Earthly Worlds

by Billy Wright

  But then an idea came to her.

  Stewart was in the back yard now, working on a knife. He must be in a bit of emotional turmoil to be working out there in the heat of the day. It was so difficult to tell sometimes with him. He kept his emotions so close to the vest he’d be a great poker player if he believed in gambling.

  Liz went outside to him, shielding her eyes against the afternoon glare. “Hey, babe! Just had a little eureka moment. Tell me what you think of this idea.”

  He paused his efforts polishing the blade of a new hunting knife. It looked like wood grain made of mirror.

  “Wow,” she said, “that looks fabulous.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “You know that storage unit full of Gramm’s stuff?” Liz said. Her dear grandmother had passed away almost two years ago, bequeathing all of her stuff to Liz. Across town, there was a small storage unit full of furniture. She had never mustered the heart to go through and dispose of it, it seemed so morbid. Liz had been the favorite grandchild, the most trusted. Gramm and Liz’s mother had never seen eye to eye on anything. Liz put her hands on her hips. “Maybe Cassie had the right idea. Maybe it’s time for me to do something about that stuff. We could have a yard sale next weekend.”

  Stewart scratched his chin. “Not a bad idea. Are you sure, though? I mean, she was a sweet ol’ gal and she really loved you.”

  “I know.” Liz choked up a little just thinking about it, eyes misting at the thought of her grandma. “But if we can empty that unit, that’s one less monthly bill, plus we need the cash. She left me that stuff for a reason.” She had held on to it long enough.

  “Your mom will be...”

  “Furious, I know. But it’s not her call.”

  Stewart smiled a little at that. Her mother had been vociferous, outspoken, and shrill in her disapproval of Stewart. Nowadays, they had reached a sort of detente, but he still nursed a bit of a grudge. It had been Gramm who gave Liz a little elbow and a wink on Stewart’s behalf.

  Liz went on, “How about we go tackle the storage unit first thing tomorrow? I’ll put the yard sale in the paper next week and advertise on the internet. I’ll call the radio station community calendar, too.”

  He nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  ***

  After dinner, the four of them sat around the kitchen table. Stewart dimmed the lights, and Liz lit the candles on the beautiful pink birthday cake, complete with rainbow sprinkles and HAPPY 8TH BIRTHDAY CASSANDRA spelled out in red piping on the top. Cassie bounced in her chair, eyes glowing at the sight of it.

  Stewart wondered if he was feeling as much anticipation as Cassie. He could hardly wait to see her face when he gave her the dolls.

  Liz set the cake on the table before her.

  Cassie couldn’t peel her eyes off it.

  Stewart looked around the room, checking corners, nooks, and crannies for a sight of anything unusual. “Are your friends here, Cass?”

  Cassie looked around. “I went out to their hole and invited them, but they weren’t home.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad,” Liz said.

  “I’ll take them a piece of cake later,” Cassie said.

  “That sounds like a wonderful plan,” Liz said.

  “Let’s do this!” Hunter said. “That cake looks so good. Do you have strawberries and whipped cream, too?”

  “As a matter of fact...” Liz made a voilà gesture at the bowl of strawberries and can of whipped cream on the countertop.

  Both kids looked ready to die of anticipation.

  “All right, let’s sing,” Stewart said.

  “Sing! Sing!” Cassie said, bouncing.

  So the three of them sang Happy Birthday to her, and when it was over, she blew out her candles in one breath, giving a fist pump at her success.

  Liz set about slicing the cake while Stewart produced the sparkling golden bag.

  Cassie’s eyes almost bugged out at the sight of it, little jewels in the dim lights. “What is it?” she breathed.

  Stewart handed her the bag, his heart pounding in his chest. He couldn’t keep from grinning.

  Cassie took the bag and opened it. With a gasp, she looked at him and said, “Two dolls?”

  “Take them out of the bag,” Stewart said.

  Cassie yanked one and then the other out of the bag and sat them against each other on the table, staring at them, unblinking.

  Stewart was struck again by the perfection of their faces, the meticulous beauty of their dresses, the startling depth of the eyes. The old shopkeeper had an eye for wares, that was for certain. Even Hunter’s jaw hung open.

  Cassie stared at the dolls. But she didn’t smile.

  Stewart’s heart skipped a beat.

  Her lips parted and turned downward, lower lip quivering, eyes glistening.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Stewart said in growing alarm, a sick pang in his gut over whether all his worry and angst over the dolls had been for nothing. “Don’t you like them?”

  “They’re...” Cassie began.

  “What, sweetie?” Liz said, glancing at Stewart.

  “They’re just so beautiful!” she said. Then she started to cry.

  “Oh, sweetie...” Liz said, tears and laughter bursting out of her, too, as she hugged the child to her chest, giving Stewart a grin and eye-roll of incredible relief.

  Amid tears and sniffling, Cassie reached out and hugged both dolls to her chest and squeezed them tight.

  “This is my best birthday ever!” Cassie unleashed another gust of crying and sniffling.

  Stewart wiped a tear and swallowed a lump in his throat. He met Liz’s gaze, and she gave him a grin and a heartfelt thumbs-up.

  ***

  The next day, they went to the storage facility, all four of them.

  Stewart rolled up the steel door, revealing the collection of old furniture, boxes, and untold bits of stuff. The size of the task immediately slumped his shoulders. It was going to be a long week.

  Hunter said, “Man, this stuff even smells old.”

  The scent of old furniture, paper, and who knew what else had come wafting out as the door opened.

  Cassie had a doll tucked under each arm. “Mommy, can I play with my dolls?”

  Liz nodded. “Stay where we can see you, okay?”

  “Ugh! This place is boring,” Cassie said, casting her gaze to the ceiling.

  It was just a long row of red-painted doors, concrete floor, and high industrial ceiling. It was boring, but at least it was air-conditioned. Cassie went off a little way and sat on the floor with the dolls.

  Stewart surveyed the contents of the storage unit. It was a 10-by-10-foot unit, stacked halfway to the ceiling. The furniture was too new to be truly antique but too old to be in fashion, with the exception of an old dresser and vanity mirror that Gramm had had from her mother.

  With a sigh, Liz said, “Let’s dig in, shall we?”

  “We can start hauling this stuff home in the truck,” Stewart said. “I can do it during the week, too.”

  Liz let out a deep breath and nodded.

  An hour later, Hunter looked bored out of his mind, sitting next to Cassie, chin in hand, no doubt wishing he had thought to bring some comics to read. The hallway around the storage unit was filled with a scattering of furniture and stacks of boxes. Liz was taking it all pretty well, it seemed. Sometimes she teared up and sniffled, other times she held up something of Gramm’s and said, “Oh, Stewart, look at this.”

  Gramm had been an interesting woman, the daughter of Slavic immigrants. When her husband died, she had traveled extensively on the life insurance money, and brought back boxes of relics from all over the world. Balinese wood carvings, Japanese dolls, a beautiful Chinese embroidered silk dress, an Argentine gaucho’s bola, a Mexican sombrero, kitschy replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of London.

  Some of it might have a little value if they could find buyers for it.

  But then Liz found what
looked like a Japanese jewelry box of black lacquer, inlaid extensively with intricate, mother-of-pearl designs.

  “Wow, that’s pretty,” he said.

  But what was inside made Liz gasp. “Oh, my gosh. Stewart, I think this is gold.”

  His ears pricked up immediately at the sound of that. He’d been hoping all morning they might uncover something of real value to stead them until he could find a real job.

  She lifted what looked like a pendant out of the box. Hanging from a gold chain was a two-inch gold oval, inlaid with silver in a vaguely organic pattern; in the center of the pattern lay a richly colored blue stone. He was no art or jewelry expert, so its origin was beyond him, but it certainly looked like real gold. And he was enough of a rockhound to recognize a sapphire when he saw one. The stone looked like two or three carats. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been hoping to find, but now that they found it, the thought of parting with it didn’t sit well with him.

  “We need to get this thing appraised,” Liz said.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to keep it?” Stewart said. “It’s probably the only thing in here worth real money.”

  “You’re right... Oh, I don’t know!” The indecision twisted her face and she bit her lip. He liked kissing those.

  “I think your mom would kill you if you sold that,” he said.

  “I’m not sure Mom even knows about this, or else she’d have asked me about it. I’ve never seen this before. And I didn’t think Gramm was the sort to collect this kind of thing. Where do you think it came from?”

  Stewart shrugged. “I’m pretty sure that’s a real sapphire. No clue what it might be worth. Depends on the quality of the stone, but maybe a couple thousand dollars?”

  She whistled. “We are definitely getting it appraised.” Then her eyes almost glowed and a grin spread across her face as she looked at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “We’re going to be okay!” she said.

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “No, no, ya big goon. The map!”

  “What about the map?” It was sitting atop his dresser at home beside some pocket change and a bottle of cologne.

  “We’re going to have a little money for gas after this. We have a tiny, little cushion. We can follow the map!”

  “Oh, you’re serious.”

  “Of course, I’m serious. You’ve been in a funk for days. There’s the whole school thing hanging over us.” She lowered her voice and glanced to make sure the kids weren’t listening. “I’m a little worried about Cassie and her little people, to be honest. We need a little road trip, a little fun. It’ll be like hunting for pirate treasure!”

  Her enthusiasm tugged loose a grin on his face. “It does sound like fun...”

  She looked at the pendant again, stroked it with her thumb. “Thank you, Gramm.” Then she put it back in the box.

  That’s when Stewart saw the little man peeking from behind the old, floral-print sofa.

  Stewart blinked and focused.

  The little man was about a foot high, with a little round face, little mutton-chop whiskers, a little black top hat, his expression changing from curiosity to shock and dismay as he realized Stewart could see him.

  Stewart must have made a noise of surprise, because Liz said, “What is it?” She turned to look where Stewart was staring.

  He had looked away for only a split second, but when he looked back, the little man was gone. Stewart jumped around boxes and a stack of chairs to get farther into the space for a better look at where the little man had been standing.

  But there was nothing there. Stewart cast about, looking behind the sofa, behind everything still in the storage unit, but there was no sign of the little man.

  “Stewart!” Liz said. “What on earth?”

  “Thought I saw something.”

  She drew back. “It wasn’t a rat, was it? Or a mouse? I don’t smell any mouse poop...”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Yes, you are. You just don’t want to tell me.”

  There was no fooling her. “I thought I saw a little guy about this high.” He held his palms about a foot apart. “With a top hat. And whiskers.”

  She snickered. “You sure it wasn’t a leprechaun?”

  “You’re right. It sounds stupid.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘curiouser and curiouser.’”

  “No, it sounds stupid,” he said, but even as he spoke the words, they sounded hollow. He remembered that face as clearly as he could see the hideous sofa in front of him. Another thing he was certain of, it was gone now. Somehow, he knew that for certain.

  Chapter Nine

  When Monday came, Stewart loaded both children into the truck for school. They had received no formal notification of whether Hunter had indeed been suspended, so Stewart was going to behave as if everything was fine. Maybe it would all just quietly disappear.

  “Is Hunter still in trouble?” Cassie asked.

  Hunter sank deeper into his seat.

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” Stewart said. “But he’s not in trouble with me.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Hunter said, still sullen and worried, but appreciative. “What do I do if those idiots come after me?”

  “Fart on their head!” Cassie said.

  Stewart looked his son in the eye. “You do what you got to do, Son. But here’s what I want you to remember forever, from now until you’re an old man. Are you listening?”

  Hunter looked him square in the eye. “Yeah, Dad.”

  “Never throw the first punch. You throw the last punch, and only the last punch. No more than that. Do you understand?”

  Hunter considered this for a moment. “You mean never go farther than I need to. If they stop, if they quit, if they give up, it’s over.”

  “Right.”

  “Are kicks okay?” Hunter said.

  Stewart chuckled. “Use the right weapon for the right situation.”

  Stewart walked each of them to their classrooms, Cassie first. Hunter’s teacher, Ms. Mecklenberg, greeted him with a smile and a wave as if nothing had happened. Hunter looked back once at his father, and Stewart could see the lift in his shoulders. With a sigh of relief, he left the boy there and went to the storage unit to begin hauling Gramm’s stuff back home. He would store everything in the house and carport until the weekend. It would take him several trips to haul it all, but he had the time. He also took the sapphire-and-gold pendant to a jeweler to have it appraised. On the drive, he took a moment to really study it. It was indeed a beautiful thing. It looked like there was engraving on the back, some sort of writing, but he couldn’t read it, didn’t recognize any language. It might be just scrollwork.

  When the jeweler gave him the appraisal, he kept his jaw from dropping open.

  That night, when he told Liz the appraisal figure, her jaw dropped open.

  She sat on the couch, clutching her hands. “Wow. I really don’t know what to do now. We need the money, but...”

  He had had all day to think about it. “How about this? Tomorrow I go put it in a safety deposit box. Let’s see how the yard sale turns out, and if we really need the cash, we can talk about it again then.”

  Liz nodded. “The weird thing is that knowing how much it’s worth makes me want to keep it. Is that weird? Gramm left that to me, and I never even knew about it...”

  “Maybe I’ll even have a job by the end of the week,” he said. “Then it won’t matter.”

  ***

  But he didn’t. Between stops in his job search around Mesa Roja, he hauled more of Gramm’s things home. By Wednesday, however, he had exhausted all the employment possibilities he could think of, with nothing on the horizon beyond a few vague niceties like “we’ll call you soon.” Warehouse jobs, construction, all kinds of manual labor, no one was hiring. Truckers were in demand, but he didn’t have a commercial driver’s license. It would take time
and money he didn’t have to get one.

  On Thursday, he started looking more concertedly for work in neighboring towns, a process made more difficult by all the employers who wanted him to fill out his application in person. His truck slobbered up gas like a Saint Bernard at its water dish. Paying for all that gas would guzzle what little money they had left. He was already using more fuel than normal by hauling all of Gramm’s things, never mind that their living room was already stacked halfway to the ceiling with musty boxes and furniture.

  By Friday, he was once again thoroughly disheartened. Worry settled over him like a lead blanket. He told himself that his loss of appetite would help make the food last a little longer, for the sake of the kids. Should he have done something different that day with Mr. Richards? Could he have kept his job? When everyone was home, he spent more and more time outside, feeling the pressure of his inadequacy, his unworthiness, every time he looked in their faces.

  Liz, however, was getting more and more excited. She and the kids were having fun putting price tags on everything. She told everybody at the day-care center about it, even the parents. “Everybody loves a good yard sale!”

  Aside from jeering at a distance, Hunter and Cassie had gotten no more trouble from the bullies at school. Apparently the two boys had gotten the memo about laying off.

  The day of the yard sale came quicker than expected. On Friday night, he brought the last bit of junk home from the storage unit and closed it up. Gramm had been a bit of a pack rat, it turned out, particularly when it came to old magazines. Stewart sifted through boxes of magazines that were older than he was. No silverfish, mold, or mouse nests, luckily.

  Hunter was excited to see the magazines, though. He hefted a full box of old Popular Science and National Geographic back to his room and started reading. Soon he poked his head out. “Hey, Mom, can we keep these? It’s like sticking my face in a time machine.”