Absent Company

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  Winter reached in, lifting the curtains of bunting high towards the ceilings. Charlie fell to the floor as something warm and cinnamon-smelling moved through him from behind. A cold wing scraped his back as Krampas leapt over him, ice nails scraping at the ceiling as he flew desperately for the door. Krampas disappeared there, his screeches blending with the raw sound of the wind, the wave of sweetness fast on his heels, chasing him away. His mother had done what she could for Ellen. Now, finally, she had taken care of him.

  Like a gift, the warm sweet smell lingered until morning, until Charlie Goode could close up the farmhouse a last time, at last prepared for the Christmas trip to his daughter’s home.

  Among the Living

  It’s not uncommon to believe yourself awake when you are, in fact, sleeping. Far less common is to believe yourself sleeping when you are, in fact, awake.

  Eric was aware of Marie’s fingertips on his back, gently insistent. This was the way she always awakened him, and it never failed to surprise. He didn’t know how she did it—the gesture was so gentle, evidencing her reluctance to wake him, knowing she must, and yet her touch still managed to bring him out of sleep, even when alarm clocks and telephones failed him.

  He fought his way through a hazy porridge of sleep and dream and bladder urgency to open his eyes. And saw no difference. He blinked away at the dark, nervous and confused until a vague halo of gray made an outline of the dresser by the window. It was the middle of the night. Marie pressed herself against his back, the warmth of her like a hot meal, the smell of her pushing the sleep out of his head.

  “Something’s wrong,” he stated softly.

  “The phone’s been ringing. You should answer it—it’s your brother … or your mother.”

  He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t answered the phone because she never answered the phone. It didn’t even occur to him to ask how she knew it was his brother or his mother. As long as she had been with him, his brother and his mother had been the only ones who had ever called, and those calls had been rare.

  Awake now—a spreading headache clear and convincing evidence—he stared in the direction he knew the phone to be. He almost expected it to glow from the heat being generated at the other end: a Carolina farmhouse hundreds of miles away, home to just his brother and mother now, who never slept. Who were too busy, possibly, with their late-night fights, their all-night dramas, to sleep. Too crazy, certainly, to sleep. He stared and waited for the phone to ring again, then felt silly.

  He pushed up on his elbows and felt with regret Marie fall away from him. He would let her sleep. She enjoyed sleep, more than almost anything. Sometimes it seemed the only reason she even bothered to stay awake was for him. That was an embarrassingly self-centered notion, but he felt in little danger of accidentally revealing that perception to anyone. Who would he tell? The man who slept all covered up like a greasy pile of rags in the entranceway of their shabby apartment building? The nameless driver of the bus he rode to work each day? Maybe someone in his office, where he’d sat and eaten lunch alone every day for the five years he had been there. Like so many other things he considered, daydreamed over, worried at during his waking life, this seemed highly unlikely.

  He reached out into the air the color of dull metal and found the phone immediately, anticipating him like some faithful pet. He brought it into his lap and stroked it, then pried loose the receiver and held it to his ear, half expecting their voices to be waiting for him. Just to make sure he listened carefully to the unsteady modulation of the dial tone. He still found he could not be sure, but his fingers began dialing the number anyway.

  Eric was aware of the receiver in his hand, smaller than he would have expected, hard and narrow like some animal’s leg bone he had grabbed to prevent its escape. Had he fallen asleep again? He tried to figure out which end held the creature’s mouth, found it on his first try.

  “Did you hear what I said? You’re not saying much.”

  His brother’s voice. Eric felt a rush of embarrassment. Obviously he had fallen asleep while talking to Jim on the telephone, no doubt about something important—Jim had never called just to chat.

  “I’m having a little trouble with the connection,” he replied. “Maybe you should repeat … that last part.”

  “I said the doctor doesn’t think further treatment’s going to do her much good. The best he thinks he can do is make her more comfortable. He says she doesn’t have to suffer.”

  Jim’s voice was so soft the static began to swallow it. His brother might have been talking about a dog or one of the horses. They never talked about Jim’s life—Jim didn’t really have a life. And Jim had never asked about Eric’s—Jim didn’t even know what Eric did for a living.

  “It’s good she won’t have to suffer,” he said, because that’s what sons are supposed to say.

  “She’d like you to come visit.”

  “She would never say something like that, Jim.”

  “No, but I know she would. You have to say goodbye.”

  “Nobody said goodbye when I left the farm.”

  “That’s because you practically snuck out of the house.”

  Eric thought that might be true, but what was the point now? “I understand,” he said, lying.

  “You’ll come.” It wasn’t a question.

  “You’ll see me there at some point.” It wasn’t an answer.

  There was no answer back from the other end. Eric waited for it, but there was no click as the phone hung up, just that hollow silence of an open long distance line. “Jim?” He waited, and hearing nothing more dropped the receiver into the cradle.

  He reached behind and patted the bed. Found nothing and turned. Marie wasn’t there. She had a habit of getting up in the night, at random, to take long walks, to visit friends he’d never met, to meditate in some out of the way place. Another man wouldn’t put up with such absences, but he’d never been particularly concerned with what other men might do. What had they ever done for him? He had no friends, except Marie. He and Marie had their own world. Their own physics. They had occasional contact with visitors from outside that world, but Eric wasn’t about to let those visitors dictate internal policy.

  Of course her absences bothered him, whatever her explanations. She was all he had.

  He grabbed the sketchpad by the bed and began drawing her face. He had limited artistic abilities, but he drew to relax, to simplify the confusing swirl of impressions the world sometimes became for him. But he had yet to produce a portrait of her that satisfied him. Her eyes alone remained unchanged from picture to picture, calmly appraising him as she waited for him to get the details right.

  “That’s a good one,” she said behind him.

  “I thought you’d gone out,” he said. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I’ve been here. I just wasn’t sure you’d have time for me.”

  “I always have time for you. Why would you think that?”

  “Your mind was on other things.”

  “Just temporarily. There’s something I have to take care of at home.”

  “This is your home. Our home.”

  “Oh, I know. I know. At my mother’s and brother’s house. She’s dying.”

  “She’s old. You knew she didn’t have that long. You always knew she would. Die.” But Eric didn’t know that at all, not really. He’d never imagined a time his mother would not be there, still in his ear even after he’d run here, hundreds of miles away.

  “You could come with me,” he said, not expecting an answer, and not getting one.

  Eric found it odd that the landscape unrolling outside the bus windows sparked no recognition in him. Certainly there was enough distinctive about it that at least one feature should have made a lasting impression. Particularly since the bus route seemed to avoid the interstates in favor of main streets and older scenic drives. Almost immediately out of the city the bus had twisted its way up a series of wooded ridges, and then they traveled through troughs blasted out
of solid masses of rock the gray and yellow of neglected teeth. Mid-afternoon found them dropping steadily through old towns whose residents were apparently so bored they stopped whatever they were doing to watch the passage of a commercial bus. Early evening had them dropping further still, into green so lush it appeared unnatural, and Eric imagined a vast platform erected over a primordial wood, and their bus falling through the rotted floor, a toy for the dinosaurs.

  He laughed aloud and turned to tell Marie of the silly dream he had just had. The old woman across the aisle stared at him unsmiling, then turned her face to the window.

  He blinked and looked back out his own window. A field full of cube-shaped and flattened rock spheres, boulders of various shapes, like the aftermath of some disruption, or houses worn down to their roots, or pruned purposely so they might grow back healthier.

  Still nothing he recognized, and now he was feeling desperately anxious about it, that particular anxiety you felt when you dreamed of arriving for the test you did not know about, or showing up for that important job interview naked. He had no idea where he was, and he’d promised his brother he would do the right thing, stand dutifully by him as their mother faded away into nothing but a bad memory.

  To his own surprise he found himself standing up in the aisle, gripping the seat backs, taking a last look out the windows on each side in an effort to find something familiar before he made a fool of himself.

  He could have been anywhere, and first he asked the old woman across from him to confirm their scheduled destinations. She would not even turn to look at him. So he tried the sleepy-looking gentleman in front of her, who slurred his way through a list of town names, one of which was Eric’s home town, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of the others, or at least had never heard their names pronounced this way. So he tried a younger woman a few aisles up, dressed smartly as if on a business trip, which surely was unlikely for someone on a bus. He calmed himself, not wanting to make her uneasy, and said, “Pardon me, but do you happen to know if this bus goes as far as Millerville?”

  “Every day, I imagine.” She smiled. “Although I’ve never been there myself. Is it nice?”

  Eric stared at her, thinking, until he saw her smile begin to fade, her eyes turn curious. “I don’t know. There’s always somebody around to say any place is nice, I suppose.” He laughed, and heard for himself he was being a little too loud, tried to lower his tone and heard himself sound strangely emotional. “I guess there was that one guy on Devil’s Island talking about how it was so damn convenient to everything and such a fabulous place to raise kids.”

  The woman’s smile did not change, but Eric saw her hand reach for her purse. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I think I’m getting a little sick from the ride.”

  Instead of returning to his seat he continued on to the front, eyeing the back of the driver’s head as he swayed. Once or twice he accidentally grabbed someone’s shoulder or arm to steady himself. He’d apologize profusely, but even when a couple of people told him he wasn’t supposed to be up on the moving bus he steadfastly made his way toward his destination.

  He tried to fight off the suspicion that these people had lied to him about the eventual destination of the bus. This made absolutely no sense—they seemed like perfectly nice, perfectly normal people—more than he could say for himself right now.

  Finally he reached the driver who, clearly annoyed, told him, “Sit down, Sir, or I will be forced to put you off this bus at the nearest intersection.”

  Eric gazed at the flat gray ribbon before him. The road seemed to be taking a direct route through a vast pasture of yellow and green grasses broken by clumps of tiny blue flowers. No sign of towns ahead. Certainly no signs of intersections.

  “I am sorry,” Eric said, staring at the road. It seemed suddenly, heartbreakingly beautiful. He thought about that scene with Dorothy and her friends coming out of the dark woods, and how beautiful the fields were that surrounded the Emerald City.

  “There are people on this bus anxious to get to their destinations, people who have traveled much farther than you have, Sir, and they deserve a peaceful journey, don’t you think?”

  “Well, of course.” It was troubling that apparently the driver had kept track of when he’d gotten on the bus. “I just need …”

  “I can’t discuss this with you any further until you sit down.”

  Eric looked around. There was an empty seat immediately behind and to the left of the driver. He took it. The man next to him paid no attention. He had his hat pulled down over his face. Eric suppressed the urge to jerk the hat off the man’s face to see what he looked like.

  “Yes, Sir. You had a question?”

  Eric looked up into the rear-view mirror. The driver’s eyes appeared huge. They were crowned with thick eyebrows that rippled ever so slightly when the driver spoke. “I’m afraid I might be on the wrong bus,” Eric said, voice breaking.

  The large eyes fixed him. Eric noticed a subtle tic in the right one. “Why would you ever think that, Sir? There aren’t that many buses this time of day, you know, going in this direction. Maybe you just have some reluctance about making this trip.”

  Eric stared at the driver’s tic, at the small gray shadows that passed across the white of the eye, that appeared and disappeared. “I’m not sure,” he replied.

  The driver blinked. “That’s a strange thing to say.”

  “It’s my mother, she’d been very ill.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Sir. But see, I believe we have uncovered the origin of your reluctance. You’re on the right bus—you just don’t want to make the journey.”

  “Look,” Eric said, suddenly extremely tired, suddenly feeling as crazy as this bus driver made him out to be. “I just need to know if this bus goes to Millerville.”

  The driver’s eyes wandered a bit to look at the road. The headlights went on, and Eric realized things were quite a bit darker outside since he’d first gotten out of his seat. “Sometimes,” the bus driver said.

  “Sometimes? Is it on the schedule or not?”

  “Of course it’s on the schedule. It’s just that we don’t always go that far. What if nobody has a ticket to Millerville? It’s not exactly a vacation spot, but you must already know that. If nobody has a ticket we turn around in Claxton, that’s twenty miles this side of Millerville.”

  Eric had never heard of Claxton. “Is Claxton new?”

  The eyes were back on the road, looking shadowed, and unless Eric was mistaken, slightly troubled. “I guess it’s new if you’ve never been there before.”

  “I guess I’ve just never heard of it,” Eric said.

  “A lot of people never heard of Millerville, either. This isn’t our most popular route, as you should be able to tell by all the empty seats.” The driver began turning the steering wheel. Eric looked out the windshield at the gentle, downsloping curve of the road just forward of the brilliant cones made by the headlights. Down. How far below sea level were they by now? No point looking for any more landmarks—the curve took them into darkness. “Look, Sir. You have a ticket to Millerville, so I’m taking you to Millerville. I don’t know what more to tell you.”

  Just stop it. There’s nothing to be done about it anyway. He got up, ignored the driver’s stern admonition to “Remain seated!” and made his way back to his original seat. Might as well enjoy the ride. Which he attempted to do, trying to appreciate the newness of the experience, rather than to worry over the unfamiliarity of the landscape they were passing through.

  Eric tried to imagine he was headed for a vacation in some new, exotic locale. He often fantasized about vacations—he had never actually taken one, unless you counted that weekend fishing trip with his dad a month before the man’s death. Eric had been thirteen.

  He happened to glance out the window as the bus’s headlights picked out a glimpse of something he vaguely recognized: a row of barns with faded red roofs—he believed the red had been much brighter at one time, but n
ot the bright red he might have wished for when he was a kid.

  This did not feel like a memory, exactly. More like an impression from a painting he might have seen in a museum—something in a faded gold-leaf frame, centered on a wall the color of early morning sky. Or perhaps a scene in a book he’d read when in high school, back when he’d read so many books, each one a ticket for a bus to someplace where there’d be people waiting for him.

  But he managed to convince himself that this was a thing he remembered from his past, convinced himself he was heading home, whatever that might mean, headed in the intended direction, though not necessarily the correct one. Back to the farm and weird old brother Jim. And Mother.

  The bus obviously had more distance to go, though he did not remember the trip being so long. In fact the trip away from the farm had seemed a matter of a few brief naps, the bus rocking through curves as if maneuvering gentle ocean waves, the trip quickened with each nervous exhale of breath, as Eric had tried to rid himself of anxiety in preparation for his new life.

  The other passengers got out the dark blue blankets that had been provided for them, pinning their heads to bright white pillows the size of sandwiches, the blankets covering them like dark layers of sod, their terra cotta faces floating serenely above, the occasional car-light glint off watch faces, jewelry, and glasses the only source of illumination other than the driver’s map light.

  And why would he need his map light on? Eric wondered, then forcefully put his doubt away, hoping he might forget it completely.

  Everyone here, he thought, was headed for some small destination, and there were so few places in this direction between the city and the coast it only made sense that some might be headed toward the handful of towns that surrounded Millerville if not Millerville itself. Towns besides the mythical Claxton—towns he might have visited as a child, even though his family had traveled very little. Mother was never inclined toward travel. And it made a kind of hopeful sense that there would be someone on this bus he had known from his life before, whom he might recognize if only he looked closely enough, and remembered back, and compared.