by Sam Starbuck
"Bye now."
I hung up the phone and threw myself into the chair by the window, staring up at the ceiling. I felt like I'd been going for days, like I hadn't stopped running since the boy came into my shop and told me to find Lucas. Running to something, running from something, both, I couldn't be sure. I was tired. Maybe that was how Lucas had felt too.
I got up and got myself a glass of water, made myself drink the whole thing, and then dressed for bed. I slid between the covers and lay on my side, looking at the window and the long strip of light thrown into the room from the streetlamp outside. And the book, on the bedside table.
I switched on my lamp and picked it up, paging through to the opening chapter. I only managed a few paragraphs before I was asleep, exhausted, the book still in my hands.
For the next week, at least, I ran more or less automatically, not thinking much about anything. A lot of people came into the shop – it felt like the whole village came sooner or later – but not in the way they would have, in crowds. Just a few at a time, asking if it was true about the dog bite, about going to Chicago, about Lucas. Gossip travels fast but I think they wanted to hear it from me, so even if they knew they kept asking. And I kept answering – I don't know where he's gone, probably with the Friendly. Yes, he did like them. No, I can't be sure; all his things were gone.
I asked some of them about the boy, and they seemed to be conscious of him, but every time they answered they had that same disconnected look. As if they weren't sure what we were talking about even as we talked about it. Some thought his family had sold up and moved away, others that he was being sent to the school in the next village south. Wasn't he one of the Ardval kids? Maybe, maybe not.
I know I never saw him again, and with the warmer weather the birds were all migrating back, so it wasn't as if I could pick one small Waxwing out of a flock and say, yes, that's probably the Ferryman's son, or the spirit of Low Ferry or whatever he was. I felt ridiculous even thinking of it, though I'd seen enough not to swear outright that I know the answer. I'm no less of a skeptic than I ever have been, but maybe I'm a little less arrogant about it now.
I wish I could tell him thank-you. Though I'm sure he knows it, wherever he is.
I missed Lucas intensely. I missed his company, and I missed being...special, being chosen. I wished there were things I'd said to him. I wished I could have asked him not to go. But Lucas, for all his reserve, his secret need for love, was also stubborn. Maybe he would have gone anyway, and if he'd stopped to say goodbye I think it would have been irrevocable. At least, with that unsaid between us, nothing was quite so final.
Every evening I closed up the store and went across to the cafe, to get some dinner and waste a few long evening hours in a place where I had to smile and talk with people. When I was finished I'd go back to Dusk Books, work a little if there were books to sort or repairs to make, and then go upstairs for bed. Often I'd pick up Ancient Games and read a few pages, but when I did I never got very far before I fell asleep.
I didn't learn much – the words just seemed to wash past me, but they were some comfort against the loss.
Marjorie had been right, at least, that metaphorical broken hearts are easier to fix than physical ones. All they need are sufficient applications of time. Act normally for long enough, and you actually start to feel that way.
As the days passed I found that I wasn't quite so tired as I had been, and that the yawning pit in my stomach was closing up a little. While days turned to weeks I discovered I could see Nona Harrison shopping with her two babies and I would still think of Lucas, but it didn't send a twinge up under my ribcage. It didn't instantly make me worry that he was out there somewhere, struggling to protect himself. I could hear a dog bark without looking to see if it was Nameless. I started to hope the Friendly would make one of their rare summer-runs up to Low Ferry, instead of just missing them, and him.
Kirchner called me up one morning in March and asked if I'd come down – nothing urgent, but he wanted to see me when I had a moment. Since I had nothing but moments, really, I told him I'd come down as soon as I got my boots on.
"Step on in," he said, holding the door to his office -- not his exam room -- open for me. "How are you?"
"Pretty good," I said, sitting down in front of the desk. He leaned against the edge rather than sitting on the other side and looked down at me thoughtfully. "I'm hoping I should be feeling pretty good."
"I think so, yes," he said. "How's the hand?"
I held up my left hand and waggled the fingers. The bandage I wore was lighter now, just a pad with medical tape to hold it on, and the stitches had all fallen out. "Healing up."
"I'll get you some scar cream before you go," he said.
"But that's not why I'm here, is it?" I asked. He shook his head.
"No. I've finally talked the city hospital into sending your most recent tests out here -- it took me a while but I thought I should make sure you hadn't incurred any extra damage."
"I didn't have an attack," I said.
"You mean when you went out to Chicago?"
"Yeah."
"Funny thing about that trip to Chicago," Kirchner said. "In your records, your injury is listed as a human bite wound, not a dog. And it says you were airlifted in with another patient. Who..." he shuffled through some paperwork on his desk, picking a file out of the chaos, "is also a patient of mine."
"Ah," I said, trying to calculate how much trouble I was in. "Lucas."
He nodded, opening the file and studying it. "A very...unique boy, Lucas. I hope he's well. All of this is by way of saying I know more about what happened than most in the village. Confidentiality, of course, requires me not to share any of this," he added. "Besides, it's not really the point."
I watched him, bewildered now. "What is the point, then?" I asked.
"You say you had no attack when you were bitten."
"That's right."
"Can you tell me when the last time you felt any arrhythmia was?" he asked.
I thought about it. "Not recently."
"How long?"
"I don't know," I said. I did know -- but I didn't really want to admit I'd had at least two arrhythmias without telling him. After all, they'd said to expect them...
He looked at me.
"Three months, maybe," I said.
He nodded and got up, walking around his desk and picking up an oversized envelope, which he passed across to me. Still confused, I pulled out the papers inside, the x-ray films, the charts and graphs. It looked to me like gibberish.
"Listen, I don't have a medical degree," I said, spreading them out in front of me.
"Those are the results of tests performed on you when you were in Chicago," he said. "They're not what anyone expected, which is why it took me a while to get them. They had to do some verification that there hadn't been a mix-up."
"Oh," I said in a small voice. I thought, I should have known better. I'd really believed that Lucas had healed me when he'd touched me on the chest to reset my heart, the night he'd shown himself to be Nameless. But of course belief wasn't a luxury afforded to me -- I needed to have facts.
"So, six months?" I asked, looking up at Kirchner, who frowned. "Or three? Should I be in hospice care?"
"What -- no!" he said, looking startled. "No, Christopher -- sorry, I'm so sorry, that wasn't what I meant at all. You're not in any danger."
I exhaled with relief. "Then what do these say?"
"They say...well, they say they've found nothing," he said, sitting down to face me across the desk.
I blinked at him. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"Well, it is, and it isn't. It's perplexing," he explained. "These tests show a perfectly healthy heart. No irregularities, nothing at all wrong with the tissue itself. None of the weakness that we should be seeing, especially after Halloween. Far as they can tell you're a perfectly healthy young man."
"Did they mix up my tests?" I asked.
"That's what I thought
, but they assure me they double-checked, hence the delay. And I have to say, having been your doctor for three years....this is your heart, Christopher," he said, reaching over to pick up what looked to me like a blobby, grainy green-and-black photograph of someone's thumb. "Only thing I can think is that maybe you got some hemlock in it when you -- went with Lucas to Chicago," he added, giving the words a slight sardonic twist. "But there aren't any known applications of hemlock for heart conditions, so that's basically hoodoo, and I can't explain it. Can you?"
I looked down at my hand, turned it over so that it was palm-up. I didn't even know what to think. I wondered if it was possible to be an atheist and still have a crisis of faith.
"I think I know what happened," I said, after a while.
"Well, you could share it with me," he replied, looking annoyed. I smiled.
"Frankly, I don't think you'd believe me," I told him. "Do you need me to do any more tests?"
"They'd like to see you in the city again, just to confirm some of their findings."
"Immediately?"
"Soon would be better, but that's up to you. If you feel well, Christopher, that's what matters," he told me. "Let me get you that cream, and you can get out of here."
I stopped him with a hand on his arm as he was headed for his supply cabinet.
"Does this...happen to people?" I asked. "I mean, is this documented or anything?"
He shook his head. "When you moved here I did a lot of reading. God knows I'm no heart specialist, but I know just about as much as anyone does about yours. You shouldn't have expected it would go away -- you shouldn't now, until you've confirmed your results. If you're healed I won't ask too many questions, but if you're not..." he gave me a regretful look. "You know you'll be lucky to make it another ten years, Christopher. You have to know that."
"Yeah," I said. "Appreciate the honesty, Kirchner."
I let him go, stood there and waited, gripped the tube of scar cream when he pressed it into my hand.
"You all right, son?" he asked. I nodded.
"Fine. Thanks for the news. I'll see what I can do about getting up to the city soon," I said. I put on my coat, stepped out into the cold, and walked back up the street to Dusk Books. Inside, I took my pulse, fingers pressing lightly against the artery at my throat.
Steady and even. Seventy beats per minute. I put my hand over my heart and could imagine Lucas's hand there under it. A good heart meant I had a choice. I could leave if I wanted, permanently leave. I could go back to Chicago, which I'd missed in my first year in Low Ferry with a desperate longing that had only begun to fade with my second summer in the village.
But...it had faded. And I'd already made my decision.
***
In Chicago, they joke that "spring'll be on a Tuesday this year," but in Low Ferry spring comes a little earlier and stays longer. I promised myself I'd visit the city soon, but it was April before I knew it and with the warm weather came more customers. I propped my green door open permanently and began using the glass door again. One sunny morning, I borrowed the ladder from the cafe and hauled a bucket of black paint and a brush up the ladder to retouch my sign.
"Hiya, Christopher!" Paula called, as I was carefully going over the curve of the u in Dusk. "Nice day for painting!"
"Yup," I called back, turning the brush a little to keep it from dripping as I pulled it back. I started on the upright. "Spring's early this year."
"Are you complaining?" she asked, climbing the steps and leaning against the support-pole nearest me.
"Not at all. You must be doing good business."
She laughed. "Yeah, everyone's fixing all the things they've been putting off because of winter."
"Nice work if you can get it. All my customers are out sniffing roses and wandering the fields and stuff." I refreshed the brush and dabbed at a stubborn knot in the wooden sign that never took paint well.
"Tourists'll be in soon enough," she said.
"Don't I know it. Bert just had a whole shipment of decongestants come in."
"I stocked up on tire irons and tent patch kits," she agreed. "What about you?"
"Flower identification guides," I said, absently thumbing away a smear of misplaced paint in one curve of the s. "Camping handbooks. Lots of picture books to keep the kids busy.
"And a pretty new coat of paint on your sign," she said, smiling up at me.
"That too," I agreed. "You have to look nice for the city folk."
"You really want to look nice, you'll – "
" – rip out the porch and put in a new one, yeah. Maybe in the summer," I told her. "And I'm going to do it myself. It'll be good."
"What about your heart?" she asked. I carefully applied myself to the fickle angles of the k.
"I haven't had an episode in months," I said. "I'm going up to Chicago sometime, but I think the worst of it's past me, you know? I feel better than I ever have."
"Low Ferry worries about you," she said seriously.
The weird thing is, that felt good. No twinge of regret that I was different, no irritation over being handled. Low Ferry worried about me, because I was one of theirs – even if it might be another decade before I wasn't also the city boy.
"I know," I answered, climbing down the ladder to shift it over so I wouldn't have to stretch to reach the s in Books. "And I'm glad. Just...don't worry too much." I gave her a smile. "I'm okay, Paula. Really."
She grinned and gave me a hug, careful not to spill the paint.
"Well, I'm glad," she said. "Now, how much lumber can I get you for that porch?"
***
What finally sent me to Chicago for those tests the doctors wanted was a phone call to Marjorie, which in turn was spurred by another Low Ferry departure.
I'd all but forgotten that Michael and Nolan were leaving in mid-April, so it caught me off-guard when Carmen brought me a plate of pancakes and a mouthful of hot gossip early one warm morning.
"Did you hear yet?" she asked, as I sliced up the pancakes and, to my delight, found two links of sausage underneath them.
"About what?" I said, mouth half-full.
"The boys at the bank?"
I swallowed sharply and cleared my throat. "Nolan and Michael?"
"They ran off last night," she said, leaning forward and whispering, eyes wide.
"I hope they didn't rob the place," I said.
"No, but I hear they cleaned out their bank accounts. Nolan's little sister says they went to Chicago."
"Really," I said innocently.
"Together!" Carmen added, a hint of scandal seeping into her voice.
I admit to a little mischief. After the last few months, I felt I was owed that much. "Well, it's better to travel in pairs."
"No! Like, together."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "Is that so. I suppose I can see why they'd run off, then."
"You mean aside from Michael's dad throwing him out of the house?"
"Well, this just gets more and more operatic. Did he really?"
"That's what I hear."
"Well, what do you think of it?" I asked, honestly curious. She glanced at me, frowned, and looked out the window nearby.