by Rodney Jones
“Probably be back around nine,” Brian said, as they stepped out the front door. “Want us to bring you back some pizza?”
Once the family left, the house quickly settled. The hum of the refrigerator and the occasional snap from the fireplace kept it just short of silence. Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Roland sat in a recliner, gazing into the fire. He imagined Joyce, the woman in that precarious, other reality, sitting at their dining room table, gazing out the window, imagining him. Was it real? He believed it was. Would her experience have been anything like Dana’s? Is she thinking I abandoned her?
He gave his head a shake, trying to rid himself of his melancholic thoughts, then rose from the chair to poke at the fire. A new host of flames licked up from beneath the logs and the fire returned to life. In the window to his left, a thin, horizontal line of glowing yellows and reds, sandwiched between dark-grays, stretched across a gap in the arborvitae.
Roland stepped up to the stereo cabinet at the opposite corner of the room, selected a CD, dropped it into the player, and hit the play button. The whispery voice of Elliot Smith came over the speakers. He glanced down at the bottom shelf of the cabinet where some large, photo albums were tucked in among a row of books. He pulled out an unlabeled, tan binder, and carried it back to his chair to browse through snapshots of his brother's family. On the first page were six photographs; two were of Molly and her older brother, David, looking three or four years younger than they would now have been. They stood on a rope bridge, both grinning toward the camera lens, nothing but trees in the background. In another photo, they appeared to be picking their way across rocks and boulders, dotting a shallow stream. One of Molly’s blue denim pant legs was dark with wetness, from the cuff to the knee. This was followed by a picture of Beth and Brian sitting on a log under a rock outcrop, then a gathering of small tents near the edge of a rushing stream, a picture of Molly emerging from a tent, sleepy-eyed, her hair disheveled, and finally a slightly underexposed photo of a campfire with six glowing faces around it. The photos were unlabeled—no dates, names, or locations. But, even in that last picture, even with its less-than-perfect qualities, the faces, with the exception of one, were still identifiable. Kate’s eyes were turned toward the fire; Beth, David, and his own were peering toward the camera; Molly, her attention was on her hands, or something in her lap; and the sixth person, the one sitting next to him, apparently turned their head as the shutter opened—their face was blurred.
The next couple of pages contained photos from a vacation to a tropical beach—Florida maybe, or the Bahamas. He flipped past them to a series of pictures of some familiar looking mountains, another camping trip. But he knew these mountains—the Bridger Tetons of Wyoming. He remembered being there, remembered suffering from altitude sickness, his first day there. He recalled sitting on a boulder, his head slouched between his shoulders, watching as Joyce struggled to set up the tent, alone.
He studied the photographs—mostly mountain vistas, but also a couple of the gang marching up a mountain path, their bulky backpacks to the camera, their heads mostly hidden. He turned the page to more pictures from the same trip. At the bottom right-hand corner was a group-shot, everyone lined up, sitting side by side on top a huge boulder. He spotted himself in the picture. But then, searching for Joyce’s face, he instead found Dana Serrano’s. The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar—the boulder, the trees, even the light—everyone and everything in it.
Recalling the trip they’d taken to Wyoming, he attempted to put Joyce’s face in Dana’s place. But then it came to him that it was an entirely different trip, just Joyce and him, not the family. The details flowed from his memory—he and Joyce in the car on their way out west, the two of them lying in a grassy valley near the Bad Lands, a full moon, coyotes yipping and howling, then Devil’s Tower, a rain storm over the Tetons, a double rainbow, and on and on. He looked again at the photo. It was small, but not so small that he couldn’t identify everyone in it and clearly see Dana smiling as though she was about to breakout in laughter, as if someone had said something funny just before the shutter was released—a happy Dana, rather than the angry Dana he’d experienced over the phone.
Roland thumbed through the remainder of the album, searching for more pictures of her. He came to a group of photographs taken in the canyon lands of Southern Utah. Among them was one of him and Dana, closer to the camera, standing together, their arms around each other’s waists, smiling for the camera, like a couple with a history. Here was a photograph of a woman he’d spent a good portion of his life with, a woman he was married to, yet couldn’t recall having ever met. He studied the picture of this woman, his wife, and noticed, for the first time, her smile. Again, that curious sense of obligation stirred. Perhaps it was always there, like an incarnate piece of his programing, always there waiting within the shadows of more immediate concerns.
Roland dug his wallet from his pocket and retrieved the slip of paper he’d scribbled her number upon. He pushed himself up out of his chair, went into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and tapped in the number. He paced the kitchen floor, the phone to his ear. Four rings later, a recorded voice came on.
“Hello. You’ve reached the home of”—his own voice—“Dana Serrano, and Roland Bax. We’re not at home…” The beep arrived prematurely. His confusion and inability to find the right thing to say were being recorded. He set the phone back in its cradle, then slipped the scrap of paper down into his breast pocket.
Brian and his family returned from their evening out. The book that was sitting in Roland’s lap when they’d left was again there. Molly entered, carrying a pizza box. Her mom and dad came in just behind her.
“Want some pizza?”
“Sure.” Roland rose from the chair, and headed for the kitchen.
Molly wandered off to her bedroom, leaving the pizza on the table.
“Let’s do something tomorrow,” Brian said, “a hike or something. It’s supposed to be the last nice day ever.”
“And what about the lawn?” Beth said.
“Ah, right… right.”
“What needs done?” Roland said.
“Mm…mowing, planting bulbs, the garden needs turned. A whole shit load of stuff,” Brian said.
Roland said, “That shouldn’t take but a couple of hours with four people on it, don’t you think?”
Brian shrugged. “Maybe. It’d be nice to get out, do a little hiking before cold weather sets in.”
“And don’t forget we were going out to Mom’s tomorrow,” Beth said.
Brian rolled his eyes and sighed. “Can’t we make that a little later. Like Spring of 2006?”
“I told her we’d be there around two or three.”
Brian twisted off the cap of a beer bottle and handed it to Roland. “Well, if we got done here by eleven, then drove down to Oak Ridge, hiked for… say three hours, we could be back by…” He stopped to calculate.
“We’d be back around four or five, and then we’ll all need a shower and change of clothes,” she said.
Brian glanced across the table at Roland. “Another time I reckon.”
Beth huffed. “Why don’t you two go, and then come out to Mom’s once you get back? You think you could be there by six?”
“Uh… yeah, we could manage that.” He slipped Roland a look, while tipping his beer bottle to his smiling lips.
Roland turned off the light on the nightstand, climbed across the bed to the window, and peered out into the backyard. Moonlight reflected off glassy blades of grass and leaves, still wet from the day’s rain. He unlatched the window, slid it as far up as it would go, and let the cool, damp air spill into his lap. He leaned toward the screen, filled his lungs with the scent of damp leaves, and regarded the almost mystical juxtaposition of flat-black shadows and sparkling grass. A smoky cloud of vapor left his lips as he gazed up into the brilliant, star-filled sky.
Chapter thirty-nine – the mojo fairy
A feeling of stability a
nd connectedness greeted Roland as he awakened, a feeling that, once again, he was in control of his destiny. It wasn’t much, but subtle, something he might have overlooked if not for the fact that it had for so long been absent.
He sat up. The window to his right had been left open, just an inch, from the night before. The warm-hues of an early morning sky reflected off the dark-green arborvitae. A small maple glowed brilliant-orange in the corner of the yard, its stark beauty demanding attention. He listened, expecting the chatter of birds, but the air was quiet. He slipped into his clothes, went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, then slipped into the kitchen for a cup of coffee—no one was up—the first time he had beat Brian and Beth to the task of making coffee since moving in with them.
Rows of cornstalk stubs scrolled by the window at his right as Roland’s brother navigated the narrow Hoosier back roads heading south. Oak Ridge State Park was another fifteen minutes away—an hour’s drive from Sulphur Springs. He’d gone there, decades before, on a picnic with his first wife, Nancy, and some years before that, skipping school with a group of high school buddies.
He remembered hiking the woods with his friends, smoking pot, endless joking, fooling around, laughing at all variety of nonsense, then stopping on the way home at a drive-in restaurant—the old kind, with waitresses delivering your food to your car, on trays. They’d hang your tray of burgers and fries from a partially-rolled-up window—cars lined up in their individual stations, each with its own squawky, drive-up-menu intercom on a telescoping arm.
“What ever happened to Ray’s Drive-in?” Roland said.
“Oh, yeah… the place with the twenty-cent Coney dogs.”
“And ten-cent root beers.”
“Yeah, I ate there a few times. It went out of business about ten, twelve years ago. I think the Coney dogs exceeded their worth at a dollar.”
“I remember stopping there, back in high school, with some friends. Remember Ed Griffin?”
Brian kept his eyes on the road and nodded.
“We skipped school one day. Ed, me, and a couple other guys drove down to Oak Ridge, hung out in the woods most of the day and got stoned. On the way back, we stopped at Ray’s Drive-in. I was hungry enough to eat a horse, but I didn’t want to come off looking like a pig, so I ordered like three Coney dogs, some onion rings, and a couple root beers… maybe three.”
“They were generous with the onion rings.”
“And grease,” Roland said. “I ate those three Coney dogs and onion rings and wasn’t even fazed, so I ordered three more and finished those off, no problem. I was ready for desert. Man, I used to be able to put away the food.”
“Those things were nasty… those Coney dogs,” Brian said.
Roland snorted. “They looked nasty. They looked like cat shit on a skinny, little weenie.”
Brian laughed.
“Amazing what you can eat after a day in the woods,” Roland said.
Brian glanced his way and added, “Stoned.”
A large sign on their right indicated they had arrived at the park. They drove on past a tiny, unmanned, admission building—a little shack, positioned in the middle of the road—then continued up the road another mile before turning into a paved, parking lot. Brian pulled in alongside an old, Chevy station wagon, parked near the trailhead—the only other vehicle in the lot. A placard on a post, a few yards from the edge of the lot, marked the beginning of the trail.
“You remember how long it is?” Roland said, as they stepped down from the truck.
“A six-mile loop, I think. Should take no more than three hours.”
Roland lifted a daypack, containing water and snacks, from the truck bed, then followed Brian as he marched off into the hilly forest—tall, ancient trees, mostly oaks, but also some scattered maples, black walnuts, and an occasional shagbark hickory or black cherry. The leaves of the oaks had turned yellow and brown. Those on the ground were still damp from the recent rain, their earthy perfume, lingering in the air.
A short distance into the woods, the trail became narrower, nearly hidden by fallen leaves, then eventually came to a fork. Centered within the fork was a wooden sign with an arrow pointing left for Wildcat Pond, and another pointing right for the extended trail.
“The loop.” Brian pointed up the hill to their left. “We’ll be coming back that way.”
“Do they allow camping here?”
“No, but there’s a state forest, not far from here, where Kate and I camped last November.” With frequent glances over his shoulder, Brian marched on, recounting a story from his and Kate’s adventure, about a hunter who had stumbled, half-frozen, into their campsite, after having fallen into a pond.
The two hiked for about an hour more before Roland noticed the trail had turned back in the direction of the parking lot. Another half-hour brought them to a large clearing with a pond at its center. A band of spent cattails, topped with brown fluffy spikes, bordered the opposite side. They followed the trail to a hefty picnic table, standing in foot-high grass about thirty-feet from the pond’s edge, then sat there looking out over the pond, sharing the grapes and crackers and cheese they’d brought along.
Brian glanced at his watch. “Man, I wish I didn’t have to go to Beth’s mom’s tonight.”
“It’d be a nice night for a fire in the back yard,” Roland said. “Beer and weenies.”
“You don’t have to go, you know.”
“Actually I was thinking of giving Dana a call later… see how that goes.”
Brian nodded—“Well”—then gazed about as though soaking in the surrounding landscape—“good luck.”
The sun was close to setting by the time Brian left the house. “See you later,” came from down the hall—followed by the thud of the front door.
Roland had just stepped from the shower. He grabbed up the clothes he’d worn earlier, now lying in a pile near the foot of the bed, and tossed them into the hamper in the closet. But then, remembering the phone call, he dug the shirt back out, retrieved the note from the breast pocket, and considered the ten digits written upon it.
Minutes later, he was sitting at the end of the kitchen table holding the receiver to his ear—still teetering on indecision, a thousand unknowable possibilities dangling from a thread, the phone at the other end ringing.
“Mary’s Diner and Funeral Home,” a woman said.
Roland looked at the number he’d written down.
“Hello?” the voice said.
“I’m sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number. Is this area code seven one—”
“Roland?”
It took another instant to realize who it was he was talking to.
“I thought it was Mary,” she continued. “I was joking.”
Roland let out a sigh at having caught Dana in a good mood. “Oh, I thought something was odd. Are you expecting a phone call?”
“Well, no, not really.”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’ve been thinking that we should… that I might come and spend a little time up that way, your way… and try to clear up a few things.” He waited, but the silence seemed to stretch beyond a reasonable pause. “Hello?”
“I’m wondering… is this going to be you repeating the stupid story I’ve already heard a dozen times?”
“I was hoping we could put that to the side… for now, anyway,” he said.
“It would be nice to know what we’re putting to the side.”
“Hmm… yeah…”
“If it’s just more of the bullshit you’ve so stubbornly—”
“The bullshit… It’s not what… I really had no control over that. I just thought it would—”
“No control? You had no control over running off to Arizona? Come on Roland, that is undeniably bullshit!”
He sighed. “Okay, it’s bullshit then… and it’s honestly all I have at the moment.”
“That whole cockamamie story is crap.”
Roland’s eyes drifted down to his bare feet.
He became aware of a faint buzz in his ears. “Well… I thought maybe it’d be a good idea… talk it through in person. I don’t know. If you want to, fine. If you want to think about it, and then get back to me, that’s fine too. Whatever you decide is okay.”
He waited through another silence, which he suspected would be the end of it—his last attempt at satisfying whatever it was driving him to connect with this difficult woman.
“What’ve you been doing?” she finally said.
“What?”
“I mean, there in Indiana.”
He took a moment to switch gears. “Not much… walks, reading, a few movies… a lot of sitting around and thinking. Brian and I just got back from a hike.”
“Me too. I went for a hike today.”
“Is it still nice up your way? No snow yet?”
“When would you come?”
He hadn’t really expected it to go this way. Before he even had a chance to think about it, he committed.
Chapter forty – the road
Independence was nothing new to Roland. Since his arrival at his brother’s house, he had been out on several occasions by himself. Though short, by comparison to the trip ahead of him, he’d come to savor the feeling of autonomy that came with being behind the wheel of a car. The route he had planned was a route he’d driven more than a few times, more than twenty-five years before, though only as far as Cleveland. The years had nearly erased the landscape from his mind. But then everything east of Cleveland was new to him.
The road before him was clear of traffic. A glance in the mirror confirmed there was nothing behind him either. He fiddled with the radio tuner until he found music that matched his mood—the rare feeling of empowerment that he had awakened to the morning before. It had stuck with him. Off to the right side of the road, a small, green sign came into view: Mesick Road.
What was her name? Janet, I think. Seventeen… and oh, my god, what a sexy little thing. Mesick Road… less than a mile down… the farmer’s daughter. And what… why it didn’t happen? Was I too scary for her? But, man, I had the hots for her.