‘Some other night, okay? Soon.’
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
When I got back indoors Karen had taken herself upstairs. I could hear preparations for bed. The kettle was boiling. We’ve both long been in the habit of taking a cup of chamomile tea to bed, made by me.
While I waited for the water to boil I walked through into my study and stood at my desk. I hadn’t expected Gerry to be behind the envelope. He has, so far as I can tell, no sense of humour whatsoever, assuming that’s the quality you require for a practical joke of this type. I could ask our mail person tomorrow, if I caught her, but Marie is a stolid person of middle age and approximately pyramidal shape and I couldn’t imagine her playing a prank on me either. The mystery the bishop presented was therefore unsolvable, and frankly not terribly interesting.
I picked it up and examined it again.
The base was still wet. It still smelled a little weird. That’s all there was to be said about it. I carried it out to the kitchen, where I poured water onto the waiting teabags. Then I went out the back door.
I still didn’t want to put the piece in the trash. It deserved to continue on a journey of some kind, but I was bored of it, and I really didn’t like the smell, which was now beginning to pervade the study.
So I walked a few yards toward the woods, and threw the piece into the trees.
* * *
Next morning Scott had a dental appointment, which — for reasons too tedious to relate — meant going to a town twenty miles away, and thus — given the practice’s playful way of pretending they’ve never, ever seen you before, and making you fill in more forms and then jump hoops through dental nurses and assistants and senior assistants before you got to the maestro himself — at least three lost hours. I’d assumed I’d be in the frame for this adventure, but Karen volunteered.
I got a lot of work done, as is often the case when the house is empty and you’re free to work to your own rhythms. Which meant, in my case, a fresh cup of coffee and a cigarette about once an hour. I was on one of these breaks when my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out quickly, assuming it would be Karen wanting my say-so on some unusually outrageous dental charge — or, I dared hope, her giving me news that they were going to make a day of it and come back the slow way.
The screen said no, it was my mother.
I winced. Partly because she’d called me, which meant it had been too long since I’d called her. Also because, goodbye productivity. But… she’s my mother.
She was in good form, generally, and spent the first twenty minutes on a free-form catch-up on the ins-and-outs of the tiny Midwestern town where she lives, delivered in a style that Garrison Keillor might be proud of, were he a little bitchier in nature (and presently without an editor). This segued into a list of the tasks she was currently undertaking around the house. In the last six months she’d acquired the decluttering bug, and while I feared this might eventually see her living in a house with a single chair, her phone, and no other possessions, it seemed more positive than how she’d spent the period immediately after my father’s death, restlessly going from room to room, weepily sifting through old photo albums and mementos, repeatedly, trying to arrange them into an order which no one — including her, I’d been confident — would ever comprehend.
‘One thing, though,’ she said. My attention had been wandering a little, I’ll confess, but this re-focused me. Over the last two years I’d come to realize these three words often signaled whatever her current low-key obsession had become. ‘Something’s missing.’
‘What?’ I asked, keeping my tone light. I had plenty of practice in deflecting these minor manias, at reassuring her that not being able to find the store receipt from when they bought the new dishwasher in 2008 was not a huge deal in the scheme of things.
‘The bishop,’ she said.
My mind spent half a second wondering which of the clerics in her town she was referring to, but my body was quicker. My heart beat hard, once. ‘What?’
‘Your father’s chess set.’
‘Dad had a chess set?’
‘Of course he did. You must remember it.’
I did not. ‘What do you mean, it’s missing?’
‘The bishop,’ she said, patiently. ‘I hoped I’d been reasonably clear about that. By saying… “the bishop”.’
It’s as well to remember that your parents remain potent individuals, however batty they may appear from time to time. ‘Sure, okay, sorry. But missing how?’
‘I was clearing through the drawers in his den, and found the set. I can’t get rid of it, of course. He never played much, well, he didn’t have the opportunity at home… I can’t play, and you never showed any interest, but I remember him buying it, not long after you were born. Lovely brown wood. You sure you don’t remember it?’
I felt short of breath. ‘No. The bishop, Mom?’
‘Oh yes. Well, it’s gone. One of them. All the other pieces are there — well I assume they are, I’m not sure how many of those pawn things there are supposed to be, but the others all come in pairs or fours. Quartets. Or quads. Or whatever the word is. Except the bishops. There’s only three of them. That can’t be right, can it?’
I had no recollection of my father owning a chess set. That didn’t prove anything — you don’t remember everything from childhood. But it seemed very odd to me that we should be having this conversation today.
‘It’s probably in another drawer somewhere.’
‘Nope,’ she replied, smartly. ‘Checked them all.’
Of course you did, I thought. ‘What about…’
‘It’s nowhere in the house.’
‘Well, I guess it just got lost at some point,’ I said. ‘He figured maybe it’d turn up, and anyway no big deal, as he never used it.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Matt,’ she said, sounding relieved, as though what I’d said constituted a statement on the subject from a higher and more reliable authority than she felt herself to be. We spoke for another ten minutes, but I can’t remember what was said.
When I walked back into my study, the first thing I noticed was the smell.
The chess piece was standing on the desk.
I heard our car pulling into the drive, and reached into the drawer to get a breath mint.
* * *
Toward the end of the afternoon, Scott came in. Instead of heading straight to my desk, as he usually did, he lurked in the background. He seemed subdued.
‘Everything okay?’
‘I guess.’
‘I wanted to ask you something, actually,’ I said.
‘What?’
I nodded toward the chess piece. ‘Did you put that there?’
‘No. It was here when I came in yesterday. I asked you about it, remember?’
‘I know. I meant… did you put it there today? This morning? Before you went to the dentist?’
He looked confused. ‘No. It was already there, right?’
‘Right.’ I knew it had been extremely unlikely that he’d gone wandering into the woods, happened to find the piece where it had landed somewhere in the bracken and leaves, and brought it back. It was the best idea I’d been able to come up with, however. I’d spent a long time trying to produce a rational explanation for the piece’s reappearance. That had been my only shot.
Now I had nothing, except for the hollow feeling in my stomach.
‘Never mind. How’s the book report coming along?’
‘You’ve been coughing all afternoon,’ Scott said. ‘I can hear you from my room.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. It’s not that far.’
That wasn’t what I’d meant. I hadn’t been aware of coughing at all. ‘Sorry. Allergies.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
I turned to look at him. ‘What?’
‘You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’re a liar. I know you hav
e.’
‘Scott, I…’ I stopped. ‘Yes, okay. I’ve had a couple today. I’m sorry.’
He nodded distantly. This was far worse than his usual tactic of shouting. ‘I really am,’ I added.
‘So stop.’
‘It’s really not that easy.’
I expected him to launch into another iteration of his well-worn analysis of how incredibly simple it was to stop putting a dumb burning thing into your mouth, but instead he sniffed. ‘I don’t like that smell.’
‘What smell?’
He indicated the bishop. ‘From that thing.’
‘I don’t like it either.’
‘It smells like dying.’
I didn’t know what to say to this.
‘You should get rid of it,’ he said.
I’ve tried, I thought. It’s harder than you’d think.
Suddenly he came over and hugged me. ‘I love you,’ he said, very quietly, arms tight around my shoulders, face buried into my neck.
* * *
After dinner, when Scott was up in his room and in the downward spiral toward sleep, I told Karen that I was going to take a walk, maybe stop in next door, see how our neighbor was doing.
‘You’re nice,’ she said. ‘See you in bed.’
I stopped by the study, put something in my left and right trouser pockets, and left the house.
‘True to your word,’ Gerry said, gratefully, as I walked up his path. He was sitting out on his deck, a short line of empties on the side table. ‘’Fraid I’m done with the Boonts, though. Anchor Steam work for you?’
‘Plenty good enough.’
* * *
We sat and talked a while. I drank a beer slowly, and accepted a second. By then, Gerry must have been on his sixth or seventh.
‘So how come you never had kids?’
He shrugged. ‘Darlene never wanted any. Figure she looked at the mess her parents made of it, decided she didn’t want a part of that scene.’
‘Not such a great childhood?’
‘Kind of fucked up. And eventually her dad walked out. Darlene never forgave him for that, though from the few times I met her mom, I could kind of see his point. Family like that, I guess it was always a long shot she’d be able to make a marriage stick forever.’
I’d heard all this before. I’d just needed to hear it again. ‘I suppose it’s hard when a parent leaves you. Casts a long shadow.’
‘It does that. Another beer?’
‘One more, maybe.’
When the next bottle was opened, I reached in my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. If you’re a smoker, you’ll know: they go together with beer far too well.
‘You mind?’
Gerry shook his head. When I put the pack on the table, I saw his eyes drift toward it.
We talked some more, about this and that. Halfway through the beer, I lit another cigarette. This time it was pretty clear that Gerry was looking at the pack.
‘I’m not going to offer,’ I said.
He held out until we started the next beer.
By then we were having a whale of a time, and it was a foregone conclusion.
* * *
A couple hours later, and by now pretty drunk, I finally stood.
‘I really better go.’
Gerry smiled blearily up at me, around his fifth or sixth cigarette. ‘Glad you dropped by, Matt. It’s been a blast.’
‘We’ll do it again soon.’
I put a hand out for the pack of cigarettes on the table, saw his eyes flick toward them.
‘Heck, keep ’em,’ I said.
‘You sure?’
‘Got more at home.’
‘Awesome.’
He pushed himself laboriously to his feet, we shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder, like men, and I walked away up his path.
I glanced back as I turned the corner around the short section of fence that led onto my own property. Gerry was sitting in his chair on the porch, feet up, looking like king of the world.
Fresh bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other.
I’ve tried throwing my pack away before, putting it in the trash, brushing my hands of the whole sorry business and declaring I’m done with it. That doesn’t work. You can easily go buy more. You can’t just halt the journey, any journey. Dad becomes dead, son becomes dad. The path goes on. And what you can never do to a child is leave, especially via corridors that smell of disinfectant.
I stopped and pulled out the thing in my other pocket. The chess piece was back inside, rewrapped in the scrap of paper, resealed with tape. I’d used a Sharpie to write GONE AWAY across one corner of the envelope. I put it in my mailbox, then walked back up the path to our house.
Gerry glimpsed me through the trees, and raised a hand in cheery goodnight. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the dark.
I waved back.
‘Over to you,’ I said, quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’
* * *
Next morning the envelope was gone.
I don’t smoke any more.
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH
Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published over eighty short stories, and four novels — Only Forward, Spares, One of Us and The Servants — winning the Philip K. Dick, International Horror Guild, and August Derleth Awards, along with the Prix Bob Morane in France. He has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author.
Writing as MICHAEL MARSHALL he has published seven internationally bestselling thrillers including The Straw Men series, The Intruders — recently a BBC series starring John Simm and Mira Sorvino — and Killer Move. His most recent novel is We Are Here.
He lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife, son, and two cats. For more information visit www.michaelmarshallsmith.com
IN MEMORIAM
JOANNE HARRIS
Imagine a warehouse in Belfast. Over five hundred miles of shelves, running from floor to ceiling. Red-draped yorks; plastic crates; sorting tables and boxes and bins all filled with weird ephemera.
This is the National Returns Centre for the UK – in other words, the dead letter office.
This is where Her Majesty washes her hands of the Royal Mail. Letters that have travelled across the world, and found no destination. Parcels returned, only to find that the sender has moved away, or died. Letters to fictional places, fictional people, or to the dead. In these cases, Her Majesty graciously allows us to open the mail; to seek out hidden identities; to divide the gold from the garbage.
I am a CEW. Customer Experience Worker. I’ve been here for twenty years, and I’ve seen it all, let me tell you. Two hundred million pieces of mail a year, give or take, pass through our hands. Begging letters, death threats, photographs of lost loves, keepsakes, unopened Christmas cards, undelivered manuscripts. There’s a forgotten Picasso in there, somewhere along the thirtieth stack, plus enough pieces of jewellery to send off a dead infanta in style. And still they keep coming, every day: the undelivered letters, the ones with no return address; the parcels with torn-off labels, inscriptions that are illegible; mail refused by the addressee, or sent to weedy, deserted plots and old abandoned buildings. There are letters here addressed to God, though He has never claimed them. Lots more addressed to Santa Claus, or Superman, or Wolverine. I sometimes wonder how many kids sat waiting for their heroes to call, until, one day, they realised that no one was coming to save them. Or how many desperate lovers, bottle of poison or dagger in hand, waited in vain for their loved one’s reply. So many dreams end up in here. So many everyday tragedies. Messages in bottles, sent in hope across the sea, only to wash up here at last, at the foot of a cliff of paper.
The paper-cuts are the worst thing. I get dozens of those a day. I even tried wearing gloves for a while, but it didn’t seem right, somehow. These letters have already been through so much. They deserve the touch of a human hand. They deserve to be read, and understood, and acknowledged, before w
e burn them. The black-edged notes of condolence; the tearful declarations of love; the dutiful letters from boarding school; the last words from the battlefield. It feels as if, by reading them, I can put them at rest, somehow; these strangers, whose words have travelled so far, and never been delivered. What I do is so much more than simply cataloguing mail. I am the one who lays them out; the one who delivers the last rites. I am the embalmer of memories; the custodian of the last word.
First I open, and read, and sort the letters containing valuables. Cheques and cash we return, if we can. Sometimes you can find an address if you open the envelope. Things of intermediate value – clothes, trinkets, toys, books – we keep for six months, then dispose of. Watches, jewellery, artwork, we tend to try to keep longer. Perishable items we get rid of at once. Birthday cakes; live bait; garden plants; groceries; and once a box of soft, pale moths, drowsy in their wrapping of banana leaves and rice paper, which, slipping through my fingers like dusty old transparencies, came back to life in the clear, cold air, and flew up into the overhead lights, where they remained until they died, dropping one by one to the floor in clusters of brownish blossom.
Who on earth sends moths through the post? What were they supposed to mean? Sometimes I still find their wings on the ground like torn-off pieces of paper. The fallen wings are intricate, patterned with tea-coloured hieroglyphs. If you laid them side by side, and looked at them from a great height, then perhaps they might spell out a message. I try not to think too hard about the messages I could have passed on, if only I’d known where to send them. It keeps me awake at night if I do. It’s too much responsibility.
I never, ever send letters myself. That may be something to do with the job. I read so many love letters here, so many messages of hate. I don’t want to put my thoughts on the page; to risk some stranger reading them. Maybe that’s also the reason that I never married. Maybe I know that world too well to dare to be a part of it.
But, last week, something happened. I was going through a load of undeliverable mail. Letters like spent tennis balls, bouncing back and forth for so long that all momentum has been lost. I was about to take a break, when for some reason, a letter at the edge of the pile caught my eye. The address was handwritten, in faded blue ink.
Dead Letters Anthology Page 3