnight, but it was dark before Katie was allowed to use the phone.

  "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," Molly said. "Sit tight."

  Katie's eyes were sore and swollen, but she spotted Molly by her flyaway mop of red hair and met her at the door.

  "I was worried sick," Molly said. "God, you're a mess. Did you get in the tear gas?"

  "Just get me outta here, Mol. Take me home." She was dirty and tired and her back hurt.

  Back in the dorm, she dropped her clothes in a pile and crawled between the sheets. She wished she hadn't gone. She felt unfaithful. She wished she hadn't done any of it.

  The next day she was better, but she kept hearing that thunk, thunk, thunk, and she knew her parents would try to pull her out of Oakland if they found out about it.

  "They told me I have an arrest record," she told Molly.

  "Bullshit. They were just trying to scare you."

  "They took my fingerprints." She worried her lip. "Will is going to go seismic."

  "So, don't tell him."

  But she already had. She didn't want to start keeping things from him. There was enough distance between them. And while she didn't want him to know, telling him made her feel less traitorous. She couldn't not tell him.

  The thing was . . . she worried about Will. She longed to feel him inside of her again, but she was beginning to wonder if she ever would. Memories of the physical man were fading, like the pictures taped to the cement block wall above her bed, the dog chains had lost their shine, and the boots were muddy and cracked. The helmet was etched with anti-war dogma and peace signs, but he did what he was told. The stack of letters tied with a ribbon filled her desk drawer but held nothing of what he was told.

  The boy she remembered in jeans and flannel with the cocky walk and come-over-here look had been replaced by a man in jungle green with a wary stance and a thousand-yard stare. The boy who sent pictures and wrote her poems and loved her madly had turned into a man who wrote run-on sentences that went nowhere and had lost his flair for poetry. The boy who bought a camera before his first pack of cigarettes wasn't sending pictures anymore.

  Resolution by S.Q. Eries

  The first shock of the year came when Mike showed up at my door right before the Rose Bowl coin toss. The second followed soon after when he said, "Happy New Year, Joe. I got a favor to ask. I want to see Ralph."

  A lump stuck in my throat. Mike sounded calm enough, but the last time I saw him he said he'd rip the tongue out of my head if I mentioned Ralph's name again. The knot on his temple and the fresh cuts on his hands weren't big confidence builders either.

  Mike noticed the direction of my stare and held up a blood-streaked palm with a chuckle. "Oh, and I could use a Band-Aid, too, if you got one."

  My grip on the door knob tightened. "I don't know, Mike …"

  "Look, Joe. I'm not out to hurt him." Mike's voice was pleading now. "All I want to do is talk, I swear. You can even frisk me if you want, but the only metal I've got is this." He held up his keychain, heavy with keys and an old Swiss Army knife.

  I relented at once. If Mike hated anything, it was lies, especially after the affair. If he gave his word, he meant it. Besides, there was a pained look in his eyes that told me I shouldn't turn him away. Stepping aside, I let my brother-in-law in.

  Check that, my former brother-in-law. He was still technically my brother-in-law because Ashley flew out of Apple Dale without anything as official as a divorce, but their marriage was pretty much through.

  I led him to the bathroom and pulled the first aid kit from the medicine cabinet. "So, about Ralph," I said. "What do you want me to do?"

  Mike's expression turned thoughtful as he washed off his hands. "Call him and tell him I want to talk. I'll meet him wherever he wants. Tell him you'll be there, too."

  I nodded and went to the living room to get my cell phone. As I dialed his number, I wondered if it was still good. We hadn't talked at all since summer.

  It was still good. "Joe?" Ralph's voice was a strange mix of suspicion, hope, and confusion.

  "Hey, Ralph, I …"

  My tongue froze as my brain stalled. Only months ago, I could say anything and everything to Ralph. But that was back when we were best friends, before he slept with my sister and everything turned into a flaming mess.

  From the bathroom, Mike hissed, "Joe! Tell him!"

  I snapped back to the present. Clearing my throat, I said, "I'll get to the point. Mike's with me. He wants to see you. To talk."

  Dead silence. But even though Ralph wasn't speaking, I had a pretty good idea what he was thinking.

  The day he and Ashley got found out was a Saturday. Mike had gone to shoot hoops with some pals from the furniture factory, but a broken water line had flooded the court so everyone went home. Mike thought he'd find Ashley in the kitchen making lunch. He found her in bed making out with Ralph.

  My ears still cringe at the memory of the frantic call from Ralph that morning. Somehow he got out of Ashley's place, but Mike kept after him like a rabid pit bull. I ran over to Ralph's to find Mike whaling at the front door with a garden hoe. Thank God I managed to wrestle him down without calling the cops, but it took a good ten minutes and likely would've taken longer if he hadn't broken his foot in the fight. I might outmuscle Mike by thirty pounds and six inches, but when someone loses it, size means nothing.

  So it was no surprise Ralph wasn't jumping to say yes. Deciding he needed a nudge, I said, "Will you just think about it? I'll be there, and he says he's not going to hurt you—"

  "Are you nuts?" Ralph yelled. "That's exactly what he's—"

  "He's not." Lowering my voice, I growled, "In case you've forgotten, I saved your stupid neck, and I didn't do that just to let him get you now. He only wants to talk. Trust me on this."

  Silence again. I was certain he was going to hang up when I heard, "Fine. I'll meet you."

  * * *

  Why did I have to open my big fat mouth?

  The question cycled over and over in my head as I waited with Mike near the playground. I could've just taken Ralph's refusal, told Mike, and gone back to watching New Year's Day football. But noooo. I had to insist, and here I was, freezing in the park, letting myself get sucked back into the mess I swore I'd have nothing to do with again.

  Mike seemed nervous as he rubbed his newly bandaged hands together against the cold, but there was no murderous glint in his eyes. And when Ralph pulled up in his old pickup, Mike let out a long shaky breath and looked up at me. "Thanks for setting this up."

  "Sure," I answered, though I really didn't feel that way.

  Ralph approached slowly, cautious as a fattened turkey at Thanksgiving. Even though plenty of kids and their families were playing nearby, he still wasn't convinced Mike wouldn't jump him then and there. About ten feet away, he stopped and said, "Hey, Joe."

 
"Hey," I said.

  "Happy New Year, Ralph."

  Ralph's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Mike was staring at his boots, not looking at us, but those words definitely came from him.

  "Um, yeah," said Ralph, his guarded look easing up a tad. "Same to you."

  "Have you …" Mike coughed and started again. "You hear anything from Ashley?"

  Ralph's face screwed up with confusion. There wasn't any anger or bitterness in Mike's voice at all. He just sounded tired. And maybe a little sad.

  "Uh, no," Ralph said finally. "She hasn't called or messaged me at all."

  "Me neither," said Mike. "Wish she would. Be nice to know if she's okay." He coughed again. "She never was good with money and stuff."

  "Yeah," agreed Ralph. "I've been worried about her, too."

  All of a sudden, the mood turned weirdly polite, and I gaped as my sister's lover and her husband calmly talked about her.

  If Ashley saw the three of us here, she'd have a heart attack, considering what happened the last time we were together.

  After the affair got out, Mike arranged for marriage counseling. Despite what happened, he still loved Ashley, still wanted to stay together. She didn't feel the same. Halfway into their third session, she decided she'd had enough and bolted from the therapist's office.

  And ran straight to my place. I opened the door to find her in a panic, begging for help to leave town. As I was trying to make sense of my sister's babbling, Mike's Chevy screeched into my driveway, and he burst out, stumbling toward her as fast as his cast and crutches would let him. At the same time, Ralph, who'd been worried about Ashley, got the bright idea to come over to ask me how she was doing.

  You guessed it. All hell broke loose on my front lawn. Mike screamed bloody murder as I wrestled him down—again—while Ralph, instead of getting out of there like anyone with half a brain would, stayed at the front gate, yelling for Ashley to run away with him. And smack dab in the middle was Ashley, crying hysterically.

  Finally, I got fed up. This was her screwed up love life, and somehow I was getting punished for it. "Ashley!" I exploded. "Make up your mind! Which guy do you want?"

  Everything stopped. Mike and Ralph held their breath as Ashley looked back and forth between them.

  "I don't want either of you!" she screamed and took off in Mike's car, leaving us in shock.

  That was the last anyone saw her in Apple Dale.

  Given all that, watching the two men she'd left shattered on my doorstep talk normally seemed like a bizarre dream. But bizarre as it was, it was kind of nice. Mike was a decent guy. He deserved better than for four years of marriage to end that way, and it was good to see him not angry again. And as stupid as Ralph had been, I'd missed him more than I realized.

  Eventually, they ran out of things to say and fell silent. Thinking that Mike had gotten what he wanted, I was about to invite them over for coffee when Mike said, "Ralph, actually, I called you out because I want to give you something."

  Ralph blinked as Mike pulled out his keys. Removing the Swiss Army knife from the ring, he handed it over, saying, "I've got a confession to make."

  Ralph nodded for him to go on, and Mike took a deep breath. "Ever since Ashley left, I've been going to your house at night."

  All the color drained from Ralph's face. My stomach dropped to my ankles.

  "I'd sit there," Mike went on, "and think about how you hurt me and how badly I wanted to hurt you back. And I'd hold that knife and think about all the ways I could use it to hurt you. That's how much I hated you.

  "But I don't want to feel that way anymore so I'm going to stop." Mike held out a hand. "As far as I'm concerned, you go and live your life. And I'm sorry. For thinking all that stuff about you."

  "Uh, thanks." Hesitantly, Ralph took his hand and shook. "I appreciate that."

  Ralph didn't stick around too long after that. As he tore out of the parking lot, I had a feeling he'd toss that knife into the first dumpster he saw.

  Mike, on the other hand, looked like a two-ton weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "Well," he said, stretching his arms overhead. "That wasn't as bad as I thought."

  "Mike," I said, "did you really do all that stuff you told Ralph?"

  He nodded, serious as an undertaker. "Between midnight and two a.m., I'd park under the big tree on Adams Street and watch. I did that every night from June 12th up to two nights ago."

  "So why? Why the change of heart?" If he'd been doing it six months straight, there had to be more to it than turning a New Year's leaf.

  His expression turned sheepish. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said, looking away.

  I grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to face me. "Try me."

  * * *

  It was a five-minute walk from the park to Mike's place. Though we lived less than a mile apart, I'd deliberately steered clear of his house since summer, and I blinked in surprise at the light-up Santa and reindeer on the gable roof.

  "Wow, you put everything up."

  I instantly regretted my words. Mike wasn't a holiday kind of guy, but Ashley was a certified Christmas nutcase. Every December, she'd turn their house into a Yuletide extravaganza, and their friends would joke about how Mike got nagged into becoming Ashley's very own light-stringing elf. At least they did until she left.

  Mike, though, just shrugged. "Yeah," he said as we walked past the six-foot inflatable snow globe and life-sized nativity scene on the lawn. "I didn't think I'd bother this year. But before I knew it, all the decorations were up. Habit, I guess. And … I guess part of me hoped it might bring her home."

  We walked up to the front porch, which was all decorated with evergreen garlands and a giant jingle bell wreath, and Mike opened the door.

  I gasped. Broken glass, torn stockings, and bits of plastic holly covered the living room carpet. Holiday lights, what was left of them, hung in tatters on the wall. Branches from Ashley's eight-foot aluminum tree lay scattered amid overturned furniture while the mangled trunk and stand stuck out of the fireplace.

  Mike stepped inside, porcelain bits crunching beneath his boots. "Coffee?" he offered.

  "Uh, sure," I said, following him carefully into the house.

  The kitchen also looked like it got visited by the Ghost of Christmas Devastation. Ashley's poinsettia china set lay in pieces on the tile floor. A new hole gaped in the wall by the breakfast nook, and an upended kitchen trashcan, its mirrorlike surface badly dented, lay in front of it.

  But somehow the coffeemaker had survived intact. I kept my mouth shut, trying to ignore the decapitated Nutcracker on the kitchen table, as Mike brewed a pot and poured two mugs. For several minutes, we stood sipping coffee in silence. Then Mike set his mug on the counter and said, "Guys at work invited me to go out last night, but I didn't go. Didn't feel much like company. So I stayed home with a bottle of Scotch."

  "Uh huh," I said, noticing a smashed Jimmy Walker just outside the kitchen door.

  "I pretty much got wasted. But around midnight, I got up for Ralph's like usual. On the way out though, I bumped against the tree, and last year's picture ornament fell off."

  Oh boy. Part of Ashley's Christmas tradition included taking some picture of them and putting it into a tiny decorated frame for the tree. And last year they'd posed kissing under mistletoe. I remember because I was the one she dragged into taking the picture.

  "Somehow, looking at it got me mad. She was the one who wanted to do that kissy pose so she could have it for our tree, and to know now she'd been sleeping with another guy at the same time … I lost it.

  "I stomped it to bits. But I just got madder. All of a sudden, I was tearing everything apart. The lights, the ornaments, anything I could get my hands on." He sighed, shuffling his feet against the broken dishes. "After a while, things turned into a blur.

  "When I came to, I was down there." He nodded toward the nook where the stainless steel trashcan lay. "I felt like crap, and when I opened my eyes and saw my face in the tra
shcan, I began to bawl.

  "I was a mess, covered in garbage, like some pathetic bug. And I started crying harder when I realized it was worse than that. It was bad enough Ashley left, but now I was stalking people and wrecking my own house. I'd turned into someone I couldn't recognize, someone I didn't want to be, and I began screaming for God, for somebody, to help me make things right.

  "But no one answered." He paused. "After a while, I told myself I needed to suck it up and got up. That's when I found this underneath me."

  Mike opened a drawer and pulled out a torn piece of greeting card. Printed in gold letters on red paperboard were the words "Peace" and "Goodwill Toward Men."

  "This might sound crazy," Mike went on quietly, "but it … it felt like God was telling me that if I wanted peace back in my life, I had to get on with the goodwill part. And if there was anyone I didn't feel goodwill toward, it was Ralph. So I got up, went to your house, and you know the rest."

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. "You think I'm nuts."

  Part of me did. But more of me was glad I wouldn't have to worry about my brother-in-law knocking off my best friend. That for sure was a Good Thing, and possibly even something God might go out of his way to arrange.

  "Well," I said with a shrug, "they do say God works in mysterious ways."

  He smiled back. "Right."

  * * *

  "Peace and goodwill, huh?" I mumbled as I tramped home. My mind still struggled to wrap itself around what happened, trying to decide if it was all real. But there was an undeniable peace—for lack of a better word—on Mike's face when he said goodbye. A peace I didn't think possible after what Ashley did to him.

  And Ralph. And me, I added silently.

  I sighed. I probably had my own goodwill issues to work through. But they could wait. Ralph and Mike might be desperate to hear from Ashley, but I was fine with her silence. I'd had quite enough of a sister who'd wrecked her life and screwed up a big part of mine in the process.