by Harvey Click
“We can’t get lost—I have a GPS. And who’s this dark-eyed man? A dark handsome suiter from your past?”
“At the age of seven I probably had few suiters. I suppose it’s possible he’s my father. Maybe he abandoned me or maybe something dreadful happened to him and the trauma of seeing it caused me to lose my memory. And in fact something dreadful did happen the same day I was found. When I was older my parents—my step-parents—told me a young woman had been murdered in her car that very day. She was parked beside a small cemetery just a few miles from where I was found. Rudy, watch the road.”
“Sorry. This is all so strange. Do you think the woman was your mother?”
“She wasn’t. She was just eighteen years old and had no children. The police looked for a connection but couldn’t find any—nobody associated with the woman recognized my picture. The mystery of her murder was never solved.”
Rudy drove without speaking for a while, his brow uncharacteristically furrowed. After several minutes he asked, “Do you think the dark-eyed man could have murdered her?”
“I’ve wondered that. Suppose my father didn’t live in the area but was driving through with me in tow. Did he happen upon the young woman and murder her, and did I run away in terror? Maybe he drove around looking for me for a while and then decided he’d better get away before his victim was found. So he left me behind and drove somewhere far away.”
“A drifter?”
“I doubt it. Whenever I see glimpses of him, he’s always dressed in a handsome suit, not the clothes of a vagabond.”
“Grandma, your life has been pretty happy, hasn’t it?”
“More than happy. Your grandfather was the love of my life, your mother and your Uncle Ted were wonderful children, and now I have the finest grandchildren anybody could possibly want. And don’t tell anyone else, but you’ll always be my favorite, unless of course you get us involved in a serious accident before the day’s over.”
“Then why don’t we have a nice picnic somewhere else and skip the rest of this? What if you find out your father was a serial killer or something like that? Why not let it go?”
“Because the memories, if that’s what they are, are breaking through more and more each day, and they’re making me very uncomfortable. I want to unravel this mystery at last—I want to know who I really am. I want to drive down that road I was found on, and I want to find that cemetery, and I believe it’ll unlock my memories once and for all. I’d rather find out the whole truth, even if it’s ugly, than have it jabbing at me like a needle every few hours.”
She thought she heard a soft sound behind her, maybe a chuckle or somebody clearing his throat. She looked back and saw the dark-eyed man sitting in the backseat. He was smiling.
***
They drove through the hilly little college town of Athens without stopping. Rudy keyed into his GPS the name of the road where Sylvia had been found walking, but getting there took a while because it was a backroad off a backroad off another backroad.
As soon as Rudy turned onto it, Sylvia felt panic tightening her throat and chest. She recognized this narrow, winding road, its gentle green hills and small pastures with cattle or sheep watching as the car drove past. The farmhouses were few and far apart, nestled between the hillsides with old barns and sheds clustered near them, and as she stared at a white two-story house with steep gables she was certain this was where a farmer’s wife had found her. She remembered the woman clearly, plump and plain-faced with a long blue printed dress and her graying brown hair bunched up with bobby pins. She had given young Sylvia, though at the time she had no name, oatmeal cookies and a glass of milk while they waited for the police to arrive.
“Are you all right, Grandma?” Rudy asked. “You’re looking sorta pale.”
“Just watch the road. These curves are steep.”
The road slowly descended into a valley, and at the bottom was a gravel road to their right. “Turn there,” she said.
Rudy turned and had to slow to a crawl to keep the Trans Am from bottoming out in the potholes and gullies. After a mile they’d seen only one farmhouse, a ramshackle place with an ancient John Deere tractor parked beside it. Another mile or so, and she spotted the old church on their left.
“That’s it,” she said.
Rudy pulled into the weedy parking lot, shut off the car and stared. The roof of the small church had collapsed, most of the windows were broken, and the small cemetery beside it was overgrown with weeds.
“Quaint,” he said.
Sylvia got out of the car and gazed at the cemetery. Several large trees grew in it, crowding out much of the light and leaving the tombstones in dusky gloom. The day had warmed considerably, but she felt cold and pulled her cardigan sweater tightly around her. Rudy came up beside her and grasped her arm.
“Grandma, you’re shivering,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“Are the memories coming back?”
“They are, but they’re all a jumble. I’m certain I could see them clearly now, but I’m afraid to look. There’s something…very unpleasant I don’t want to remember.”
“Then don’t try. What good will it do to stir up a lot of nasty stuff? You’ve been happy all these years without remembering any of it.”
“I have to, Rudy.”
“Okay. I’ll walk through this old boneyard with you for five minutes, and then we’re leaving. Deal?”
“Nope. I’m staying here till I remember.”
Rudy sighed and led her slowly through the open gate of the rusty wrought-iron fence, his hand grasping her arm gently as if he were escorting a prom date. Though the year was young the weeds were already thick, with fallen branches hidden among them. Gnarled tree roots had overturned some of the stones, and storms or vandals had knocked over some others. Three crows cawed loudly from a tall maple.
“There it is,” Sylvia said, staring at one of the stones still upright. “George Jeremy Ivers and his wife Marie Harmony. I told you I’d seen this stone in my mind.”
“Do the names mean anything to you? Do you think they’re relatives?”
“No, I think it’s just a stone I remembered. Maybe I was staring at it while…while something awful happened.”
“Your five minutes are up. Let’s get out of here.”
Sylvia allowed him to lead her back to the car, but when they got to it she spotted a few concrete picnic tables behind the fallen church. She pointed at them and Rudy groaned.
“They’re probably covered with bird poop,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I have a tablecloth. I know growing boys are always hungry, and it’s way past lunchtime.”
In fact the tables were clean, apparently washed by a recent hard rain. Sylvia spread a checkered vinyl tablecloth on the one least broken, and she and Rudy cleaned their hands with hand sanitizer before setting out the food. He sliced the ham with a long serrated knife while she assembled sandwiches, piling plenty of Swiss cheese on his because she knew he loved it.
Rudy also loved her homemade potato salad and spooned enough on his plate for two or three people. He washed down a mouthful of it with iced tea and said, “Well, have you remembered enough to satisfy yourself, Grandma?”
“The memories are all in my mind now, I think, but I can’t see them. It’s as if they’re hidden behind a curtain. I can sense them back there, but I can’t make myself look at them.”
“Well, that’s enough for one day’s work,” he said after he swallowed a huge bite of his sandwich. “They’ll probably come drifting back now bit by bit when you’re ready to see them. You’re not eating anything.”
She had nibbled at a corner of her sandwich and put it down. “I’m just not hungry.”
“This has been too upsetting,” he said. “You look pale. When we’re done eating let’s walk around Athens for a few minutes and get your blood moving again.”
She smiled and said, “You just want to see what those college girls are we
aring down here this spring.”
From where she was sitting she could see part of the cemetery past the church. A movement caught her eye, and she saw the dark-eyed man step out from behind the thick maple. He stood beside it and beckoned to her.
“Rudy, I was too distracted by your presence in the cemetery,” she said. “I need to wander around in there for a few minutes by myself.”
“I don’t like this. You’re already too upset to eat.”
“It’s important to me. You need to allow me a few minutes alone and undisturbed, and then we’ll drive to Athens and you can ogle the cuties.”
She got up without waiting for him to reply. The dark-eyed man was still standing by the maple, smiling now, and she passed through the gate of the iron fence and made her way toward him carefully through the weeds and fallen branches.
When she got close to him she could smell his cologne. It was the same fragrance he’d been wearing seventy years ago, a strangely beguiling scent of trees, herbs and something else, something mysterious and compelling, and it triggered memories so sharp they felt like knives in her breast. The pain was so keen she sat down in the weeds and began to sob.
“I won’t do it again,” she said. “Not again.”
The man stood above her, smiling. He hadn’t aged in seventy years, but then he wouldn’t.
“You’ve said that many times before.”
“But I won’t. Never again.”
“It’s your choice,” he said. “As always. But shall I give you a glimpse of what’s in store for you if you don’t?”
With his right hand, he drew a circle in the air in front of her face, and it created a round portal. Through it she saw and heard the misery of the damned.
She lay down on her side in the weeds and wept so bitterly that her throat felt sore, all the horrid memories as clear as yesterday. When she was able to stop, she stood and wiped her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweater. The dark-eyed man was still there, but he was fading back into his own world, and she could see the bark of the maple tree through his vanishing figure. Soon nothing of him was visible except his eyes and his smile.
Rudy was finishing his second piece of cherry pie when she returned to the picnic table. “My God this is good,” he said. “How do you get the crust so crispy?”
“You have to use lard instead of artificial shortening, and you shouldn’t roll it too long or it will get tough.”
“You must have been born with a rolling pin in your hand,” he said. “You’re a culinary genius.”
She began putting food and plates away in the ice cooler and the wicker basket. Her hand trembled as she picked up the long serrated knife and stepped behind him.
***
Later that afternoon a young girl, maybe seven or eight years old, was found walking alone on a backroad toward Athens. She was dressed in nothing but a woman’s long cardigan sweater, buttoned all the way down like a dress. She could not remember her name or anything else.
Luck for Sale
Another door slammed in Bernie Snive’s face. He’d been counting, so he knew this was the twentieth door in a row. Most of his days were unlucky, but this one was even unluckier than usual.
It was getting toward evening, and he decided to pack it in. No point busting his ass when luck was this bad. He was beginning to boil with righteous indignation, and people never want to give you money when you look indignant. He had every reason to be angry—the world was full of selfish bungholes, too stingy to donate a few measly bucks to cancer research. How were they going to feel when they came down with it themselves?
Maybe the cancer trick was wearing out. He decided tomorrow he’d try collecting for food pantries.
His mother always told him he should shake the dust off his shoes after he’d been around a bunch of stingy creeps, because that’s what people in the Bible did, but his loafers looked more scuffed than dusty and he didn’t want to waste the energy. He needed it. He hadn’t earned enough for cab fare, so he’d have to hoof it all the way back to his hood, which was no short distance. His mother, with all her superstitious hooey, might waste her effort shaking dust off her shoes, providing she was sober enough to do it, but he wasn’t that dumb.
When he finally reached his home turf he stopped into his favorite dive and was surprised to find his old friend Joe Boy sitting at the bar. Joe Boy wasn’t seen around these parts very often anymore, and word had it he’d gotten in with some muckety-mucks and was too good now to hang with his old cronies.
But there he was, sitting at the bar wearing an expensive-looking suit and a collection of gold chains around his neck and some big gold rings on his fingers. Life was so unfair, Snive thought. He wasn’t sure he dared to approach such a big cheese, but Joe Boy spotted him and called out, “Hey, Snive, my main man! Lemme buy you a drink. What’s your poison?”
Snive sat on the stool next to him, shook his gold-laden hand, and said, “Whatever you’re having.”
“Hey, gar-kon, a double Scotch over here,” Joe Boy yelled. “And make that your best single malt. So how ya doin’, my good old friend?”
“Eh, you know. Some days you eat the bear and some days you eat bear shit. I hear you been doing pretty good, running with the big boys.”
Joe Boy grinned and said, “Can’t complain.”
“I don’t get it,” Snive said. “You always get the big luck, and I just get the big fuck. I’d sure like to be holding some of your cards.”
Joe Boy gave him a careful look and said, “Tell ya what, my friend, let’s go sit at that table over there in the corner where we can talk more discreet like.”
They carried their drinks to the table and sat down. Joe Boy didn’t say anything for a while, as if he was deep in thought. Finally he leaned closer to Snive’s ear and said, “Snive, you and me’ve been ace buddies just about forever. So if I tell you something big, do you promise to keep your lips sealed up tight as a flea’s pussy?”
“Sure, you know me.”
“Well, if I can’t trust you I guess I can’t trust nobody in this whole damn crooked world. Snive, my man, there’s a secret to luck, and I’ll tell it to you if you promise to keep it to yourself. I don’t want no word gettin’ out on this.” Joe Boy leaned closer and spoke very quietly. “The truth is, amigo, you can buy luck if you know where it’s sold, and I happen to know.”
“So how much is this gonna cost me?” Snive asked. Knowledge usually wasn’t free in these parts.
“Not a penny, my man, not a penny. At least not until you start raking in some good scratch, and even then it ain’t gonna cost you a red cent unless you want to keep on raking it in. Lemme go make a quick phone call. The old man don’t like no publicity, and it’s pretty likely he ain’t gonna want to work with you, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll tell him you’re my special friend, and maybe I can get him to let you in on the deal.”
Snive swallowed his Scotch while Joe Boy went to another corner of the bar and made a call on his cellphone. He smelled a scam coming on, but if it wasn’t going to cost him anything up front, he at least wanted to find out what the gag was.
He certainly could use a new trick. He’d been a small-time grifter his whole life, and the big time always stayed out of his reach. In grade school he’d acquired his classmates’ lunch money with marked cards and loaded dice. As a teenager he’d graduated to three-card Monte, phony raffle tickets, the dropped wallet scam, and the old change-for-a-twenty gag. In his twenties he tried his hand at more elaborate cons, but he didn’t have a flair for them and always came closer to getting arrested than getting rich. His best scam was collecting for good causes door to door, using a variety of fake charity IDs, but this was far from lucrative. Some of his huckster friends were making good bucks with computer scams, but Snive’s computer skill were nil and he lacked the nerve for grand and risky schemes, so by the time he turned thirty he’d resigned himself to the small time, very small.
It wasn’t fair. Other skilled professions had unions
and regulations and teams of lawyers to make sure the workers were properly compensated for their services. The Constitution promised fairness to all citizens, just as long as they weren’t named Bernie Snive.
Joe Boy returned with an excited look. “You’re in, my friend!” he exclaimed. “I had to talk till my tongue was sore, but the old man says he’ll see you. We can go in my car if you want.”
That seemed like a good idea, since Snive had never been able to afford a car of his own. They went to the parking lot out back and Joe Boy unlocked a bright red BMW. It maybe wasn’t exactly new, but it was a Beemer sure as shit.
Snive got in and said, “So what’s this all about?”
“You’re probably gonna think I’m crazy, my friend, but what I’m talking ’bout works, and that’s all that matters. Look at all this gold I’m wearing, and look at this nice BMW. Where do you think all that good luck comes from? You might think it don’t grow on trees, but it pretty much does if you happen to have a friend with the knack.”
Joe Boy explained that the friend was an old man who knew black magic and could sell you good luck just as easily as a baker sold you bagels. Snive didn’t believe in superstitious hooey like magic, but he believed in BMWs and gold rings, and he believed in luck. He believed luck was a substance sort of like air: you couldn’t see it but you needed it to live. Some clowns got all the luck they could ever need while some others had to gasp for it like men sealed in an air-tight vault. You could deal some gamblers bad hands from a stacked deck and somehow they always ended up with full boats or better. They were blessed with that wonderful invisible substance, like some good fairy had touched them when they were little, and even if Snive didn’t exactly believe in magic he knew this substance existed and figured a person with the right knowhow could maybe control it the way air conditioners controlled air.
Besides, he’d been promised this wouldn’t cost him anything up front, and there wasn’t enough money in his pocket to worry about being robbed. Joe Boy parked in front of a rundown house in a bad section of town, and Snive wondered aloud why a luck-maker couldn’t make himself enough luck to afford better digs.