by Geoff North
“No, that’s not what I was getting at.” Hugh was done with the half-truths and excuses that had been getting him by in this second life. He wanted to tell his dad everything. “Have you ever heard voices from like…from somewhere else?”
His father tossed the cigarette into the hearth’s smoldering coals. “Like a ghost, or do you literally mean the voice of God?”
Hugh could feel cold sweat on his palms. When he spoke again, the words came out in hitching gasps, a boy on the verge of bursting into tears. “I-I’m not sure what I mean. I just don’t know.” How could he explain to this simple carpenter and part-time farmer that he’d lived another life? That he’d died in the twenty-first century?
“I think my father came back to me once in a dream,” Steve Nance said. “At least I tell myself it was a dream, nowadays.”
Hugh felt hopeful. Perhaps he wouldn’t think he was a lunatic. “Really? So was it a dream, or wasn’t it?”
“It was shortly after he died in 1966. Do you remember Grandpa Nance?” Hugh shook his head. “No, of course you wouldn’t. Anyway, like I was saying, it was maybe two or three months after he’d passed away that the strangest thing happened. I was in bed trying to get some sleep. Your mother’s snoring was as loud as a jumbo jet.”
Hugh grinned and sat down on the arm of the chair. His father leaned forward and wrapped an arm around his waist. “So you weren’t sleeping.”
“Obviously,” he answered, and rolled his eyes. “I was just kind of lying there, thinking about things like you are right now, when all of a sudden the room got really cold. Not an uncomfortable, creepy cold, but a numbing chill. You know what I mean?” Hugh didn’t know, but he nodded in agreement to keep the story going. “Then the voice of my dad starts talking in my head as plain as day.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked how I was holding up, how your mom was doing…he asked how you kids were, even asked after you by name.”
Hugh figured that should’ve scared him, but it didn’t. It made him feel special. “So did he just want to have a chat?”
“Knowing my father, yeah, that’s probably all the old windbag wanted.” He laughed quietly and Hugh sensed his sadness. “He never told me why he came to me that night. I never gave him the chance.”
“What happened?”
“Well I gotta tell you, I felt really uneasy about the whole thing, damned scared actually. I guess he picked up on that because he asked me if I felt uncomfortable.” He laughed again. “Sounded like a dentist talking to his patient right after he pulls out the drill. I told him the whole thing was damned unusual, and that if he didn’t mind, I’d rather not have him visit me anymore like that.”
“Did he leave then?”
“Not right away…I had a few questions.” He ran a hand down the stubble on his chin. “You probably know what I mean. He told me my mom was with him and doing fine. Even old Charlie, my terrier dog from when I was a kid was with them.”
Hugh thought of Colonel and his heart soared. “So where was he? Where were they?”
“That was my next question. All of a sudden he appears not three feet in front of the bed, all greenie-blue and glowing, fit and strong like I remembered him being when I was just a kid.”
Hugh recalled how it had been seeing his dad again for the first time in decades. It made him feel good and warm all over, a spiritual confirmation of what he’d gone through.
“You okay?” His dad asked. The concern on his face was plain enough to see in the dim light. “I’m not scaring you too much?”
“No, keep going.”
“He told me there was no way to put into words where they were…said there was no way I could wrap my head around it. So then I asked what it was like.”
He paused for a long time. Hugh shook him by the leg. “So what did he say?”
“He held his hand toward me and spread out his fingers. He said these were the senses that I was aware of.”
“What did he mean by that?”
Hugh’s father sighed, trying to put a complex idea into a few simple sentences his son, or even he himself, could comprehend. “The senses, you know? Like taste, touch, smell, and so on. A finger for each one. Then all of a sudden a hundred more fingers pop up all around them, maybe a thousand, who knows for sure…he tells me that’s what they feel where they are. A million more sensations than we could possibly imagine. And all those fingers were different colors…colors I’d never seen before, and never saw again after that night.”
The story made Hugh tingle all over. It made sense, unlike most dreams. They sat together in silence for a few more minutes and watched the glow of the embers die down even further. His father gave him a light shake. “So which is it? You seen a ghost, or have you talked to God?”
He shrugged his shoulders and stood up. “Neither one…just wondering…you know, what with the season and all.”
“Good night son. Merry Christmas.”
Hugh leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, dad.”
He crept quietly toward the kitchen and looked back one final time. His father was lighting another cigarette. Hugh soaked in the warmth of light the tree cast about the room and headed upstairs. His deepest, most troubling questions had gone unanswered, but it hardly mattered at that moment. He was just beginning to understand the nature of life and death, his own and others. There was a lot more to learn. But he would sleep well that night, and for many more nights to come. Sometimes all a kid needed was their dad, whether he was ten or forty-seven hardly mattered.
Chapter 11
1977
Hugh was reintroduced to the wonderful world of masturbation around the same time ABBA was becoming a worldwide sensation. He’d managed on his own this time and skipped the boner-lecture from Gordo. He’d grown half a foot in the last year and his voice had deepened in a considerably less amount of time. Girls were no longer cute, they were hot, and that troubled him.
My daughters are older than some of the girls I want to have sex with. What would they think of their old dad now?
He had no right to think of thirteen and fourteen year-old girls that way. It was sick. His virginity wasn’t meant to be lost for another four years. Why the big rush?
Because unlike most kids, I’m not scared of fucking for the first time. I could care less if a girl says no the first, second, or third time. Someone will say yes sooner or later.
Rejection was a joke at his age. His ego wasn’t as tender as it once was.
May as well be sooner…No! Quit being such a pig.
He tried to focus his mind on something else.
8, 12, 20, 23, 34, 36.
Hugh repeated the numbers over and over in his head like a soothing mantra. Somewhere between the third and fourth repetition, he was back to thinking of a way into Caroline Sterling’s pants.
Girls like talking, they like it when a guy listens…
“Would you let Major in the house?” His mother asked.
“Huh? Oh yeah, sure.” He could hear the young dog woofing at the front door as he got up off the couch. Hugh had seen to it that Colonel never got stuck in the spring runoff two years earlier. Unfortunately the old dog died after eating rotten road kill later on in the summer. They’d buried him at the edge of the old raspberry patch in the field east of the house. Gordo, in a rare sentimental moment, placed a handmade wooden cross at the head of the stony grave. Heather laid wildflowers, and Hugh left behind the chewed, plastic Spider-Man figurine, minus its parachute. Colonel had a lot more use for it than Hugh ever did.
He let Major in, and watched the Nance’s second collie circle around him anxiously, his long nose sniffing feverishly at the floor.
Gordo had suggested the name General, but Hugh would never allow another pet to outrank his first and best friend. Major sounded better their father had said, easier to pronounce. Hugh won the naming debate and received a private beating as his prize afterward.
“There’s a good boy,” his mother said
stroking the big, dumb mutt’s head. She placed a dish of dry food next to the door. Hugh watched him eat for a minute and recalled the line of pets that would succeed him. Major would be the last collie. A big white Cadillac driven by a ninety-year-old woman, half-blind and barely able to see over the steering wheel would do him in next year. He would be followed by a black lab, Max, a loveable big brute, and then a loud-mouthed chiwawa named Chico. Fortunately, he would have a massive little heart attack during a thunderstorm and drop dead.
It was kind of sad thinking about all those dead dogs. There wasn’t much he could do to save them. Colonel had proved that. Would it be that way with Ben when the time came? Was it worth trying to prevent?
Of course it will be.
He would be at home this time. Even if there was a Little City Food Store, Hugh had no intention of ever working there. Maybe he would buy the entire block before the store could be built.
I’ll put up a big mansion in the center of town. Shit, I’ll buy the whole town!
He laughed out loud, the best ‘World-Conquering Super-Villain’ imitation he could muster.
“What’s so funny dear?” His mother asked from the kitchen.
“Just thinking about the house I’m going to build in the center of town when I grow up. It’ll be so big they’ll need to build an overpass just to get by it.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
Hugh wandered up to his room, sat in front of the open window and lit a cigarette. At least he wasn’t stealing them anymore. Gordo had caught him down at the dugout last fall, and instead of telling on him, had decided to join him. It was more of the partners in crime stuff. Gordo would buy the smokes as long as his brother supplied the cash to buy for both of them. Hugh had no choice. It was the only way he could continue the filthy habit without eventually getting caught by his dad. Besides, he made a lot more money than Gordo. Hugh had become quite the little handy man in Braedon over the past three years. He mowed lawns, raked leaves, shoveled out driveways, and occasionally fixed leaky sinks and toilets. His father wondered where and when his least mechanically-inclined son had acquired such knowledge, but he never stopped him from helping the little old ladies when they called.
Cigarettes were cheap, and what money Hugh didn’t save, went into comic books. He looked over to the shelves that held his growing collection. He would need his dad to build him a new one soon. A much larger one.
Hugh placed his half-smoked cigarette down in the ashtray on the window ledge and went over to look at a few of the books. There were over a thousand now. What would they be worth in the twenty-first century, he wondered? It was a question he knew the answer to; he just loved asking it because the answer was such a pleasure to hear. He picked up a shiny new Batman and smelled the pages. A pristine mint collection like this would fetch over a hundred thousand. The amount would continue to grow with every weekend trip to the pharmacy.
He would be able to buy Cathy a nice house as soon as they were married.
No goddamned mortgages.
Maybe the mansion in the center of town wasn’t such a far-fetched idea.
He placed the book back and pulled out a copy of Swamp Thing.
Ben would get a new bicycle; all the kids would have their own bikes, no more hand-me-downs. No more nine to five dead-end jobs. He would be there for his kids; he would be there for his wife. He would provide, and he would be happy.
Swamp Thing went back in, and he pulled out the latest issue of Green Lantern. His mouth went dry and his jaw dropped open at the sight on the cover. An obscenely large, cartoon penis had been drawn onto the hero with a thick, black felt marker. That month’s villain stood off to one side, his dialogue balloon had been scribbled over, and new words had been printed in.
“YOUR A FAG GREEN LANTERN!”
Hugh opened the book, his hands shaking, he found page after page of crude felt-marker dialogue. It was ‘FAG’ this and ‘GAY’ that, there was even one reference to a super-villain being a ‘GAY-FAG’ on page seven. There were more penises of course, and big boobs drawn onto the comic’s female characters. A poorly rendered vagina had been attempted in one panel, so badly drawn that it hadn’t been attempted again.
The book was worthless, would always be worthless, unless some future historian found value in the homophobic rants of Hugh Nance’s older brother. He sat back on his bed in utter dejection and let the book fall to the floor.
Why would Gordo do this?
His eyes began to tear up and he looked back to the neatly stacked piles of comics. A few were sticking out at odd angles, page edges and spines a half inch out of order here and there.
“No,” he whimpered. “Oh please God, no.”
Hugh looked through the first slightly askew pile. The ‘A’ titles. Action, Adventure, Avengers. There were penises and boobs on every cover, more ‘FAG, GAY, HOMO, LOSER, DICK-WAD comments strewn throughout the insides. He could see where the black marker had begun to dry up and been substituted with red, green, and bright orange pencil crayon. No doubt borrowed from his own drawing desk.
He’s ruined them all. All that great art, all those great stories…all that money.
Hugh didn’t waste another second. He could have a good bawl later. Now it was time to act. Gordo didn’t realize he was messing with more than a helpless thirteen-year-old. He’d screwed with a thirteen-year-old going on forty-nine who know what bitter, vindictive vengeance was all about. He stormed into Gordo’s room with fearless determination. His brother was at a soccer tournament in Whendel, wouldn’t be home until later that night.
I’d like to see that prick try and stop me now. I’d just love it.
There was a trophy shelf above the bed filled with track and field awards. Hugh swept them all off onto the floor with a crash. He stomped a few of the ones that hadn’t broken with the heel of his runner, satisfied to hear the cheap, gold plastic crack and snap into bits and shards.
He stood back after he was done and surveyed the damage.
Not good enough.
He wiped beads of sweat from his brow and bent over to pick up a broken trophy stand. He read the words inscribed on it.
“Gordon Dudley Nance: 1st Place 100 Meter Sprint 1975”
One plastic leg snapped off at the knee was all that remained above.
“Fucking asshole!”
He hammered the sharp end into the glass surface of another athletic achievement award hanging from the wall. He scraped it along the paper inside and watched it tear away with hateful satisfaction. There were other awards hanging to either side. He repeated the process on all of them, cursing between clenched teeth with each savage slash.
Breathing heavily, his energy and rage nearly spent, Hugh sat down on the edge of his brother’s bed. He wiped a few thin lines of blood off his cheek where pieces of shattered glass had cut him. He looked at his shaking hands and a wave of emotional exhaustion washed over his entire body.
“Oh boy,” he said, looking at the mess around him. He started to chuckle, but within moments it turned into a hard cry. After a few minutes he wiped his eyes on the sleeves of his shirt and stood up. His legs that felt like rubber as he undid the zipper to his pants and began to urinate all over Gordo’s bed. He forced the stream to stop halfway through and opened the top drawer of his brother’s dresser. He pissed on the socks and underwear and pushed one final squirt onto a neatly folded pile of white tee-shirts.
He zipped up and placed his hands triumphantly on his hips. Not bad, he thought, maybe a bit of overkill, but overall, a job well done.
Had Gordo destroyed his comic books in his first life? He didn’t think so. What had he done back then to make them grow so far apart?
Had to have been something bad. Wasn’t anything I did.
The room smelled of urine and blood mixed with something else--smoke?
“Oh Christ, my cigarette!”
He rushed out into a hallway heavy with grey smoke. Orange flames were licking through the frame of his bedroom
door.
Chapter 12
If Hugh’s mother hadn’t heard him tearing Gordo’s room apart, she never would’ve come upstairs. She never would’ve gotten a head start on putting the fire out.
“Get out of the house!” she yelled as rushed into the room, coughing on the smoke. She was frantically beating away at the flames with a bed sheet. Hugh ignored her and grabbed a crumple blanket off the floor to help. In that instant, he realized the fire wasn’t totally out of control. The posters on the north side wall had been consumed, but besides that and the sheet in her hands which was now a mass of flames, the fire seemed to be concentrated around the doorframe where a collage of older comic book covers had been taped up.
“Drop it Mom! Let it go!” He swatted at her hands until she let it fall in a ball of yellow and grey smoke. It extinguished in a few black poofs as she stamped down on it. Hugh covered the remaining flames with his blanket, effectively smothering the flames instead of fanning them any further like his mother had been doing. In seconds the last of the fire was out, the lower pressure outside sucked the heavier smoke through the screen window.
“I told you to get out of the house,” she said breathlessly.
Hugh was afraid she was going to have a heart attack. Her face was deathly pale and coated with sweat. Her hands were swollen red and streaked with soot. He reached out to her, helped her sit down in the chair in front of the window. “I-I couldn’t leave you up here alone. You would’ve…died.”
“What did you do?” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she traced the line the flames had made. A pile of clothes directly beneath the window sill had caught first. A three foot wide path of black and grey ran up the wall to where the first poster had been. Farah was gone. It had jumped to another picture, the Justice League of America. From there the flames had dropped down to his drawing desk and leapt up to the door frame, where thankfully, they had caught it in time.
Hugh watched as she looked back down at her burnt hands. They sat on her lap, palms up. It looked incredibly painful. “We have to get those under cold water right away.”