Front-Page McGuffin & The Greatest Story Never Told
Page 4
“I’m going to teach him the power of the mind,” says Jack.
“Wear your coat at least,” Jim shouts as Jack starts up the stairs, his arm around Front-Page’s waist.
“You want me to come with you?” says Bills.
“Uh uh.” Jack grunts. “He’s still carrying a weight.”
Bills Williams thinks Front-Page is carrying lots of things around with him, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I’ll be back,” Jack shouts, in his best Arnie impression. “Serve yourselves.”
Out on the street it’s cold.
It’s dark and there’s a wind blowing and snow’s in the air, though right now it’s trying to rain … but most of all it’s cold.
But somehow … it’s okay.
Sometimes the City carries its magic on the surface for all to see.
Right now, at a little before 9 o’clock, on a Tuesday evening after the longest Happy Hour in the brief history of Jack Fedogan’s Land at the End of the Working Day, the streets are empty of people. Jack looks along 23rd and then down Fifth and there’s not a single person to be seen. Not even any traffic.
Then, its tyres swishing along the rain-washed streets, a single Yellow cab turns the corner into Fifth just a block down and heads their way, its light glowing like a beacon in the darkness.
Jack hefts Front-Page up against him and waves his free arm. “Hey!” he yells into the gloom.
The cab pulls up alongside them, the cabby calls, “Get in.”
“Thanks.” Jack pulls open the door and manoeuvres Front-Page into the back seat. It smells of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke, for which Jack is grateful. His companion would not win any prizes in a sweet-smells competition.
“Where to?” the driver asks as Jack pulls the door closed.
“Central Park.”
“Where in Central Park, friend? It’s a big park.”
“Anywhere, but quickly.” He pushes a rolled-up twenty through the grill.
“You got it,” comes the reply.
As they drive, Jack starts patting Front-Page’s face. “Front-Page,” he says, “can you hear me?”
“Hear you,” says Front-Page.
“Hang on in there, buddy,” says Jack. “Hang on in there.”
Front-Page lets rip with a fart. It sounds like material tearing.
“He okay?” the driver calls over his shoulder. “He gonna throw up, you tell me, okay?”
“It’s just wind,” Jack shouts. Then, to Front-Page, “Hang on, buddy.”
The driver lets them out on the corner of Central Park South and Fifth, seemingly relieved to have made the trip without his passengers redecorating the back seat.
Jack holds onto Front-Page, his shoulders hunched over at the biting cold wind, and watches the cab drive on up Fifth Avenue.
“Okay,” says Jack, “I want you to walk with me.”
“Where … going?” says Front-Page.
“We’re gonna sit ourselves down on a bench along here a ways and we’re gonna look up at the city.”
As they start to walk, Front-Page McGuffin says, “Nice.”
Maybe it’s something in the air, maybe it’s the promise of rain coming down as a fine spray, but Front-Page starts to improve as they move along and it doesn’t take as long as Jack thought it would to reach his destination.
Then they’re there.
A bench on one of the pathways that cross and re-cross Central park. Over across from them as Jack lowers Front-Page onto the seat, they can see the buildings up Central Park West, their lights twinkling like fairy lights in the gloom.
“This is where Phyllis and me used to come,” says Jack Fedogan. He leans forward on his knees and looks up through the branches at the glittering lights. “We used to come here and make plans,” he says, either telling Front-Page McGuffin or simply reminding himself. If you were to ask him which one it was, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. Not for sure.
“You. Miss. Her?” Front-Page’s voice is stilted and echoing, hollow, more like the memory of voice than the voice itself.
“I miss her very much, my friend,” says Jack. “And I look forward to seeing her again. But only when the time is right.”
By his side, Front-Page nods. “Time. Is. Right,” he says.
For a few seconds they sit in silence and then Jack says, “What I was saying back in the Working Day? About the power of the mind?”
Front-Page’s head lolls on his neck.
Jack shakes his friend’s arm and says it again.
“Yes?”
“You have that power.”
Jack takes the single grunt to be an ironic laugh. “I have no power.”
“Yes you do,” Jack says. “Okay, you can’t lift an auto right now … and maybe you couldn’t even if Betty were here and lying right underneath. But you’d have a college try, am I right?”
Front-Page nods.
“So try.”
“Wha- what? No. Auto. Here.”
“Try to get to her, for Chrissakes. Just … just leave it all. Let it go!”
“How?”
“Your body is finished. It’s you who’ve trapped yourself here … nobody else. You and all those dumb superstitions … all that spitting and rapping and twirling. You’ve got- Listen.” Jack turns around and takes hold of Front-Page’s jacket lapels. “If I could change places with you right now, I’d do it. You hear what I’m saying to you, Front-Page? If I could be as close to seeing Phyllis again as you are to seeing Betty, I’d change places right now. All you have to do is try.”
“Try,” says Front-Page. “Yes.” Then, “How?”
“Just … just close your eyes and let it go. Don’t fight it. Use that power of the mind that folks use to lift automobiles.”
Front-Page McGuffin blinks at Jack Fedogan and then looks down at his friend’s hands. “You. Can … ”
Jack takes his hands away. “Sorry. Getting carried away there.”
“S’okay,” says Front-Page and he moves his head to face the twinkling lights on the buildings through the trees. “Quite. A. City,” he says, his voice now sounding like a door rubbing on a piece of coal trapped beneath it. “New. York,” he says.
Even the words themselves have a magical sound, Jack thinks. He rubs his shoulders and shivers. “You trying?”
“Trying,” says Front-Page.
They sit like that for a few minutes, silent.
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Something … You. Good. Man. Jack.”
“So they tell me.”
“Something. Happening.”
Jack Fedogan turns around and looks at his friend’s face. Is it his imagination or is it the light filtering through the trees … or does Front-Page look more peaceful now?
“Hold. Hand,” says Front-Page McGuffin. “Going.”
Jack takes hold of Front-Page’s hand and grips it tight, trying hard to let him feel the warmth. “Front-Page?” he whispers.
“Yessss . . . ?” Sleepy-sounding now.
“Tell Phyllis I said, ‘Hi’.”
Front-Page’s head lolls forward. And now there is just one person sitting on the bench in Central Park, breathing in the fine mist and watching the lights twinkling through the trees. Jack sits there for a while like that, his arm around Front-Page McGuffin’s shoulder and Front-Page’s head leaning against his own like a sleeping lover, just watching the city and listening to its sounds.
* * *
It takes Jack Fedogan almost two hours to walk back to The Land at the End of the Working Day. Two hours in which he has re-lived weeks and months and years of memories. When he arrives at the familiar entrance at the corner of 23rd and Fifth, it’s raining hard and Jack is already sniffling.
“Where you been?” Edgar says as Jack clumps down the stairs. “It’s almost midnight!”
“Where’s Front-Page?” asks McCoy Brewer.
“Right now?” says Jack. “Right now I’d say he’s catching up with so
meone he’s been missing for a long time.”
“Where’d you leave him?” asks Bills Williams.
Jack walks across to the counter and lifts the hatch. “In the park.”
Bills smiles. “And I bet I know where,” he says.
“Coffee anyone?” asks Jack. “It’s been a long—”
Suddenly the lights flicker.
A wind blows down the stairs and swirls around them, a wind so strong that the five of them shield their eyes.
Then, as quickly as it appeared, the wind drops.
The lights return to their full intensity.
And a solitary shimmering figure stands at the foot of the stairs.
“Someone call me?” asks Dawdle O’Rourke.
Front-Page McGuffin & The Greatest Story Never Told
Copyright © Peter Crowther 2008 & 2011
Introduction
Copyright © Joe Hill 2008 & 2011
The right of Peter Crowther to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form in The Land at the End of the Working Day by Humdrumming.co.uk in 2008. This electronic version is published in March 2011 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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