But eventually, they would leave.
And eventually was coming. That was why Hammerlock was clearing the yard; the Caretaker was the sort who made up the bed before checking out of a hotel room.
The fallen windmill creaked audibly as Hammerlock pushed it towards the edge, metal blades screeching like nails on a chalkboard. Its agony persisted until the entire contraption was pushed off the edge in a tangle of brittle wood and rusted metal. It fell in silence, and was gone.
“So whose home is it?” Jasper asked.
“It’s no one’s home. Not yours. Not mine. Not theirs.” Then he gave the young man a sidelong look. “Besides, you already have a home.”
Jasper tilted his head.
“Don’t you want to go home, Jubjub Bird?”
Jasper’s eyes widened with interest. “I sure do,” he said. “But I don’t know where home is. I don’t know where anything is.”
“Don’t worry, Jubjub Bird. I know the way home.”
Kreiger gestured towards the fence. A section of the corrugated steel had been peeled away, perhaps by time or wind or vandals who never existed. Someone had used a large sheet of particle board to cover the missing slat, but you could still see behind it, still make out the section of the chain that was cut and pulled out of shape to make a small gap under which someone could squeeze, someone thin and wiry and of a mind to slither in and out of a junkyard.
“From now on, things will seem clearer,” Kreiger said. “You’re outside of my power, but I still have some influence left. You have been privy to the world behind the illusion of reality, and can more clearly see its boundaries, that place where the nominal stops and the phenomenal starts.”
“The nom-in-all?” Jasper asked, still confused.
“Never mind. I’m going to show you the way back to your home and your grandmother. I’m sure you must miss her terribly. I know she misses you.”
“Gramma?”
“Just go through that hole in the fence. Slide the board aside. You remember the board, don’t you? You’re friend taught you how to push it aside so that you could get in and out of the junkyard. Do you remember?”
“I remember. Billy taught me about the board. How you could get into the junkyard behind the board. But … what about …” He lapsed into silence, eyes flicking back and forth as if searching an invisible wall for its secrets.
The sideshow wagon, axles locked with rust, slued sideways as Hammerlock continued clearing the yard. It skidded momentarily then caught and rolled in a slurry of cracks, the clamor of old, dry boards breaking all at once. The Guardian continued pushing the wreckage across the sand until it fell over the edge and disappeared.
“You’d better go, Jasper Desmond. This is no place for you.”
The young man nodded politely and turned, pushing the large piece of particleboard aside to reveal the small hole below the chain link, the worn and flattened path in the dust. Dropping to his stomach, he slithered under and through, finding himself in the undeveloped alley of scrub bordering Benwil’s Junkyard, the ground dappled with shadows from the sunlight through the leaves, the air alive with the droning of cicadas and the raucous calls of seagulls diving for scraps in the dump. Along the fence-line, Jasper saw his bike, whole and undamaged, exactly as he left it.
From where he stood, Gusman Kreiger could easily see the other side of the fence. But where the young man disappeared, nothing emerged. Beyond the chain link fence, there was only empty desert and barren sand. Jasper Desmond was gone.
“Thank you for the ride, Jubjub Bird.”
* * *
“I’m thinking we’ll leave tomorrow,” Jack said, unable to look directly at her. It was moments like these that made him realize he was not so different from the introverted writer ignorantly chasing the vague promise of a lunatic into the vast unknown of the Wasteland what seemed like years ago.
“Okay,” Ellen replied.
“Before we go, there’s something I want to ask.”
“What?”
He felt the words, long considered and oft-rehearsed, slip away into nothing. All he could think to say was the first thought that popped into his mind. “I still remember the first moment I saw you.”
“Hmm?”
“You were on the platform behind the Saloon. The sun was just coming up. You had this look in your eyes; faraway, like you were still dreaming. I actually thought you were some kind of angel.” He looked out across the sand, feeling his face flush, his thoughts fumbling. Then he glanced at her, the way the faded denim of her jeans clung to her legs, the way the loose shirt billowed about her, the light tan on her arms, neck and face, her stunning eyes, tender and determined both at once.
“What did you want to ask me, Jack?” she said gently.
“After tomorrow, everything will change. The choices seemed simple before; uncomplicated: coffee or tea, stay or go, sink or swim. That was all. But after tomorrow, everything opens wide. All of our choices will be ahead of us again.”
“So?”
Jack sighed, and Ellen thought she had never witnessed anything so easy made so difficult. Why was it so hard for him to admit what was so obvious?
Because unlike so many endings before this one, he cannot simply imagine it as he has done a thousand times already, and make it real.
“There’s something about you that makes me … better,” Jack said. “I knew it from the very first moment we met; I didn’t understand it, but I knew it. I don’t really know what I’ll do after this. I only know that I don’t need this place to do it. I only need you.” He scanned about uncertainly. “I don’t want to go back to the way I was before I met you. We don’t exactly have a lot in common. We’re survivors washed ashore on some remote island. After the rescue, there’s nothing to say we can’t just go our separate ways, get back to our lives again and put all of this behind us.” He swallowed hard, wondering how this all seemed to make sense this morning, but now sounded like gibberish. “But I’d as soon stay here as be lost out there alone. I’ve done that before. It doesn’t hold anything for me.”
Ellen drew herself up straight, trying to be serious for him; it wasn’t easy. He could be very intuitive sometimes. Other times, he could be as dumb as a stump. Too trusting and too sensitive. It was like his writing. He wrote from the heart: what he felt, what he knew, what he believed. From the heart. But with matters of the heart, vulnerability was a necessity, dangerous though it was. And she was the one who taught him to fly; she could cut him a little slack. “You would stay here in the Wasteland rather than be without me?”
He nodded, staring out over the edge of reality into the empty blue beyond, and her heart went out to him. “Kreiger was right about that, at least,” he said. “Once you’ve dined on honeydew and drunk the milk of paradise, nothing ever again taste as sweet.”
“I thought that was Coleridge?”
“It is.” Jack smiled. “Funny thing is, I always think of the song by Rush.”
Ellen sighed, mostly for his benefit. “Then it looks like I’m going to have to save you again.”
He turned to her, and found himself captured by her smile: beautiful and radiant and just a bit mischievous. She left him speechless.
“I didn’t come back to escape the other world,” Ellen said. “I came back because of you. From the moment we met, even when I was convinced you were nothing more than a dream, I couldn’t imagine not having you in my life. And I don’t want to.”
Jack leaned forward to kiss her. “Then let’s go home.”
* * *
They stayed in the Wasteland until the sun began to set, the day’s heat giving way to twilight, their contentment marred only by the knowledge that it was short-lived and its like would not be seen again.
They walked back to the Café as the sun slipped below the horizon, the buildings casting long shadows upon the sand. By the time they arrived, the boneyard was gone, dismantled by the Guardian with brutal intensity and fervor, efficiency bordering upon enthusi
asm. Gouging up rails, tearing apart old machines, and dispersing the wreckage to the void; it was a task to which the Guardian was uniquely designed. That he meticulously brushed the sand in the wake of his destructive path was simply an aspect of his machine nature. And when he was done, all evidence of the boneyard was erased, existing nowhere now but in their memories. All that remained was the red pickup, the needle-thin spire of the focal lens, and the hunched form of Gusman Kreiger.
The Cast Out sat with his back to Jack’s reality, still wrapped in the old carnival canvas, staring at a fixed point in the air as though he could still see the fence that once stood there, the chain links weaving from post to post, the sections of rusted tin, the place where the shallow opening existed, a means from this place to another. But if the Cast Out saw anything, it was only in his mind; nothing remained but memories and a name now meaningless, vague furrows in the sand like old scars suggesting something more. Exactly what remained a mystery fast being erased by the Wasteland.
“There’s no going back now,” Ellen said softly, the landscape’s emptiness echoed in her heart.
“No,” Jack agreed.
“Do you wish there was?” she asked.
“No,” he said, realizing that he was the one staring long and hard at the emptiness, the stark whiteness that was once almost alive, his eyes faraway and haunted. She had mistaken his look for concern over the boneyard, but that wasn’t it.
Jack turned and kissed her. “There’s something I still have to do.”
* * *
Hammerlock stood amidst the scoured dust of the Wasteland, staring over the edge, so close that the ends of his feet hung just over the lip, edging beyond the last vestige of reason into the beginnings of madness. Jack came up beside him and crouched down, taking in the robot’s view of the broad, darkening horizon of endless blue. No bottom. No across. Like time and space, it existed without borders or limits. You could almost believe you were staring up at the sky instead of across the void.
Jack heard the soft chirring sound as the robot turned to look at him.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said.
The robot was characteristically silent.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Ellen is coming with me.”
The robot turned back to the emptiness. He could not speak, and Jack could not imagine what he would say if he could. Maybe it was for the best. “There’s no place for you where I’m going. I’d take you with me if there was, but the world I’m going to doesn’t believe in you. You understand?”
The robot simply stared over the edge, no indication that he had heard or could even comprehend what Jack was saying.
“Kreiger will look after you if you wish. If I ask him to, he will. But I understand if you don’t want to stay.” Jack found it hard to talk past the ache in his throat, hard to see the distant clouds. He stood up and walked back to the Café, saying, “Let me know, okay?”
Behind him, the robot remained where he was, staring out over the edge of madness and dreams into the vast unfathomable beyond.
* * *
In the morning, the boneyard was empty. Jack never saw Hammerlock again.
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
With the gray light of new day behind him, the deep indigo of night not yet gone in the west, Gusman Kreiger discarded the worn carnival canvas that had served him these many days, shielding him in Jack’s world, protecting him from the Caretaker’s influence. He dropped it to the barren dust like a lizard shedding a skin, worn out and torn, and walked around the side of the building along the narrow strip of sand between the tangibly mad and the untouchably insane. The Café was still dark, no light but the glow of lonesome machines: the chrome reflected reds and blues of the jukebox, the dull yellow popcorn maker, the brilliant orange neon that burned the twilight with its promise, HOT COFFEE ALWAYS. The rest was darkness. The Caretaker was asleep, his whole world sleeping right along with him. The guardian was gone as well; Kreiger did not see him leave.
He alone was awake.
He stopped on the curb outside of the diner, looking up at the dulled metal, the neon that offered an occasional, listless sputter, and wondered. Had it been long enough? Had the Caretaker forgiven him? Had the Nexus forgotten him? Or was this Jack’s final revenge upon the aged leader of the Tribe of Dust? Bait him in with vague promises, allusions to apathy and yearnings and wants unanswered, only to drop the jaws on him one final time. Kreiger had wriggled free the last time like some snared vermin; gnawing off his arm to be free then congratulating himself with his good hand, patting his own back while he bled freely from the stump.
And Jack was so much stronger now.
In the window of the diner was a single placard of white cardboard leaning against the glass, large blocky letters announcing, HELP WANTED.
How many signs had led him back here, following along like a man lost in the desert, a way erased by dust and time as he searched the stars for vague answers and intimations? There was one step left to take, no other way this could end.
Gusman Kreiger was only dimly aware as he reached for the door that he was holding his breath, hands shaking, eyes shut tight. He pulled open the door, and his feet carried him forward mechanically, a nerve-dead meat puppet, blissfully unaware.
And then he was inside.
Inside the diner.
Inside the Edge of Madness Café.
Inside another Caretaker’s reality!
And he was not dead. Not run through on a thousand barbs of steel, not set ablaze, not vomiting black blood thick with the strings of his own viral-blistered gut. The only thing pressing against him was the hard floor beneath his feet. The only thing touching him was the cold air against his face. The only thing that reached out to him was the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
Kreiger released the air from his lungs, and forced his limbs to relax, to recover from the numb, empty sensation that made them feel like water, like air, like dust in the wind. He was alive. And he was close to the Nexus. Jack had been true to his word. The Caretaker was leaving.
The Caretaker was leaving.
Kreiger reached over to the window and took down the HELP WANTED sign. He carried it with him behind the counter and into the dark kitchen where he placed it in the garbage can before turning on the light.
A long, saurian tail protruded from the walk-in cooler, taking up much of the kitchen floor. It shrugged a little as Kreiger looked down at it, not imposing itself, but not yielding to the Cast Out either. This was not his place yet. Something inside the stove vent scuttled and clicked noisily along the ductwork like some monster crab on a tin plate. But that was all.
That was all.
You’ve got work to do.
Kreiger spied an apron hanging on the wall by the door. He put it on, careful to skirt the enormous tail that lay motionless on the floor. Then he went to the large sink, turned on the water and started washing his hands, paying careful attention to getting the dirt out from under his nails; Wasteland dust had a way of saturating every inch of you. He turned to the stove, preheating the oven and warming up the grill. On the butcher’s block table was an assortment of utensils. He grabbed a spatula and a whisk, found a mixing bowl under the table by the pots and pans.
The breakfast crowd would be along soon, people with long journeys ahead. They would want something to eat before they left.
Kreiger turned to the dark, walk-in cooler and the dragon’s tail, its size suggesting that whatever was attached to the other end was not only too big to fit in the freezer, but too big to fit in the entire Café; even if it hollowed the buildings out and wore them on its back like a shell. Jack knew a thing or two about the limitless imagination.
Gusman Kreiger, leader of the Tribe of Dust, the last of the Cast Outs, survivor of the Wasteland that lies at the edge of all reason and sanity for nearly two-thousand years, walked into the darkness of Jack’s cooler, past the great dragon’s tail. He was looking for sausage and eggs and baking powder, milk and flour and cream of tartar
and all the other ingredients he would need.
The travelers will be here soon; they will want breakfast before they leave.
LONG ROAD HOME
When Ellen woke up, the sun had already risen, light streaming through the room below like a hazy river of gold. It washed over the cement and cinderblocks and metalwork, transforming the garage into a palace of gold, fixtures of polished brass and copper, stately pleasure domes, a heaven through which she could pass but not stay. Beside her, Jack lay with one arm carelessly wrapped around her waist, fingers lightly brushing her stomach, his absent caress distracting her. She turned her face towards him, smiling sleepily, and said, “I guess we should be getting up.”
He smiled back, kissing her softly on the lips. “I guess we should. We’ve got a long road ahead of us.”
She wanted to ask, is it too late to reconsider? But she didn’t think he would understand why, and said instead, “There are things about this place I’ll miss.”
Jack nodded into her head, nuzzling her hair while she nestled glumly in his arms. “Me, too,” he said. He wanted to ask her if she was reconsidering, but he didn’t; he didn’t think she would understand.
They got out of bed like any other couple on any other morning, reluctant but resigned. They showered together because unfamiliar days lay ahead and comfort was taken wherever found.
While Ellen dried her hair, Jack went out back. So little remained of the boneyard now; even the ruined rails had been torn up and cast over the edge, the ground razed until one would have doubted a train track could ever have existed there. All that remained were the memories and the few witnesses who still cared. Anyway, the highway replaced it; as with history, so to it was here. The age of the rail had given way to the asphalt ribbon. All that remained of the yard behind the café was the antenna, a scrap of old carnival canvas already dissolving into dust, and the red truck.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 47