by Anthology
He hung head-down for five minutes while Mo pleaded with the unconscious Algie to tell him what to do. Algie regained consciousness and sat up cursing and rubbing his neck. He told Mo what to do and sat there smiling until Pete lost consciousness.
Slap-slap-slap, slap-slap; his head rocked back and forth in time to the blows. He couldn’t stop them, they jarred his head, shook his entire body. From very far away he heard Algie’s voice.
“That’s enough Mo, that’s enough. He’s coming around now.”
Pete braced himself painfully against the wall and wiped the blood out of his eyes. The short man’s face swam into his vision.
“Mac, you’re giving us too much trouble. We’re going to take your crystal and find your strike, and if it’s as good as the samples you got there, I’m going to be very happy and celebrate by killing you real slow. If we don’t find it, you get killed slower. You get yours either way. Nobody ever hits Algie, don’t you know that?”
They turned on Pete’s walk-through and half carried, half dragged him through the wall. About twenty feet away they emerged in another artificial bubble, much larger than his own. It was almost filled by the metallic bulk of an atomic tractor.
Mo pushed him to the floor and kicked his walk-through into a useless ruin. The giant stepped over Pete’s body and lumbered across the room. As he swung himself aboard the tractor, Algie switched on the large walk-through unit. Pete saw Algie’s mouth open with silent laughter as the ghostly machine lurched forward and drove into the wall.
Pete turned and pawed through the crushed remains of his walkthrough. Completely useless. They had done a thorough job, and there was nothing else in this globular tomb that could help him out. His sub-rock radio was in his own bubble, with that he could call the army base and have a patrol here in twenty minutes. But there was a little matter of twenty feet of rock between the radio and himself.
His light swung up and down the wall. That three-foot vein of RbO must be the same one that ran through his own chamber.
He grabbed his belt. The airmaker was still there! He pressed the points to the wall and watched the silver snow spring out. Pieces of rock fell loose as he worked in a circle. If the power pack held out—
and if they didn’t come back too soon . . .
With each flash of the airmaker an inch-thick slab of rock crumbled away. The accumulators took 3.7 seconds to recharge; then the white flash would leap out and blast loose another mass of rubble. He worked furiously with his left hand to clear away the shattered rock.
Blast with the right arm—push with the left—blast and push—blast and push. He laughed and sobbed at the same time, warm tears running down his cheeks. He had forgotten the tremendous amounts of oxygen he was releasing. The walls reeled drunkenly around him.
Stopping just long enough to seal his helmet, Pete turned back to the wall of his makeshift tunnel. He blasted and struggled with the resisting rock, trying to ignore his throbbing head. He lay on his side, pushing the broken stones behind him, packing them solid with his feet.
He had left the large bubble behind and was sealed into his own tiny chamber far under the earth. He could feel the weight of a half-mile of solid rock pushing down on him, crushing the breath from his lungs.
If the airmaker died now, he would lie there and rot in this hand-hewn tomb! Pete tried to push the thought from his mind—to concentrate only on blasting his way through the earth.
Time seemed to stand still as he struggled on through an eternity of effort. His arms worked like pistons while his bloody fingers scrabbled at the corroded rock.
He dropped his arms for a few precious moments while his burning lungs pumped air. The weakened rock before him crumbled and blew away with an explosive sound. The air whistled through the ragged opening. The pressure in the two chambers was equalizing—he had holed through!
He was blasting at the edges of the hole with the weakened air-maker when the legs walked up next to him. Algie’s face pushed through the low rock ceiling, a ferocious scowl on its features. There was no room to materialize; all the impotent Algie could do was to shake his fist at—and through—Pete’s face.
A monstrous crunching came from the loose rubble behind him; the rock fell away and Mo pushed through. Pete couldn’t turn to fight, but he landed one shoe on the giant’s shapeless nose before monster hands clutched his ankles.
He was dragged through the rocky tube like a child, hauled back to the bigger cavern. When Mo dropped him he just slid to the floor and lay there gasping. He had been so close.
Algie bent over him. “You’re too smart, Mac. I’m going to shoot you now, so you don’t give me no more trouble.”
He pulled Pete’s .45 out of his pocket, grabbed it by the slide and charged it. “By the way, we found your strike. It’s going to make me richer’n hell. Glad, Mac?”
Algie squeezed the trigger and a hammer-blow struck Pete’s thigh. The little man stood over Pete, grinning.
“I’m going to give you all these slugs where they won’t kill you—not right away. Ready for the next one, Mac?”
Pete pushed up onto one elbow and pressed his hand against the muzzle of the gun. Algie’s grin widened. “Fine, stop the bullet with your hand!”
He squeezed the trigger; the gun clicked sharply. A ludicrous expression of amazement came over his face. Pete rose up and pressed the airmaker against Algie’s faceplate. The expression was still there when his head exploded into frosty ribbons.
Pete dived on the gun, charged it out of the half-cocked position and swung around. Algie had been smart, but not smart enough to know that the muzzle of a regulation .45 acts as a safety. When you press against it the barrel is pushed back into half-cock position and can’t be fired until the slide is worked to recharge it.
Mo came stumbling across the room, his jaw gaping amazement. Swinging around on his good leg, Pete waved the gun at him. “Hold it right there, Mo. You’re going to help me get back to town.”
The giant didn’t hear him, there was room in his mind for only one thought.
“You killed Algie—you killed Algie!”
Pete fired half the clip before the big man dropped. He turned from the dying man with a shudder. It had been self-defense, but that thought didn’t help the sick feeling in his stomach. He twisted his belt around his leg to stop the blood and applied a sterile bandage from the tractor’s first-aid kit.
The tractor would get him back; he would let the army take care of the mess here. He pushed into the driver’s seat and kicked the engine into life. The cat’s walk-through operated perfectly; the machine crawled steadily toward the surface. Pete rested his wounded leg on the cowling and let the earth flow smoothly past and through him.
It was still snowing when the tractor broke through to the surface.
ROCKING MY DREAMBOAT
Victorya
Jameson was pushing his mother in her rocking chair. He sang her favorite song, his tired voice caressing each word in a mixture of boredom and frustration.
“Tell me something about my father?” he asked.
“He was a bastard,” she replied, not even looking up from the television. In her hand was the remote, and on the screen were commercials. She always muted the commercials and had Jameson sing.
“But you named me after him,” he said.
“Before I realized he was a bastard,” she said. Then, “Hush now honey, COPS is back on.”
Jameson was twenty-six and lonely. He moved back in with his mother after her fall, which wasn’t really a fall, just a stumble while she was out grocery shopping. She leaned into a parked car when she felt her balance leaving and the alarm went off, causing her to jump and stumble into another car. From then on she lived with her son, claiming that since she took care of him for eighteen years, seventeen of those alone, the least he could do was take care of what was left of her life.
He was even lonelier now that Kathleen dumped him. She had just stood up during dinner and walked out. Three m
onths of dating over with no explanation. He bought her roses daily, always commented on her Facebook wall, and called her twice a day. He even waited until she was ‘ready’ and respected her wishes to not spend the night at his house while his mother was in the next room, not that he could stay overnight at her place and leave his mother alone. He did everything right and here he was alone again.
Jameson went to work the next day and tried to forget about it. He pretended to look busy, which is easy with a computer and alcoholic boss, and then went home. Too upset to sleep, he crept into the attic and pulled a loose piece of wood out of the floor. There lay a Legoland Time Machine kit that he always imagined belonged to his father. There was no image on the box, just Think of the Time and Place, and Go! written in precise lettering across the side. Jameson finally had the courage to open it, and cursed the entire time he tried to put the pieces together. He was upset that, when he felt it was done, it was a handheld device and not some helicopter looking thing like he’d figured. He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.
Kathleen’s mother was hobbling down the big cement steps of her apartment complex, just like Kathleen had described on that first night. A teen mother alone, living in a seedy tenement on the wrong side of town, going into labor while she tried to make her way down the stone stairs and into a car that took three tries to start. She stopped on the third step and looked at Jameson. She smiled when he came over, one hand holding the railing the other her stomach, the dress she wore stuck to her from sweat and the breaking of her water. Perhaps she thought he would help her when he reached out his hand, not pull her down the remaining stairs and then proceed to kick her in the stomach. Her screams were answered by windows slamming shut. Blood soaked her dress and puddled around her thighs. She lay on her side clutching her stomach, but her lithe hands were no match for Jameson’s ire.
Mari didn’t appreciate the flowers. She didn’t like the candy, or his calls. She didn’t like his romantic gesture of showing up outside her window and throwing stones at it in the wee hours of the night. They had only gone out for two weeks, but had been friends for longer. They had hung out in groups, sometimes after work with other colleagues, sometimes with Jameson’s friend Steve and Steve’s girlfriend Karen. But now she was saying words like ‘restraining order,’ like ‘scary’ and ‘frightening’ and ‘therapy’ and ‘suffocating.’ Jameson went straight home from work. His mother had made meatloaf and scalloped potatoes.
“What’s wrong sweetie?” she asked while the serving spoon squished into the casserole dish and slurped out a giant scoop of potatoes. They plopped on his dish, the oils pooling along the rim. “You look so sad.”
“Mari dumped me,” he said.
His mother sliced off a piece of meatloaf, the top shining from the baked-on ketchup. She placed it on his plate aside the potatoes.
“You know no girl is good enough for you,” she said. “Not my little boy. No, you’re mommy’s little boy and a very special one at that.”
Jameson winced at hearing her say this. She was old and crimping his style, but she was the only woman that had every truly loved him. No. No girl compared to her, and no girl would hurt him.
Jameson held the time device and pushed the red Lego. He had to be careful. Mari’s mother was married to a cop, and he had rushed her to the hospital the night of Mari’s birth. However, she shopped alone every Thursday after work. Jameson helped her carry the bags from the grocery store to the car. She thanked him and slipped him a dollar. Jameson leaned in and sniffed her. She smelled just like Mari. He smiled and nodded and later scoped out her house. She didn’t live in an apartment like Kathleen’s mother, but a real house with a chain link fence and a gate.
Jameson brought money back with him, making sure all bills and coins were dated from that time or before. He stayed in a hotel a few blocks away and followed her. Sometimes he sat in a nearby park to relax. Finally, he saw his moment and it was so much simpler than he had anticipated. He didn’t have to hit her with a car like he thought he might, merely let loose a puppy into the street, just quietly drop it from his rented car into the middle of an intersection. She swerved, other cars swerved, and while she didn’t die there was twisted metal and blood.
“How did my father woo you?” Jameson asked. He was rocking his mother and singing Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat during the commercials of COPS.
“This again?” she sighed.
“I’m sorry mother,” he said.
“He read to me,” she replied. “Your father was always such a bastard later, but in the beginning, he read to me. He tried to love me, but didn’t know how. Not like you. You love your mommy, don’t you?”
Jameson pulled the blanket up to her neck. She held on to the remote and unmuted the television when the show came on. She giggled every time a policeman slammed someone into a car or sidewalk. This episode had her in hysterics. When the commercials came on again, she muted the channel and Jameson sang once more.
Jameson found a time he liked, five years before he caused the miscarriage of Mari. 1971. It was far enough back that the prices were lower than his time, but close enough that he could still convert his paycheck to dollars from that era or before with no problem. His money went farther there. He rented an apartment just a few blocks down from a park, the one where his mother and father would get engaged later that year. Theirs was a quick courtship.
“He was dashing,” his mother would say on occasion, running her arthritic fingers through Jameson’s hair. “And smart, like you. He used big words and I liked that. Made me feel smart.”
He still worked, still cared for his mother and listened to her stories and sang to her during the commercials.
Jameson liked the park near his new apartment. There was a fence of twisted black metal entwined in morning glory. Inside, it always seemed to be green or in bloom. The park wasn’t big, encompassing one small block amidst the apartment buildings that allowed only slivers of the sun to come through. However, at noon, when the sun was directly overhead, the flowers within the park practically glowed. Pink and yellow roses reflected the light and attracted bees and butterflies and ivy wound around the four park benches that lined the little walkway through the park.
He never thought of himself as a park-goer, but there he was, every Saturday afternoon after he brought mother home from physical therapy, every Sunday before he brought her to church, and every other moment he could slip away from work or mother.
One day she was there. Black hair cascading down her back, the wind blowing soft tendrils across her cheeks pink with the slight bite in the breeze. Winter was coming, its voice heard in the crackle of the leaves as they began to fall from the trees, in the crunch of frozen morning dew and the ice felt on the breeze.
Jameson didn’t mean to fall in love, but he thought it was the only word encompassing how he felt.
“I see you here a lot,” the woman said. He was reading the paper—history. “Mind if I sit here?” she asked, gesturing next to him. The morning air covered the blush that sprung to his cheeks. He looked over at her; she was dressed simply, in jeans and a corduroy jacket. In her hand, a book.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
“Beowulf,” she said. “Well, trying too. It’s not really a book I can understand, which is why I wanted to give it a try.”
“I like the quiet,” Jameson said. “It’s so quiet here.”
“Is the rest of your life loud?” she asked.
Jameson thought of his days, work where his boss yelled at him in a drunken stupor, home where he had to sing to his mother during commercials lest she get upset.
“My name is James,” he said. She sat down next to him and he turned to face her. She was sitting with one leg bent under her, the other swinging off the bench.
“Muriel,” she said, putting the book on her lap and holding out her hand.
“Mother, what would you think if
I got a nurse to come in and look after you some days?” Jameson asked. He was rocking her during a commercial break. She was watching Jerry Springer.
“Oh sweetie, you do a good enough job. I don’t need anyone else,” she replied, her voice gurgling with phlegm from some unknown virus that had taken hold of her. She reached a hand up, the skin loose and spotted with age, and patted his hand.
“I was just thinking, it might be better for you. I can’t be home all the time. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
A spasm of coughs racked through her body. She stood up, her joints creaking more than the rocking chair.
“Now you know very well I can take care of myself,” she said, reaching for her cane. Jameson handed it to her. It was simple silver metal with rubber grips. “I don’t need you here. If you want to run off and be a man, sow some wild oats, then go do it. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You being like your father, running off on me?”
With his mother’s health worsening, she clung to her son while berating him for wanting to be free. The more she yelled, the more he clung to his Legos and fled into the past, to speak with Muriel on the park bench. She had already given up on Beowulf and moved to A Tale of Two Cities instead.
“I really like it,” she said.
“Why don’t you go to college?” he asked.
“Oh no,” she said, turning her head down. “That’s not going to happen. I am going to secretarial school though. We just can’t afford college. Not for me, not like this.”
Jameson found out that her parents had died in a car accident and she lived alone with her sister, Martha. Martha was older, had started school on scholarship but was now a legal secretary. Muriel had wanted to be a schoolteacher, but was now working on getting her secretarial skills in order to find a job.
“Did you go to college?” she asked, her brown eyes examining him.