Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  His face quivered. Bunch watched sadness, disappointment, fear, tears, joy, anger, triumph run through the quivers.

  “There’s more, you see? He’d become addicted! To life. A drug, it was!

  “Then, suddenly—really, like/that!—tens of thousands of years slipped by and, now, it’s almost time to be born. And he doesn’t know, our traveler.” He looked into Bunch’s eyes. “For the first time in forever, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe it’s Forever at last, the dark at the far end of the mirrors. Maybe not. Point is, I do not know.

  “He has suspicions. Over the thousands of years he thought. About It, the monster. Time. Him. He that is to come in my place. I’ve come to some conclusions.”

  Clifford was still standing where he had when he’d risen from the rocker. Bunch squished back and forth, then stopped dead in the freezing muck not wanting to upset his guest.

  “You have no idea, do you? Who you’re talking to?”

  “Ain’t you Cliffy?” Bunch ventured.

  “Shh!” Clifford said. “Fathering children, finally, being absentee dad to a burgeoning species, and, well, it gets under your skin. First it’s about the tingle. Then, it’s about... Well, about responsibility, I suppose. Addicted to life and all. And knowing your kids are going to die and you? You’ll just keep going, well, you start thinking you should leave instructions. Something the kids can carry with them through their little lives. You write a bit and leave it scratched in rocks or pressed into clay or on papyrus, you hide and whisper it but that’s not enough. You feel you ought to leave it where it’ll stay.” He tapped his head. “Up here. In the kids’ minds...”

  He let out that silly little chuckle again.

  “Do you know who I’ve been? Do you know who the world thinks I am? Don’t answer. You do. Don’t say it! The animal who vanished. The guy who went ahead. I who went back. We’re all the same. There’s so much I have to say and now’s my last chance to sayitandi’mhereandcan’tgetitoutandyou’re...

  Bunch had about as much as he could take. Polite or not, he was a working guy. He stretched, yawned. A touch of light showed through the fog. Cripes, he thought, it’s morning?

  Clifford mouth kept working but only squeaky wheezes came out. He looked upstream, toward where the town would be if anyone could see through fog, darkness, trees, and distance. Maybe he could in those last moments. Who knew?

  Something was coming. Bunch felt it. Couldn’t see it, but it was coming on the light.

  Nah, Bunch figured, too early for sun-up.

  Clifford chattered like a loose fanbelt.

  “I can throw another log on the fire?” Bunch asked. Truth was, he felt a little chill, too.

  The stranger spoke, but Bunch had stopped listening. Fact was, Bunch couldn’t understand a word. Cliff’s mouth was a blur, speaking whole books in seconds.

  By the time Bunch had tossed another good log on the fire, the light from upriver had gone damn-near day-bright. Peculiar, but Bunch was used to peculiar.

  Cliffy was almost transparent with the shakes.

  “Need anything?” Bunch asked, fairly certain Cliffy wouldn’t.

  In less time than it took the log to catch, Cliffy had half-way risen off the ground. The frozen mud under his feet churned then hissed. In a couple more seconds, he was spinning off toward town – right across the water, then along it. He left a trail of steam and tore a hole in the ice, the water, and the light.

  A thunderclap followed. Nothing big, just a little local thing. Rolled hardly more than two, three bends of the river, Bunch figured.

  When Clifford had gone, darkness poured out of the light, a wave of night came in a rolling torrent like a busted dam. When it passed, Bunch kicked the log out of the fire. Time had gone warm. Good log. Save it for cooking, Bunch figured. Spring’s here!

  At the Eats, Bunch nursed his breakfast. When Vinnie showed up and sat next to him, like always, the big guy looked beat. “’Kay, well, that’s that. I delivered Mrs. Dorbler’s kid last night.” he said. “And that ain’t my job, for cripes sakes! Karl too cheap to call the Doc down in Cruxton and her damn near 90. You know that?”

  Bunch nodded.

  “And old Egil Dorbler acting like he’s a first-timer, too.”

  “Cripes,” Bunch said.

  “And that thunder? The kid drops out and WHAM! One clap and no more. All peculiar.” Vinnie gulped a swig of coffee. “Well, mom and son are doing. Well, they’re doing okay considering.”

  Bunch nodded.

  “And you know? You’ll never guess what they’re going to call the kid.”

  Bunch took another suck of lousy coffee. What the hell, spring was almost there. Life could be worse. “Clifford?” he said.

  “Yeap,” Vinnie said.

  Chapter 22

  LONG THOUGHTS

  Sun up? Hell no! Stupid sun! To the patch and back, all in the black! she figured, THE way to Goddamn ‘shroom: Take the long haul!

  Leslie B. Fritz, scrambling up the bluff – screw the road – night still covering the town. And thinking as she scrambled: Leslie B. Fritz? Wanted this, needed that, and now?

  Okay, now she was off to her morel patch, but in the tediosity of life in bulk? There she went: sneaking after one more something else! Going to be – once upon a Goddamn time – a hotshot reporter, knowing, wise, ruthless, loved, and famous. Then: one night a witch dances naked and, whoa, there goes life, into the cow-flop! Leslie’s to-and-fro life of adventure and peril, the yearned-for distant wars, the terrible injuries, the great and beautiful scars she’d earn, endure, and show, the terrible tales and sweet memories she’d pass to the millions and to the hundreds of grandchildren who’d come later, later, much later, the history she’d carve into the old world’s forever? Where was all that?

  Oh, tossed aside. Ta-da!

  For what?

  For shut UP! she yelled at the inside of her head. Criminies! climbing this familiar way left too much time to slip-slide around inside her head.

  All her gonna-be’s trashed for... Leslie wouldn’t say what!

  Hell yes she would! “I’ll tell YOU,” she yelled at the rocks and dirt, “Gonna be a witch!”

  The words hung on nothing and were gone as quick as said.

  “’A sister of the old wisdom.’” Phau! “Strega’s apprentice!” Phooey! “Cristobel’s mouse is me!” she said, to the creepers and mosses, “The witch’s cat!”

  She could see them...just see them! Cristobel’s lidded eyes looking aside and down her nose: “That may have been anything...may have been of Roy’s urging.”

  May have what? Roy’s huh!? Screw you lady!

  Flush it all! All her damn dumb life before Eugene Roy! All her stupid little life before Cristobel! Flushed for mumbles and squints at the underbelly of the world. Her history-to-be given up, exchanged for what?

  And screw you Eugene Roy! Go sell beer and doggie food! Well ‘Shrooms are real. Morels, cripes, are here and now!

  She hauled back and kicked the whole damn stupid earth! A patch of spalls slipped beneath her sneaks and she scampered in place before she flopped on her elbows and chin. She slid a body-length before she caught a creeper and saved her stupid life.

  Damn spalls. Rotten creeper. Leslie B. Fritz? Pissed at self, flat on face, jeans of grit.

  She half-stood, half-leaned and caught her breath. Was she scuffed. Did she bleed? She in-snorted, swallowed. Salty. Thick. Could be blood, maybe snot.

  Okay. She was quote learning unquote. Well, Christ, okay! She was. She was learning stuff: stuff from Cristobel. And, okay, she was doing something: finding the Way, feeling how the world was held together. On the inside! She was learning the touch from the Goddamn mother’s heart of it. Soon she’d be...

  Be what? Be powerful so nobody’d make fun of her! Leslie B. Fritz? No more the butt! Not ever!

  Cristobel’s patience: “Ah, see: the power of the Way descends from knowledge.”

  “Can’t you just whatchacall? Invoke
the whatever? Say the words! Like, ‘Cadabra yadda-yadda, you’re a toad!’”

  Cristobel’s patient Goddamn smile: “The practitioner understands: the power is not in the words. The art is in the woman. You and the knowledge must be one.” She gave another of her ‘I know and you don’t’ smiles. “Knowledge is the seed. You are the earth. When that is clear, you’ll know what you can do, know what you may do, and,” Cristobel stared through Leslie, “and what you must not do.”

  “So this is like school?”

  The smile again. Cristobel touched Leslie’s head. “Knowledge, begins, yes, with books: through the eyes, the ears, first! Then – and more important – It settles here.” Cristobel touched Leslie’s chest, “It becomes knowledge of self.”

  “Oh cripes. Okay.”

  Cristobel had tipped Leslie’s face by the chin. Their eyes met. “The Strega’s gifts derive from the world; past, present and future. All things that move within the world generate the strength the Strega focuses, aims. It must flow through you. You wield it only when you have mastered yourself.” Cristobel squeezed Leslie’s hands.

  “‘With great power comes great responsibility?’” Leslie said.

  “Yes,” Cristobel drew out the word.

  “’Use the Force, Les!’”

  Cristobel stared.

  “Like in the movies.”

  Cristobel stared.

  Maybe because she wasn’t Italian? In books the Strega was always dark, cool, kind of sexy. Leslie B. Fritz? German witches were bug-eyed and warty. Gaak.

  To-date, Leslie’s power – demonstrated – was a one-time-only pop fly she’d hung in shallow center field. That was it! And the ‘Birds didn’t even win the damn game!

  So, okay. There was that.

  And she had her mother-great ‘shrooming patch up nobody’s-business-where which she’d had as long she could remember any-stupid-thing from long-ago-before so that wasn’t at all demonstrative of the Goddamn Way or had nothing to do with any powers that flowed in, through, or out her butt or anywhere else! So there!

  Her breath was back and she looked toward the top of the bluff.

  “That baseball?” Cristobel had said.

  “My hanger?”

  “That. See, it may have been anything. A thing derived from another source entire.”

  “My ball!”

  “...may have been your friend...”

  “Roy!?”

  “Roy, yes. The event may have been of Roy’s urging!”

  “My hanger? Roy’s doing!”

  “His urging, hmm. Strange boy.”

  “Jesus Christ! All Roy does is...is...is...” Took her only four stutters and she gave up the solemn secret she and Roy shared since their first hour together. “All he does is see stuff!”

  “Stuff?”

  “Monsters, outer-folks, critters and crap nobody sees and stuff.”

  She hated throwing up the secret but, cripes! Not enough that he saw! Crimminies! He had whole world of monster and phantasm critters that drooled all ‘round him and now he gets credit for her...

  Cristobel’s right nose hole had flared, an eyebrow arched. “Yes,” she said, drawing the word in that way she had that always made Leslie work at not rolling her eyes! “Yes. Eugene Roy may have been the impulse toward that.” she’d said.

  “My Goddamn miraculous hanging fly!”

  “The ball in the sky, yes.”

  “His!?”

  “Could be.” She’d said.

  Leslie crested the rise. She kicked a morning-damp tuffet. Damn tuffet! Above the valley, the sun was peeking. Stupid sun! It squeezed flat over the far bluff and puked red dawn over the fields. Night dissolved. Gloom oozed away. She watched the lousy shadows. Nothing moved in all the world but the friggin’ sun, night’s edge, morning pie smoke from the Eats, and her, Leslie B. Fritz on top of the bluff – and she hardly twitched for watching.

  No one had followed.

  Best not!

  She kicked out along the ridge past the muddy ruin of Karl Dorbler’s “Karlton”. “Gaak,” she said; fired two magic fingers at the half-dozen lived-in houses. “Pow, pow, ka-pow!” she said over her shoulder, and rolled up the mostly empty streets, filled in the half-dug foundations of Karlton.

  Nothing happened.

  Dorbler’s folks’ place was just down the road. Old house. Old, old people and a growing baby nobody knew the where of. Stupid baby, but something to think about! she reminded herself. She walked and thought. Soon she wasn’t thinking. Soon every part of the world – town, river, school, ballpark – had passed below in early light.

  Above the dam, casual, she stretched herself by parts like joggers from the cities did. Twisting, she peeked a sneak over her shoulder: the path back was empty. Always was! She stooped – maybe to tight-up a lace, shake a stone from her shoe maybe – then, a quick tuck, a practiced roll and there went Leslie B. Fritz: butt-scudding down the mud and willow-fuzzed way. She dodged the patch of spiny furze and slipped into the cool tangled damp of the trees. From where she lay, she counted a slow two hundred, gave herself another hundred – just because – and when nothing came, decided nothing was coming.

  She worked down through chokecherry tangles and onto the hidden path she and she alone in all the world – stupid world – knew about. The roaring water dam sound got louder. Mist soon drifted in the air, the rocky path grew sloppy, slippery. Older trees, trees grown thick with water-rich mosses and their aromatic breath crowded the path. Supple creep vines drooped from their branches.

  When the downward way had nearly pinched off in tangles and mossbacks, the path leveled, spread, grew wider. Then it became a tree-rounded ledge, twelve, fifteen feet above the scenic bike and footpath that followed the river by the dam. The floor of the clearing was springy, a million years of rotted trees, dissolving leaves and thick sphagnum layers going back to the dinosaurs were feathered underfoot.

  Leslie dropped to all fours and scrambled. She peered over the edge, looked up and down the path.

  Nothing. Like she liked it!

  Yes! She could have climbed up from there. It was a minor sunofabitch, the climb; it included hanging almost upside down just before you groped yourself over the ledge but, even so, it was less work – and a shitload quicker – than the route just taken. Climb up from the path? Phau! Anyone might see! One day she might have – once upon a time, Goddamn it – shown the way to Roy. She’d love to see him hanging his way up those rocks! She might also show Cristobel the way to this place – where no human feet but hers had ever stood, where no other human eyes had peered, no other hands had ever gathered cautious harvest, the morels that were hers and hers a-Goddamned-lone! Show Cristobel? Roy’s Goddamn hanging fly? Show them?

  That’ll happen!

  She sat. Dam-water mist and the earthy smell of moldering deadfalls filled her. She breathed it until she was clear.

  “Rats,” she said an hour or more later – maybe it was five minutes, maybe less – and there she was, Leslie B. Fritz: at ease in the spillway’s hiss and rumble; up and doing, bringing in the ‘shrooms.

  At her work! She took them, cautious with the caps, not too damn much stem, not cutting to the root of the plant! Yes: Plant! The patch was one critter, she knew that damn much, all one grand mushroom, up-popped and sprouted in a thousand damp and shady places around the ledge. And this whole one ancient thing was hers: a patch, munificent of scale and of succulent prodigality – words learned for her place in particular.

  She cut the caps that were finished; left the runts for later. ‘Shrooming was a what-and-which thing! She knew that damn much. Four minutes, choices made, she was done!

  She wrapped the morning’s harvest loosely in moist rag, laid the bindle in a burp-top, put the cover on and stuffed it in her pack. Another minute. Done.

  When she turned to leave, the little guy behind her said something had “smell” and “wonderful” in it and she damn near leapt her skin falling back and down.

  “I’ve s
tartled you?” he said.

  She lay on her back pissed to splutters. Blood pressure pounded her ears. Rotten adjectives flowed till she hit the core: “How’d you follow!?”

  He hadn’t.

  Clearly. He wore a suit and tie; wasn’t muddied, scratched, or scraped. She adjusted the question: “How’d you get here?” she spat.

  “That way,” he pointed. The guy sounded like a hound pup new to people-speech.

  She rutched up from the muck and blinked. Once quick wasn’t enough so she looked again. Finally, she sat up to stare: the place he pointed to – no other way to put it – was not there. It was a place in this, her place, that she’d never seen, never noticed; a place that had never been before. And which, of course, couldn’t be there now.

  “What?” she said.

  “I walked up from the path,” he said, “there’s a nice little stairway cut in the stone.” He looked at her, at everywhere. “A lovely spot, this: mushrooms, moss, shade, beauty. Mmm.” He nosed the air. “Aroma. Ah.”

  “No!” she said. “Poisonstools. Toadshrooms! Deathwart and rattler-breath!”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” he said and smiled.

  Winter wrapped the back of her neck. “Don’t do that,” she said.

  His lids flipped a dozen times. “Do what?”

  “Smile,” she said, “don’t do that.”

  eH”Oh, yes,” he said like he’d just remembered an old something. His face slid into not smiling.

  “Never mind!” she said, closing her eyes. “Smile. Smile!” His not-smile made her want to swallow her eyeballs.

  When she peeked, his face had struck a balance. He was a droopy little guy. His face overflowed his collar. The necktie stopped it below the third roll but there he Goddamned stood, sagging, disinfected, sanitary-looking in the roiling fecundity of her place. She loved that word.