The Book of Days

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  He started to open the door farther. He leaned toward the darkness inside.

  The ambulance driver’s head stuck out the window and shook no no no.

  Then he heard his own two children crying from the darkness inside the ambulance. So he shut the door firmly. And watched the ambulance pull slowly away, the driver’s head looking back at him until the vehicle disappeared into a tiny point in the distance.

  MAR. 1

  1932: the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped.

  Cal kept looking for indications of some town or city– some downtown business core however outdated– attached to these strip malls, but he could find nothing, not even any signs indicating the distant presence of a town. This made him sad, thinking what that might mean about the sense of community in such places. And the sense of family. He wondered where all the people lived.

  He walked into the largest structure he encountered, looking for something to eat. The choices, as he expected, were myriad, but nothing seemed particularly appetizing. He ate part of a hotdog, part of a hamburger, and could tell little difference.

  The mall was littered with flyers and posters of missing children. “Advertisements,” he heard someone call them, as if some supplier might provide you with a child who was forever missing. Low maintenance, that way. And you’d still have these nice pictures to show your friends. “My missing child,” you might say.

  Cal went from store to store, mall to mall, and saw these flyers everywhere. Thousands upon thousands of missing children.

  Once when Parker was little and Jenny was just a baby, Parker had gotten separated from Cal and Linda at just such a mall. Linda had been frantic, and Cal almost numb with guilt– he was supposed to have been looking out for Parker. Now with Jenny bawling and fussing, upsetting Linda almost to the point of hysteria, Cal had to go looking for their little boy.

  Even back then the mall bulletin boards were filled with pictures of missing children. As he searched for his own son he kept glancing at these sad pictures: families torn apart, parents devastated. It seemed to him there must be enough missing children to fill ten malls this size. So where had they all gone?

  Then there was an announcement over the intercom about a lost little boy named Parker, and then they put him on. “Daddy– you got lost!”

  Cal had walked to the mall security office thinking that Parker was right: when children are missing it is the parents who are lost.

  Now Cal studied the pictures of the missing children on this mall’s bulletin board. After much searching he found his own picture as a child on one of the posters. But there was no number listed to call.

  MAR. 2

  1933: the movie King Kong premiers at Radio City Music Hall.

  The old woman had followed Cal from mall to mall the previous day. He hadn’t realized it until nightfall, but then he didn’t see her anymore, so he thought she’d grown tired of the game. Now he was several miles past the last building, and looking over his shoulder down the road he saw her again, a hundred feet or so behind him.

  He walked back and looked at the old woman. He tried to smile and look friendly– he didn’t want to scare her– but he was tired, and he wasn’t feeling particularly friendly. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “You look just like my ex-husband!” she shouted at him.

  Cal stepped back. “I’m not your ex-husband.” It seemed a stupid thing to say, but she looked pretty crazy to him.

  “Course you ain’t! I just said you looked like him. Hairy like him, you are. Bet you got a hairy back, right? You got a hairy back?”

  “I’ve got a hairy back,” he replied.

  “That’s what I said! Course my ex-hubby was hairy all over, he was. Thick black hair, each hair long as your average car, I reckon. He was a might taller than you, though. By a couple of hundred feet!”

  “Ma’am, do you have a son or a daughter living around here? Some place I could take you?”

  “No … no. Me and the King– not Elvis, but the other– we wanted to have kids, but there were– well, it would have been difficult.”

  “I’m sure. I think I’d better take you back to one of the malls. You’ll be a lot safer there.”

  “Oh, he kept me safe, kept me real safe. Fine family man. You a family man?”

  Cal hesitated. He didn’t want to talk to the crazy lady about anything personal. But if he ignored her she’d be pushy. “I’ve got a wife, two kids.”

  “Then what are you doing out here hitchhiking? Family man shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing. Family man should be with his family.”

  “That’s where I was heading, ma’am.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you! Family man should be with his family. I won’t bother you no more.”

  Cal turned to walk away, then looked back at her, smiling. “You say he was your ex? You two get divorced?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “No, no divorce. I said he was a good family man, now didn’t I? I told him not to go climbing on things, but he kept saying ‘Faye, I’m restless, gotta go out. Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.’ Damn fool!” She turned and started back toward the last mall. An airplane flew overhead. The old woman looked up, raised her fist, and shook it angrily at the plane.

  MAR. 3

  1847: Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, is born.

  Midafternoon. The sun high overhead. Cal was passing an emergency road phone mounted to a pole in the grass by the side of the road. No one else in sight.

  The phone started ringing. After staring at the phone a while, and looking up and down the road, and finding that that phone rang and rang without stopping, Cal answered it.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  “My King was a good husband!” Faye said. “Even though we were from two different worlds. People said it wouldn’t work out, but I swear it was a love like few can boast of. He would have stayed with me forever if they hadn’t shot him down! You go home to your family, mister, don’t you go wandering and hitchhiking no more. And don’t climb no tall buildings, neither!”

  Then she hung up.

  MAR. 4

  1904: Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as “Dr. Seuss,” is born.

  The sign at the side of the road said “Childhood Complaints.” A few hundred feet past the sign a bored-looking man with a long white beard sat behind a desk painted bright red. Hundreds of people– men, women, children– stood in a long, wiggly line leading up to the man behind the bright red desk. Cal walked up and stood close enough to listen.

  A thin fellow in his late forties came up to the desk and with a trembling voice said, “There’s a willow on my pillow and it makes it hard to sleep.”

  The man behind the red desk nodded and said, “Next.”

  An elderly lady in a blue dress waddled up to the desk and said, “That’s a czar in my car, and he won’t get out!”

  The man behind the red desk nodded and said, “Next.”

  A small boy came up to the desk and, barely seeing over the top, he shouted, “There’s an idget in my fidget and it gets me in trouble at school!”

  The man behind the red desk nodded and smiled. He looked down at the little boy and shouted, “Next!”

  “There’s weeples in all these peoples,” complained a girl with long red hair.

  “There are jeeps upon my feets,” said a man who resembled a bear.

  “These smashes have smeared my glasses,” spoke the man named Sam.

  “Then stop messin’ with my dressin’!” screamed the lady eating jam.

  The man behind the red desk nodded and listened to each complaint, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. Cal waited there a long time, hearing about gellows and fellows, whippers and zippers, fostrils and nostrils, lurders and murders.

  When he finally decided to leave there was was one small child left in line. The boy had stood there a long time without saying anything, trying the patience of the man behind the red desk. Finally the man leaned over and shou
ted, “Well?”

  The little boy looked up and said, “There’s no bother in my father, so I can’t adore, no more.”

  The man behind the red desk nodded solemnly, and closed his eyes. Cal nodded to himself, and closed his eyes, and wished he had a pocket full of jowers, and gistles, fandy and noys to give to his children when he returned, just to show how sorry he really was.

  MAR. 5

  1870: novelist Frank Norris (McTeague, The Pit, The Octopus) and leading proponent of the “naturalistic” novel, is born in Chicago.

  It looked like an antique carnival tent with its bright but tattered red and white stripes. Originally it had been coarse gray canvas, and the stripes were painted on, some cheap grade of paint probably not intended for this purpose. A crudely lettered banner up over the entrance read: Beat Brag– Win 5 Bucks.

  Inside, the tent smelled faintly of sweat and urine. The ground was covered with dirty straw, and people stood around the perimeter of the canvas walls, arms folded, waiting. Cal expected animals to be brought in– he kept straining his ears, listening. After a few minutes a thin man in a bright red coat, black twirly moustache, came into the ring. Ringmaster, Cal thought.

  But what followed him was not some animal, although Cal wasn’t quite sure at first. It was a man, or what appeared to be a man– stooped hairy shoulders and back, short neck and thick brow– in boxing shorts. The gloves covering his fists looked torn and thin, as if they’d lost much of their padding.

  “Beat Brag– Win 5 Bucks!” the ringmaster cried. “You all know the rules by now. Any takers?”

  A tall young man in the back raised his hand. The ringmaster nodded and the lad came forward. After slipping a new-looking pair of gloves over the young man’s hands the ringmaster backed out of the way. Brag stepped forward.

  And stood there as the challenger beat him in the face, blow after merciless blow. The boy grunted fiercely with each swing and each landed punch, gritting his teeth into a grim animal smile. He beat Brag’s eye, nose, mouth, face as hard as he could, a mist of Brag’s blood drifting between them, rivulets of it pouring from mouth and nose and cuts on Brag’s cheeks. It seemed as if the boy was letting loose with all the rage and frustration his body contained, which proved to be a great deal. Then, he stopped, exhausted, and looked up at Brag first smiling, and then suddenly fearful.

  Brag stepped closer and pounded the boy three times viciously in the face. You could hear bone and cartilage breaking and separating.

  The young challenger was down. Men in coveralls were dragging the challenger, his gloves removed, from the tent.

  “Beat Brag– win five bucks!” the ringmaster cried again, and this time an older man stepped forward, put on the gloves, and began beating Brag as hard as he could, so hard in fact he apparently sprained his wrist, before Brag stepped forward again and ended the fight with four well-placed and devastating punches.

  Cal watched this entertainment through four such encounters. The final challenger beat Brag over the head with a board. The onlookers stirred restlessly but no one, including the ringmaster, made any attempt to stop him. The skin of Brag’s face tore and bled and tore some more, but he made no effort to protect himself.

  Finally the challenger collapsed from exhaustion. Brag leaned over and pounded the man’s face until he had trouble removing his fist, then walked out of the tent.

  No applause, no cheers. The spectators filed out silently.

  Cal walked around to the back of the tent, and the woods beyond, thinking he would rest in the shade a bit before travelling on. A few yards into the trees he came to a clearing, and found Brag sitting on a log, a small boy with a bucket wiping the blood and sweat from his face.

  Brag looked up as Cal approached. “Show’s over,” he grumbled.

  “I’m not here for a show.” Cal decided to keep his distance. Leaning over like that, blood dripping from his face, mouth slack and open, Brag looked like a bull after a failed slaughter. The little boy didn’t even glance at Cal, so intent was he at cleaning Brag’s wounds. Cal felt slightly anxious at the sight, almost expecting the wounded bull to bow down and devour the small boy.

  “Saw you there, with the others,” Brag said. “Saw you.”

  “I was there,” Cal admitted. “I didn’t know what it was going to be. But I did stay. I did watch.”

  Brag grunted. The boy started patting the most severe lacerations gently with a folded towel.

  “Why do you do that? If you don’t like it?”

  Brag looked up at Cal, then rolled his eyes to the boy. “For him. My son. Look, son. Look at the man.”

  The little boy looked up at Cal, nodded, then went back to nursing his father.

  “Come on. Certainly there are other ways to make a living.”

  Brag took his son’s small hand gently from his face, patted the boy on the shoulder, then turned to Cal. “Brag dumb. Always. Always will. Not like …” He looked at the little boy then. “… son.”

  “But just standing there, letting yourself get hit in the face like that …”

  “Brag like getting hit there. The face. Harder, better. Pa like that, too. And Grandpa. Brag like them, can’t help it. Like hits, splitting, swelling, blood salt taste. Always. Now get paid for it. For him.” He looked at his son again, who continued to wipe and soak his father’s wounds.

  “Fathers do what they have to do,” Cal agreed softly.

  Brag looked up, his brutish hands framing his little boy’s face. “Go now. Time for Brag rest. Son reads Brag story. Brag’s son reads good. You go away.”

  The little boy pulled out a child’s book of nursery rhymes from a worn cloth sack and began to read. Brag closed his eyes. Cal slipped silently away.

  MAR. 6

  1836: the Alamo falls to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege.

  Several cars had been turned over in the middle of the road. Old rusted appliances– refrigerators, stoves, air conditioners– had been added to the barricade. A half-dozen men stood on or behind it, peering cautiously over, their rifles at the ready.

  “What is it?” Cal asked one of the men.

  “We only ask that we be allowed to raise our families in peace, without the drugs, the crime, the race wars. We’re simple folk here and we’d like to stay that way,” the man declared.

  Cal went up to another of the defenders and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong!” the man cried, livid. “My sixteen year old son comes home and we can’t even talk– he’s got his own language– I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

  Cal walked over to another man at the barricade and asked, “What’s happening here?”

  The man looked up, his face tight and white. “Just what every father fears,” he said. “Change.” He looked back over the barricade. “Can’t you hear it, fellow? The thunder of it? Progress is coming.”

  MAR. 7

  1849: horticulturist Luther Burbank is born in Lancaster, Mass.

  When Cal saw another tangle of wreckage blocking the road he wondered if some group rival to the one he’d just encountered had erected it. Then he arrived at the barrier itself and discovered that it wasn’t wreckage after all, but some sort of twisted vine which had grown back over itself again and again until it was several yards tall, bearing massive flowers and fruits the likes of which he had never seen.

  Where he’d grown up there had been kudzu, hills covered with an insatiable mass of the broad-leafed stuff, but kudzu seemed like some harmless window garden plant compared to this particular vegetation.

  A man with a red beard walked up to the vine with a green watering can. He permitted a small amount of water to trickle onto part of the vine, then moved on to another part.

  “What is this thing?”

  The man turned around and stared at Cal as if he were of some strange species. “Why, it’s a plant, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Then he stooped and stroked a bud with his palsied hand. The bud exploded into a bloom of riotous c
olor.

  “But how did it get this big? And so strange?”

  “I planted a seed. It grew.” The man shrugged. “You know anything at all about children? Or are you merely a father?”

  Cal took a step back and glanced at the ground. “Well, I’m a father, and I suppose in this case I deserve whatever blame you’re handing out.”

  “I didn’t mean to be so personal, young man. It’s just that it’s usually the fathers of the world who ask me such questions. They’re the ones who seem so distressed that progeny, of whatever sort, cannot always be controlled.” A red berry of a thing– a foot across at least– popped its top, spewing forth a golden rain of tiny seeds. “Indeed.” The man took out a small pair of scissors and attempted to trim tiny dead portions off the vine. But the bits of vine slapped and scratched at the back of his hand until he finally had to give up the attempt. “Ungrateful little bugger. But what can you do? You plant ’em, water ’em a little, that’s about as much control as you get.”

  Then the man in the red beard wandered further down the vine, watering here, watering there, mumbling endearments to his seedling. He apparently had nothing more to say to Cal.

  Cal had to climb over the vine in order to continue on his way. The thorns near the top of the growth were bothersome, but he found little to resent in them. It was just a plant, after all, and plants will grow according to their natures, and seldom do they ask our opinions about it.

  MAR. 8

  1986: four French television crew members are abducted in west Beirut.

  The little boy was sitting on the side of the road, crying. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. Miles from nowhere, no one in sight. Cal couldn’t believe it. Where were his parents?

  He said as gently as he could, “Hi. What’s wrong?”

  “They … left me …” the little boy sobbed.

  “Your parents left you behind? Did they forget you?”

  “Don’t have no father!” the little boy cried out.

  Cal leaned closer. Something hard landed across the back of his skull. When he woke up, two more young boys’ faces had joined the other, peering down at him. The oldest of the faces said, “But we got us a father now!”