The Cauldron

by Jean Rabe

  “Carl?”

  Twitching guiltily, he looked up to see Dave Hatcher standing on tiptoes, looking over the top of the translucent partition between their cluttered cubicles.

  “Hey, sorry,” the other tech writer said with a grin. “Didn’t mean to derail your train of thought, but you look like you could use your morning caffeine injection. Ready to flip?”

  “Always,” Carl said, summoning up a faint smile to hide behind as he stood and shoved a hand into his pocket and fished out a quarter. Hesitating when he saw it was a brand new 1979 coin, he dropped it back in his pocket and pulled out an older, well-worn one. Old habits, he thought with a grimace, remembering how his father had always kept a few shiny coins he used to pay neighborhood kids for errands.

  Rail-thin and three or four inches over six feet, Carl could see across all of the warehouse-like office except for into the boss’s corner cubicle, where the partitions went all the way to the ceiling, or as close as the exposed pipes and ductwork allowed. Despite its size, the office seemed claustrophobically small, filled with its half dozen technical writers and illustrators and one overworked typist, ready to implode and crush the breath out of him. Too long on this job, an out-of-the-way corner of his mind remarked, making him almost drop the coin as he flipped it and slapped it down on the back of his bony hand.

  “Tails,” Dave called. Carl uncovered the coin and nodded silently, almost dropping it again as Dave’s phone jangled. Grimacing, Dave sank back into his chair and grabbed the receiver.

  “I’ll get the coffee,” Carl offered, surprised at the relief he felt, not even sure what he was feeling relieved about.

  Dave nodded, already clamping the phone between ear and shoulder, and Carl went alone to the coffee machine at the far end of the room. As he watched the second cup drop into place a thought pounced, as if it had been lurking around a mental corner: Take a vacation. Start tomorrow.

  Get away from his problems for a while, drive most of each day and stop wherever he happened to find himself, leave behind the nightmares and Shelly and all the rest. Part of him wanted to get up and leave this very moment, to just take off without a word to anyone. Maybe if he could just get away for a week or two, put some distance between he and Shelly, give him time to think things through objectively, he could figure out what the hell was the matter with him.

  He pictured himself driving aimlessly, his spirits began to rise, and for once there wasn’t a pitched battle going on inside. Get rested up, sort everything out, and then, when he finally came back … everything would be better. The nightmares would be over, he and Shelly would work things out.

  “Take a vacation? Take a hike, more likely, if I don’t shape up,” he muttered, waiting for the metallic clunk that would shut the brown stream of coffee off.

  Back at his cubicle, Dave raised an eyebrow at him. “Harry just drifted by,” he said. “Wants to see you.”

  Carl glanced toward the corner cubicle and handed one of the not-quite-steaming Styrofoam cups to Dave. “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Not a word, but you know Harry. You got any idea?”

  Carl attempted a shrug. “Probably the Terrel job.” He glanced at the blank computer screen and the piles of specs and diagrams on his desk and table. “I’ve been having a really shitty week. Can’t sleep. Can’t write. Couldn’t blame him if he fired me.”

  “You?” Dave snorted and took a sip. “Promote you, maybe.”

  “Oh, sure. ‘Congratulations on not finishing a really bad job, here’s a raise.’”

  Turning toward Harry’s office, Carl started to pull in a breath, but it turned into a yawn. Lack of sleep? Or tension? As he walked, a scrap of the nightmare twisted through his mind: Something—several somethings—had reached for him out of the fog. The ghost of a chill traveled down his back. He glanced up. Just walked under the air vent.

  Or someone walked over my grave.

  ***

  Chapter 2

  Harry looked up from a clutter of papers on his desk and wiggled his fingers in a close-the-door gesture as Carl ducked his head and stepped inside.

  “Something wrong, Harry?” As if Carl didn’t know. One day’s work, if that, for five days’ pay this week. And Harry ran one of those proverbial tight ships.

  “That’s pretty much what I was gonna ask you.” His boss smiled as he waved Carl into a chair, but his eyes were serious.

  Carl took a careful sip from his coffee as he sat. “I’ll get the Terrel job done,” he said defensively. “I’ll stay late tonight, come in tomorrow if I have to.”

  “I don’t doubt you would, Carl. But why should you have to give up a Saturday? Any other time, you could’ve done that garbage in your sleep. Two days, tops.”

  And he’d been on it three. Already.

  Carl averted his eyes, felt his heart accelerate. “Sorry.”

  “And that marine radio pamphlet you did Monday—” Harry leaned back with his arms behind his head. “Marston called this morning and chewed me a new one. Said there were damn near as many typos as there were words. And a few downright goofs in the technical stuff, Carl. We can’t afford that.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  Harry waved a hand dismissively. “Brenda already did it. Listen to me, Carl. Everyone’s entitled to an off week once in a while, ’specially when they’ve had as many good ones as you have. But this week is more than off; it’s a dead loss.” He tempered the words with an upward twitch of the corners of his mouth. “Personal problems? Anything I can do to help?”

  Carl shook his head. “If there was, I’d tell you.”

  Silence, except for Harry’s fingers tapping one of the few bare spots on the desk top. Then he leaned forward. “Whatever it is, Carl, you can tell me. It won’t go outside this cube. And it won’t make any difference between us.”

  Carl shrugged uncomfortably, a mixture of fear and irritation gripping him. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping, that’s all. Haven’t gotten more than a couple hours a night, if I’m lucky. Plays hell with my concentration, I guess.”

  “I’ll say. Ever have this trouble before?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Have you seen a doctor? You’re only thirty. You shouldn’t be having this sort of trouble.”

  “Doctor!” The coffee in his hand twitched, almost slopping over the edge. Carefully, he pushed a stack of papers aside and set the cup on the edge of Harry’s desk. “It’s just the sleep, Harry, the insomnia, whatever. I’ll be okay. And I’ll get the Terrell thing done next week. Promise. I know you need it so they’ll come through with—”

  “Look, Carl,” Harry interrupted, “you know I don’t mess with anyone’s personal life. But if there’s something you want to tell me—something you should tell me … Like I said, it won’t go anywhere, and it won’t make any difference. I promise that.”

  Carl swallowed and discovered that his entire body was tingling, as if he’d come down with a full-fledged case of the flu without a single warning symptom.

  Or had been thrust back into his nightmares without even having to go to sleep.

  “If I had something to tell you, I’d tell you,” he said honestly. “But I don’t. I’m just short of sleep, that’s all.” He started to stand.

  Harry sucked in a breath and waved him back into the chair. Carl slowly re-folded himself into it, feeling a surge of cold course through his veins.

  “I didn’t want to say anything, Carl, but it looks like I’m going to have to,” Harry said. “First, one more chance. You’re sure you don’t have something to tell me? About before you started working here, for instance?”

  Catching his jaw about to sag, Carl stared. “What’s to tell? Everything was on my application—”

  “Everything?” Harry held up a smudged, dog-eared sheet of paper. His full name, Carl William Johnson, was on the first line. Age 22—which he had been, then, when he first applied here. Height, 6’5”, weight 150—still about the same, and he was still
being offered home cooking by almost every new acquaintance he made. Single—which he could change if he’d get himself straightened out and Shelly didn’t come to her senses first. The Morgantown address he had lived at for the year after his father died, until he moved here, to a suburb of Milwaukee. The date of his graduation from Morgantown High School—1966. His parents, Warren and Ellen Johnson, both deceased. No next of kin.

  A long silence, while Harry’s eyes locked with his. “I called the places you said you’d worked, Carl. Back then, before I hired you, I called them.”

  I’ve been working here eight years. Why bring this up now? Carl’s heart skipped and his head started pounding, as hard as when he woke up from one of his nightmares. “And?” he managed.

  “For starters, Garland didn’t exist. The other one, Omega, existed, but as far as they were concerned, you didn’t exist. They’d never heard of you.”

  “That’s crazy!” Memories flickered past. The hum and clatter of the old Selectric he’d scrounged from another department. That redhead with the long legs at the next desk. Gus, the supply clerk with a new bad joke every day.

  “That’s crazy,” he repeated. “Garland maybe went out of business, they were having a really hard time, which was why I left after two years, but Omega—” He shook his head. “That’s crazy! You did your checking in the right state, didn’t you? You didn’t look for Morgantown in Ohio or Iowa instead of Indiana, did you?”

  Harry scowled. “I couldn’t find any trace of Garland. Omega’s personnel department claimed there were no records of you.”

  “Two years there, too. They must have gotten my name screwed up.” Carl licked dry lips. “Spelled it wrong, or something.”

  “First thing I thought of,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Tried every Johnson-Johanson-Jonson variation in the book. But it wasn’t just the name that was missing. Nobody remembered you—and you have to admit, a six-foot-plus perambulating skeleton with blonde frizz for hair, not to mention yellow eyes, wouldn’t be all that easy to forget.”

  “But you hired me. Why hire me if you thought I was lying?” And I’ve been working here eight years!

  A ghost of Harry’s grin returned. “You know the kind of ragged-edge outfit I run around here. And the way you translated that sample engineering spec I gave you—Hell, I handed it to you cold, and inside half an hour you handed me back something even a management dimwit like me could understand. No goofs, nothing left out. How could I afford not to hire you? I didn’t care squat that you’d never been to college. And I’d never checked your references then, only now because we’re updating records, putting them all on the computer, and I want to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, not just for you, but on all the employees. But you’re the only one with these … discrepancies.” He rolled his shoulders.

  “So maybe you weren’t who your birth certificate said you were,” Harry went on. “So maybe you hadn’t done exactly what you said you’d done, exactly where you said you’d done it. Maybe you did time somewhere for stealing a car. So what? I know the knack when I see it. And for eight years now my profit margin on the jobs you’ve done has been damn near double what I get from anybody else. Couple of those big jobs that first year made the difference between keeping going and folding up the tent. I put it out of my head—whatever ‘it’ was. Until now. Harry, the company’s investors are going through the records. Gotta clear this up.”

  Carl swallowed hard. “Never been in jail, Harry. I would have remembered getting arrested. I’m not hiding anything.”

  “Well, something is off. So if ‘it’ is serious, if ‘it’s’ causing problems here and now—the way I’m scratching to make payroll, I need to know. So if you’re ready to talk about it, now’s the time.” He paused. “Even if you’re not ready to talk about it, now’s the time.”

  The urge to bolt from the room almost lifted Carl out of his seat. An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Finally, Carl broke it. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about something, Harry. There just isn’t anything to talk about. I didn’t lie on any of those forms.”

  “You’re saying you lost one company and another one lost you? Personnel computers and department heads both?”

  “Hell, Harry, I don’t know!” He clutched the rough cloth arms of the steel-frame chair. “All I know is that I worked at Garland for most of two years, for Omega once, too. Not long at Omega, either. I was moving around a lot back then, transferring in the companies, and I think I was still on probation with at least a couple of the departments when I left. So maybe I didn’t get into their permanent records.”

  “Maybe.”

  Harry’s drawled skepticism made Carl’s mind shy away. He heard his own mouth racing on, “Big places like that, you know how well the honchos get to know the peons. They don’t. First time they lay eyes on you is when they hand out the ten-year gold tie tack.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know it, Harry! You’ve said as much yourself. You said that’s one reason you went into business for the investors here, to get away from all the bureaucratic crap.” Carl swallowed hard again. “I’ll get the Terrell job done, I’ll stay late tonight if I have to. No overtime.”

  “Screw the Terrell job! Look, Carl, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t care who is lying or even what they’re lying about. What I care about is the effect on you. As an employee and as a person. And from the way you’ve been twitching ever since I brought the subject up, I’d say that you’re scared shitless about something.”

  Harry rested his folded arms on the desk. “So here’s what’s going to happen. You’ve got a lot of vacation time coming, and you’re going to take some. Starting now, right this minute. You’re going to use it to get things straightened out, I don’t care how. Go back and find Garland or find somebody at Omega who remembers you. Get a physical—our medical plan will cover it. That’s one thing I don’t cut corners on. See a shrink if you have to, or try one of those detox programs, if that’s it. A prescription for sleeping pills. It’s all covered. Or tell the jerk at the witness relocation program he screwed up with your background. Tell him it takes more than a store-bought birth certificate and a couple generic job references to fake me out. Just do whatever it takes, okay? Come back in two weeks, three if you want.”

  Carl nodded, stunned at this sudden ultimatum, yet weak with relief.

  “And if there’s anything I can do to help, just ask,” Harry added, more softly. “Anything at all. Okay?”

  Carl nodded again. “Sure, Harry. I will.”

  “Okay, then. Now get the hell out of here. Give Dave the Terrell junk and clear out until you’re ready to come back. You’ve got my home number, right?”

  Carl’s head bobbed as he took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime you need to, call. I mean it, Carl. Any time.”

  Carl shuffled slowly back to his cubicle. He put the specs in order, added the half dozen pages of notes and a printout of the boilerplate introduction—literally all he had to show for the past three days—and walked around the partition to Dave Hatcher’s cubicle. “Lucky you.” He dumped the collection on the table behind the other writer. “You get Terrell.”

  Dave spun around in his chair, eyes wide. “You weren’t kidding? He fired you?”

  “Not quite. At least not yet.” Carl took his jacket from the shared coat rack and slung it over his shoulder.

  Dave came out of his cubicle to intercept him in the aisle, still looking surprised and now a little frightened. “What happened? What did he tell you? Are layoffs coming? What did he say?”

  Carl tipped his head as he turned to walk out of the office. “Say? He says that I don’t exist.”

  ***

  Chapter 3

  An inexplicable pang of sadness shot through him as he’d shuffled past all the desks and out the door, waving to the other tech writers as he went. On the sidewalk he faltered, puzzled. Why on earth should he feel bad about leaving this place? It was only temp
orary, a vacation and a chance to clear his head while at the same time clearing up his record.

  Before he got to his car, the feeling had vanished, leaving only a trace of confusion in its wake.

  At home, Carl went straight to the warped and scarred oak desk he’d brought with him when he moved from Morgantown two states away. In the third pigeonhole from the left, a crystal-clear image told him, were two envelopes full of check stubs from Garland and Omega. He’d assembled them for his income taxes one year, but when it turned out he hadn’t needed them after all he of course had swept the whole affair under a mental carpet and never thought of it again.

  Until now.

  Annoyed at his own forgetfulness and remembering a dozen other similar lapses running all the way back to grade school, he hurried to his desk, almost stumbling on the frayed throw rug Shelly had given him to wipe his shoes on after the freakish snow storm that had, somehow, been totally missed by every TV weatherman in the state.

  Beginning to relax, he emptied the pigeon hole, gratified to see there were enough loose papers and ragged envelopes to cover a decade, never mind a single year.

  Minutes later, his annoyance and relief turned into a growing nervousness. The check stubs weren’t there. The envelopes he’d been certain contained them were simply empty. The others were filled with stubs, all right, but they were all from the paper mill that handled Harry’s payroll.

  “Damn,” he said softly, leaning back in the chair. Where had he put them? He hadn’t imagined them. He’d touched them. He’d tucked them away.

  He started at the far left and searched all the pigeonholes again, all the drawers, every possible crack.

  And did it all again, this time reading each and every piece of paper and writing down the dates of every pay stub, wondering if the cut-rate outfit that did Harry’s payroll had screwed up in some way, getting his records mixed up with someone else’s, which of course was even more ridiculous than being completely forgotten by people he’d worked with for years.