Fellowship Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  The Chamber of Commerce beer garden stopped serving anything harder than coffee or water, and revelers began fading through the doors.

  The four of them found each other. Jack led them to the waterfall door. “I have to turn it off in a few minutes.” Lisa’s (and Brandy’s!) mom stared longingly at the dancing sheet of water. Lisa spoke quietly. “I can go through, Mom. So can you.”

  Lisa swore she heard fear in her mom’s breath. More emotion than she’d sensed in a long time. She stepped in front of Brandy and gazed up at her mom, saying nothing, trying her best to exude confidence.

  Jack spoke into the quiet waiting. “I’m going to winter in Shasta. But I can close your place up for the winter.” He leaned and planted a kiss for luck on each of their cheeks in turn.

  The mosaic artist handed the caretaker a key from her pocket, and took her mom’s hand and her new daughter’s hand. Lisa held her sister’s hand. They walked forward, Brandy and Grandma Nelson tugging a little to provide encouragement.

  All four of them emerged into early evening in the High Hills, tears streaming down their faces. Brandy and Lisa raced ahead, gamboling under the starlight.

  “Hey, do you have any more butterfly balls?” Lisa asked.

  “One.” Brandy tossed it to Lisa. She threw it in the air, watching it break into fluttering dark silhouettes.

  SCARS ENOUGH

  Russell Davis

  The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

  —Plato, The Republic

  We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels; we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

  —Anton Chekov

  Arizona Borderlands, Present Day

  The ranch house sits on five acres with a small sta ble, a well, and an annual crop of tumbleweeds that cling to the wire fences when the winds rise. It’s about a mile, maybe two, from an outcropping of the Chiricahua Mountains, and in the evening, the sun sets behind them, turning them into crimson and yellow giants. The view from the back porch is often spectacular, rarely disappointing.

  The man remembers this view. It is a part of his everyday world.

  In the high desert country of southern Arizona, it only rains a few weeks a year, and most evenings, the man can sit on his back porch in his rocking chair and sip his bourbon and watch the sun go down. The horses call to him from the pasture fence, and sometimes he brings them carrots or apples or cubes of sugar. The dogs follow him out to the fence, barking and letting the world know that this territory is theirs. The man likes horses and dogs, but not cats and only a very few people.

  The man remembers the rocking chair; he has owned it for years. He remembers the bourbon; two shots of Jack Daniels over ice is his daily allowance. More than that and he remembers too much. He knows the horses’ names: Cherokee, his old paint horse, and Jug, the Tennessee walker with hooves as large as old milk crocks. He has two dogs, a keeshond he calls Stroganoff and an old mixed breed he calls Dollar.

  And the sunsets and sunrises are never forgotten, each one as beautiful as the last, each one unique.

  But evening memories are tricky for the man. There is something in the long shadows at the end of the day that makes his other memories more elusive, harder to grasp firmly enough to bring into clear focus. It is easier to sit and rock and drink his bourbon and take treats to the horses and talk to the dogs—to do these things every day—than it is to force memories to come.

  Easier and better, the man thinks. Memories are like scars, patterns of life branded by powerful emotions into our minds. He has scars enough. He doesn’t need more memories.

  He sips his bourbon and remembers something he once told his wife. She had a scar on her abdomen from a clumsy surgeon. She hated the scar and said so often. He used to tell her that scars were a proof of life. Signs that you were living instead of dying. Healing instead of wasting away.

  She had said he was full of shit and gone back to cooking dinner. Meatloaf with barbeque sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, and carrots cooked in brown sugar. Coffee with heavy whipping cream and pineapple upside-down cake for desert.

  Those memories were easy, but bittersweet. His wife was dead, and she was going to stay dead. She was only a memory now. A ghost that only he could bring back to life. He takes another sip of his bourbon.

  That was the problem with ghosts, he knew. Some ghosts were only memories, and he could sit here on his porch and think of them or not, as he chose. But some ghosts, some memories, came unbidden, and lately, there was one that came more and more often.

  The man stood up and stretched—his body was old and whipcord lean and it hurt when the barometric pressure changed by more than a point or two, let alone when it rained. He looked down at his empty glass and shrugged.

  The ghost would come again tonight. He knew that. Knew that nothing he could think or say or do would make any difference. He opened the door that led into the kitchen and poured himself another bourbon, picked up an apple off the counter and cut it in half. Opened the fridge and pulled out two hot dogs.

  He’d give the animals their treats first, then come back for the drink. Give the ice a little time to make the bourbon good and cold.

  Some memories were easier to face with a stiff drink on board.

  The second drink would make it easier to remember, he knew that. Would make the ghost—and the past—easier to accept.

  Central Nebraska, Long Years Ago

  The dirt road leading to the farmhouse is barely wide enough for a single vehicle to pass. The track is rutted and ill-used, and won’t be smooth again until spring when the farmer who owns this land will run a blade over it after the spring rains have softened the dirt. The road cuts through a cornfield on either side, and this time of year, the stalks are high and brown and the leaves rattle in the night winds of autumn like papier-mâché wind chimes.

  Cornfields at night are spooky and both of the young men walking the road are doing their best to conceal their fear from each other. They walk closely together and silently, dressed in black clothing and pausing from time to time to listen.

  Halfway to the farmhouse, they stop again. “Are you sure about this?” Michael whispers. “Why the hell would a farmer in the middle of nowhere have that kind of thing?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure,” Jake says. “He was in Second Time Pawn trying to make a deal on ’em.”

  “Why?” Michael presses. “Look at all the damn corn he’s got. He’ll be able to catch up come harvest time, and that can’t be more than a week or two away.”

  “Corn prices are in the tank,” Jake replies. “There isn’t a farmer in the state who isn’t hurting and the harvest isn’t going to save a one of ’em. Bout the best they can hope for is to hang on until next year, and most won’t be able to do that.”

  “And so you figure . . .” Michael’s voice trails off.

  “Look,” Jake says, “he had two gold coins, pretty as you please, with him. He said he had forty-eight more. A total of fifty. Said they were called Double Eagles from the 1800s.”

  “And we’re going to break into his house and steal them?”

  Jake nods. “Yes, then sell them and get the hell out of here.”

  “To where?” Michael asks.

  “West,” Jake says. “Colorado, maybe, or Nevada. Who cares, so long as we can get out of Nebraska?”

  Michael nods. Jake was right. They couldn’t stay here anymore—there wasn’t anything left for them, no jobs, no friends, no nothing. It was as close to the blasted landscape of hell as he could imagine. “All right,” he says. “But let’s keep it simple, okay? No fucking around.”

  Jake grins. “None whatsoever. We go in, get the coins, and get out. Farmers sleep hard anyway. He probably won’t even roll over.”

  “Farmers sleep hard?” Michael asks. “How do you figure?”

  “Ever worked on a farm?” Jake asks. “It’s a ball-buster of a job.” He looks around once more, then adds, “Let’s get moving. I want to hop the train out of Kearney be
fore daylight.”

  Michael nods and follows as Jake continues down the road. Jake doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. Michael is his best friend, his brother, and where one went, the other would follow. That’s what they’d promised each other.

  One night, drunk, Michael had said, “Even to the gates of hell itself!”

  Jake had nodded solemnly. “If only to steal the devil’s pitchfork and tweak his nose.”

  Ranch darkness, desert ranch darkness, is different than any darkness the man knows. Growing up amid the cornfields of his youth, the sky was high and distant, the wind a constant melody of leaves. Here, the sky is so close that stars have halos and moonlight silhouettes the mountains. The wind whispers and swirls. The night is full of ghosts.

  The man leans back in his rocking chair and sips his coffee. Ghosts are the real problem. He knows that as sure as he knows that his ghost will come back tonight. Time does funny things to a man all alone, getting older and remembering. The way those memories will come back, sudden and clear and focused. He had thought the past was gone, behind him and forgotten.

  It wasn’t. And the ghost would come again tonight to remind him. The ghost of the boy he had left behind.

  Looking back, he had been a troubled kid. There was no one at home, not really, and other than get into trouble, there wasn’t much else to do. Mostly what he had wanted was to escape. He dreamed of quiet ranches with horses and dogs, maybe running some stock, going into town on a Saturday night for dinner. It had been a good dream, damn it, and he’d achieved it all and then some. A wife. A family. The angry boy he had once been was no more than a memory now. That anger had been blunted by growing up hard, working hard . . . and trying to forget.

  Long ago, he had thought that if he ran fast enough, far enough, worked hard enough, the past wouldn’t matter. But he’d been wrong. The past did matter and time had a way of catching up to a man. Sooner or later, everyone paid for their sins.

  The ghost was here to pay him back for his sins.

  That much he knew for certain.

  He sipped his coffee again and waited in the quiet. It didn’t matter where he was and the stars were beautiful. He decided to stay out a while longer.

  The ghost, he knew, would find him.

  The farm is silent, dark and from the second floor the sounds of heavy snoring can be heard. Jake grins and whispers, “See what I mean?”

  “That’s a hell of a racket he’s making,” Michael replies. “We could drive a truck through here and he wouldn’t hear us.”

  “Probably not. Now let’s get busy and find those coins.” He looks around the kitchen, which has a small mudroom to one side where they’d entered. “You go upstairs—quietly—and check around the rooms. Save the room where they’re sleeping for last. We don’t want to go in there unless we have to. I’ll check the downstairs.”

  Michael nods and the two boys moves like ghosts through the house. Jake keeps one ear open for the sounds of the farmer or his wife waking up, heard Michael’s near silent steps on the stairs. With any luck, the coins would be as easy to find as the man’s dogs had been to quiet. A handful of soup bones had seen to their friendliness and their silence.

  The house is decorated in a sparse style: old pictures on the walls, a long well-worn sofa and chair with a table in the living room. The television is an old one, with rabbit-ear antennas and probably black-and-white to boot. These aren’t people who live extravagantly in the best of times, let alone now.

  A pang of guilt shoots through Jake’s mind, but there was no helping it. He had to get out of this place. The time of his life, his time, was slipping through his fingers the longer he bummed around and did nothing.

  Above him, the farmer continues snoring and the ceiling creaks as Michael walks carefully from room to room, searching likely places for the coins. Jake finishes searching the main floor of the house and meets Michael coming down the stairs.

  “You find anything?”

  “Nothing,” Michael says. “If the coins are here, they’ve got to be in his room.”

  “What do you mean ‘if’?” Jake hisses. “I told you I heard him talking about them.”

  “This guy doesn’t have two nickels, I bet,” Michael says. “There’s nothing here.” He shakes his head. “Let’s blow this place.”

  “No!” Jake says, grabbing him by the arm. “The coins are here and we’ll find them. We’ll just have to look in his room.”

  “Are you nuts? What if he wakes up?”

  “He won’t,” Jake insists. “Even if he does . . .” He opens his coat and removes the handgun. “I’ll keep him quiet.”

  “Oh, damn, man. Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Got it off a guy,” Jake says. “Now come on and let’s get those coins and get out of here. He probably won’t even wake up.”

  For a minute, he thinks Michael was going to say no, maybe even run away. His face is pale in the dim light, an oval moon with dark, shadowed eyes. Finally, he nods. “All right, but put the gun away. If he wakes up, we split, okay?”

  Jake nods. “Sure, man, whatever.”

  They turned and make their way back up the stairs, feet quiet on the risers, while above them, the farmer sleeps on, unaware.

  Full dark had descended on the desert when the man finally goes inside. He refills his coffee, then steps into the living room and puts another log into the wood-burning stove. Desert nights are cool, but the stove would keep the house warm through the whole winter.

  For a time, he simply watches the flames and sips his coffee, waiting. He knows that if he goes to bed, the ghost will come for him after he falls asleep. That was how it always worked. If he stays up, he’ll be able to confront it head-on, deal with the thing, deal with the past once and for all.

  He leans back in his favorite chair—an old, wooden-armed, heavy-padded monstrosity that he refuses to get rid of—and waits.

  Outside, night birds call hunting cries and occasionally, a horse would neigh or a dog would bark. The wind would sing against the window or over the top of the chimney and echo into the room. He wants this confrontation, he realizes. He’d wanted it most of his life, and he’d avoided it, too.

  On the nights when he’d woken, sweating and afraid, gasping for breath, and his wife would ask him what was wrong, he knew, but he had said . . . nothing. He blamed it on a bad dream or a leg cramp or a noise in the house. Anything to avoid telling her the truth.

  Anything to avoid facing the truth.

  But the truth had always been there and he would lay awake at night and think about it and know that the dream wasn’t a dream, that his past was very much a dead thing, reaching out to touch him, to remind him.

  And then, three weeks ago, the ghost came for the first time.

  The ghost of the boy he’d left behind. An insubstantial shade, a wisp of white in the darkness of his bedroom, but an all-too-familiar shape. His first reaction had been to scream—long and loud, a mournful wail of recognition.

  Night after night it went on, always with him waking as the ghost appeared at the foot of his bed, reaching out its placating hands—which grew more substantial and solid with each passing minute—as if to say, “Why?”

  The ghost wanted . . . deserved, the man corrects himself . . . an explanation. A revelation. A truth.

  The man knows there was no revelation and the truth was a shoddy thing indeed.

  But tonight he would wait. Tonight, he would face the past and put it away forever.

  Jake eases open the door to the farmer’s room one slow inch at a time. Behind him, he could hear Michael’s shallow breath. On the far side of the room, light from a small window shines down on the bed where the farmer and his wife sleeps, wrapped in heavy homemade blankets, their breathing even and calm.

  Without a word, Jake slips into the room and Michael follows close behind. Neither boy speaks as their eyes scan the room for likely hiding places. The sparsely furnished room offers few choices. Two nightstands,
a dresser, and a closet.

  Jake touches Michael’s shoulder and points at the dresser. Sitting on its surface is a large object, a box. Too big to be a jewelry box. The other boy nods.

  They cross the room and Jake stops in front of the dresser. Closer now, he sees that the box is made of old wood and has a simple latch. There is no lock. He grins at Michael and opens the lid. Inside, the coins gleam dully in the dim light. “Bingo!” he whispers. “Let’s go.”

  He picks up the box—it is heavier than it looks—and tucks it under one arm.

  Both boys turn to slip back out of the room when they hear the distinct click! of shotgun barrels. “Don’t either one of you move a damn inch,” the farmer says.

  “Awww, shit,” Jake breathes.

  “We . . . we’re not moving,” Michael says.

  “Put up your hands,” the farmer tells them. “Nice and easy.”

  “We thought you were asleep,” Jake says. “Should’ve been simple.”

  “I fake sleep these days better than I actually sleep,” the farmer replies. He climbs out of bed in a smooth motion. “I’ve been listening to you two creep through my house since you came in the mudroom door. Now put up your damn hands.”

  Michael shivers as he realizes that not only were they caught, going to jail, or going to get shot, but that his dreams of escape, the dreams he had never shared with anyone—not even Jake—were going up in smoke.

  The farmer is still standing next to the bed, the twin barrels of the shotgun pointing at them. He repeats himself for a third time. “Put your hands up. I’m not asking you boys again.”

  “I can’t,” Jake says. Michael feels his elbow nudge him gently in the ribs. “I’ve got the box under my arm.”