Going Places

by Kathryn Berla

  Below us the city twinkled to life. Above us, the night sky did the same. Windy Hill lived up to its name that night, whipping up a chill that somehow pierced even the steel doors of the truck. Fritzy turned the key in the ignition and left the heater running. Alana was on my mind. Plan B was on my mind. Homework was on my mind. Homework, in fact, was always on my mind those days when school structure was something I actually missed. Life as a home-schooled student meant never being done. Some project. Some test. Some reading was always lurking somewhere in the back of my mind.

  “Wheeler,” she said, shaking me from my thoughts, “I’m sorry, I know I’ve been hard on you.”

  “About what?”

  “About Love. I guess you can’t help it if you’re hung up on her. It’s just that sometimes I get frustrated with you, and I don’t get it.”

  “That’s okay. Sometimes I don’t get it either.”

  “Are you still going to Europe with her after graduation?”

  “That’s the plan. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just makes me sad to think of it.”

  “You’ll be off at college. We wouldn’t be seeing each other anyway.”

  “Maybe not, but I think we would. We’d find a way to make it happen.”

  I didn’t ask her how that would happen. Fritzy wasn’t a great student, but she was a great athlete, and she was going to a great college, one I’d never have a chance of getting into. And anyway, the two colleges my mom made me apply to were in-state. Fritzy would be all the way across the country.

  But I was sharing in her blues that night. Maybe it was the remoteness of the hilltop. Maybe it was the reminder of the season, the passage of time, my mounting disappointments, Alana so far away. Maybe I was thinking of Fritzy and the idea that after graduation our worlds would be so different—her with her fancy athletic scholarship, me traveling the world. So different that one day we might even forget what it was that had once brought us together.

  “Have you ever kissed a girl, Wheeler?”

  That rocketed me right out of my gloom. I always lie more convincingly when there’s a kernel of truth buried somewhere in the lie so I thought about the kiss my mom routinely planted on my cheek whenever she said goodnight.

  “And I don’t mean your mom.”

  I called upon memories of grandmothers, aunts and anyone else who had innocently brushed my cheeks or even my lips with their own.

  “And no other relatives either.”

  “Okay, no I haven’t,” I said. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes and no, I guess.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, obviously I feel sorry for you that you’ve never kissed a girl. But I think it’d be cool if I was your first. You wanna, Wheeler? Otherwise the first time you go in for the kiss, you’re not going to know what the hell you’re doing.”

  I scooted around in my seat so I was facing her, and she draped her arm across the back of my neck. I know I must have looked shocked because I was. But who was I to argue with her logic?

  “You wanna?” she repeated. I smelled mint on her breath.

  How had I not noticed until that moment she wore her hair loose that night? That her sweater was tight? That her eyes shone from the interior light? That her cheeks (and mine) were flushed from the almost suffocating warmth blowing through the heater vents. She leaned towards me slightly, and like the gravitational pull of the sun I was sucked into her orbit, my lips blending with hers. Soft. Warm. Greeting her tongue with my own. Gathering the silky thickness of her sleek, glossy hair into my closed fist. How did I know what the hell I was doing? It felt so easy and . . . natural.

  When it was over, and it was eventually over, I thought there’d be hell to pay. She pulled back, floating away from me like a helium balloon getting smaller and smaller until it finally disappears from sight. And only then did I see Fritzy again.

  “Was that gross?” she asked in an uncharacteristically timid way.

  “Definitely not gross,” I said. “Weird maybe, but not gross.”

  “Was it like brother and sister?” She trailed her fingertips lightly across her lips as if searching for a remnant of the kiss.

  “I don’t know any brothers and sisters who do that.”

  All sorts of appropriate wisecracks escaped me at the moment. Wisecracks that Gus would have easily come up with.

  “It’s okay though. We’re still friends and it was a friendly thing, right?”

  “Very friendly.”

  It, for sure, had been Heaven to me.

  Have you ever lost something . . .

  . . . and spent hours searching for it only to have its location revealed to you by your subconscious when you were least expecting it? If you have, then you’ll know exactly how plan B came to me.

  It was late that night, long after I’d finally given up on everything that could be postponed until the next day. I laid in bed not really asleep but not really awake either. Fritzy was on my mind for blowing my mind.

  We’re still friends, she had said.

  Did she really have the ability to compartmentalize like that? Did I? The kiss was nothing more than a grain of rice in the bowl that was the entirety of our friendship. And yet what a grain it was. One that flavored the bowl with such a pungent spice, it was impossible to ignore.

  I played out the day in the movie of my mind searching for clues as to what prompted the kiss. Was our friendship now in jeopardy? Was there a deeper motive, or should I take it for what she said it was, an act of kindness to help me become a man? There was the phone call in the afternoon. The report of Pirkle prancing about in his tighty-whities. The recent visits to her house where I’d been granted rare access to her bedroom. I pushed the rewind button, and it stopped at the place where I walked into her house that day. Where I dropped my keys in the metal bowl on the entry table. I rewound it again and pressed pause. I grabbed my phone.

  “Wheeler,” came her sleepy voice.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yeah . . . what’s going on?”

  “When Scolari comes to your house . . . does he put his keys in the brass bowl?”

  Silence.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. Everyone usually does.”

  “Plan B,” I said. “Next time he comes, you take his keys and let me inside his house. Then you go home and put them back in the bowl.”

  “You know what you’re saying is completely insane, don’t you?”

  I thought about it for two seconds.

  “Yeah. It’s completely insane.”

  “What if he has a burglar alarm?”

  “We run.”

  “Great plan, Wheeler.”

  “I don’t remember seeing a burglar alarm sign out front or on the windows. Usually people do that if they have an alarm. But I can double check.”

  “That’s called breaking and entering, and it’s a felony. You’re eighteen. You’d go to jail. I probably would too.”

  “Well, technically it’s just entering. Not breaking because we’re using his key. No one will ever know, and I’ll be in and out in less than two minutes.”

  “What if he has hidden cameras in his house?”

  “He’s a piano teacher, Fritzy, not a computer geek.”

  “Wheeler?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is so fucked up I can’t even talk about it anymore. And it’s totally not you. In fact, I’m wondering right now if you’re on something.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I gotta go back to sleep. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Had the kiss somehow made me feel invincible? Had it scrambled my brains?

  >>>

  The following morning I saw it for the crazy plan that it was, and I probably would have dismissed it completely if three consecutive event
s hadn’t occurred shortly thereafter.

  Event number one happened when I stopped by Mrs. Dickinson’s to pick up Lady.

  “Hudson, dear,” Mrs. Dickinson said. “A word, if you don’t mind.”

  Of course, The Boys did mind. Lady too. They knew their routine and didn’t appreciate any deviations from it. But when Jennifer struck a show dog pose, the others seemed to understand they must summon their better, more patient, selves. Felix teetered cautiously on his three legs before lowering himself to the carpet until further notice. Buster perched at Felix’s side, and Lady was content to gaze adoringly at her handsome Prince Jennifer.

  “I saw Len Pirkle the other day,” Mrs. Dickinson said. “He stopped by the Senior Center, and of course I haven’t seen him for a good long while. But his appearance was . . . disheveled, if I can be so blunt. I wonder if you would mind sharing your recent impressions. He is still your client, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.” I squirmed inside. I knew she was expecting a good, long talk about the whole thing. She wasn’t the kind of woman who happily took “no” for an answer, and she was my number one client, after all. “But I can’t speak about my other clients, I hope you understand. Privacy issues.”

  She looked me up and down and pursed her lips thoughtfully. The artist in me noticed the color of her lipstick, just a shade or two darker than her fingernails, but still complementary.

  “No, I suppose you can’t,” she said at last.

  But her look was clear. He’s your client so do something about it.

  Event number two happened the following day when Pirkle called to see if I could stop by.

  “If you’re coming out this way to visit your lady friend,” he added.

  I hadn’t planned on it. In fact, I was planning to avoid Fritzy for a few days and let the dust settle, considering how dusty things had become. But he was asking, so I went.

  “Have you been over there?” Pirkle asked. “To the neighbor’s house.”

  I never felt comfortable in the living room where we were sitting just then. The neatness of it, the clean but sparse furnishings. It reminded me of one of those fake rooms they set up in a furniture store, unworthy of its name, the living room. I almost preferred the day it was vandalized. At least then it showed signs of life.

  “Fritzy’s?”

  For a crazy second I thought he knew all about the kiss since that was still foremost on my mind.

  “The character who lives behind me,” he clarified with mild annoyance. “The one with the round window . . . the little girl.”

  I swallowed my words before I could blurt out the fact that we’d gone over there but been turned away at the door. I almost said it, I was so eager to report that I’d taken some action on his behalf. But I remembered Fritzy’s warning about feeding into his paranoia.

  “I haven’t had a chance yet,” I lied. “But I’ll do it soon, and when I do, I’ll call you from the window.”

  “Good,” he said, nodding his head. “That’s why I called you. I’d like it if you could do that for me soon.”

  Mrs. Dickinson was right. He was looking a little disheveled. And it was very unlike him.

  “Mr. Pirkle, do you wanna go somewhere?”

  He looked surprised. “A particular place?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I just thought it might be nice to go for a walk. Or to get a cup of coffee or something.”

  I really wanted out of that house. It reminded me of all kinds of broken things. Furniture. Memories. Promises. Lives.

  “I can offer you a cup of coffee,” he gave me the skull-searching look which was comforting because it meant he was present. “But if you’d like to go out, then let’s just walk down the street a-ways. There’s a coffee shop about a quarter mile down. My treat.”

  Anyone who saw us walking would have taken us for grandfather and grandson. A very tall grandfather with his very short grandson. It felt good walking with him. I already had a grandfather, two in fact. But the one who was the father of my dad—him, I rarely saw. In my mind, he was the sad man who lived a long plane ride away. Our grip on each other had loosened over the years until it felt like it was almost gone.

  Something about Pirkle reminded me of that grandfather before he got sad. And something else about Pirkle reminded me of that grandfather’s son, my dad.

  “How did you wind up here, sir? In this town.”

  The houses were newer where we were. On my side of town, the houses were old and small with more mature trees but no such thing as sidewalks or even streetlamps.

  “I was born here. Grew up here. It looked a lot different back then. Nothing but walnut orchards and grazing cows for as far as the eye could see.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” I said, and I couldn’t even though I tried to turn asphalt into pastures and sidewalks into walnut groves.

  A tiny white dog that couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds strained against its leash, dragging its heavyset owner faster than seemed possible. The dog stopped abruptly to sniff the tire of a parked car. The man pulled a phone from his pocket and poked at the screen before holding it up to his ear.

  “You’ve heard of the one-room schoolhouse? Well I went to one. All the way from kindergarten to high school.”

  “So . . . Chuck lived here too?”

  “We grew up about a hundred yards from each other. Not too far from here. Of course, none of these houses were here back then.”

  Somewhere behind us a car came to a sudden and unexpected stop. The screeching brakes startled Mr. Pirkle. We turned around but saw nothing.

  “Must be over that way.” I pointed in the direction of a busier parallel street.

  “I’m getting worse, Hudson. I know I am.”

  “Have you seen her again?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Your mother . . . does she know things? I mean, if it comes to that.”

  It was my turn to nod.

  “My mom’s really smart. And she’s a great nurse. She’ll help you with anything.”

  “If it comes to that,” he repeated. “I’m not so sure it will though. It depends which goes first, my brain or my body.”

  “You seem really healthy to me, sir.”

  “You mean physically? I suppose I am, but don’t forget I’m ninety. People don’t live forever, you know.”

  And at that moment I understood he was rooting for his body to give out. In the war between mind and body, he only wanted his sanity to last long enough to see him through the rest of his life.

  “I’ve built a lot of walls, Hudson, and now I feel them crumbling down. Peeling away like the skin of an onion. Sometimes it seems I’m traveling back in time to the places I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to avoid.”

  “Did you have a happy childhood?”

  We’d reached the coffee shop. It was one of those chain franchises filled, at that time of day, with young mothers and their pre-school age children.

  “What could be unhappy about a childhood when you have a best friend and a doting mother? I lost my father too, Hudson. Did I ever tell you that?”

  He hadn’t. With unspoken agreement, we turned back towards his house, leaving behind the steaming lattes unordered, unbought, and undrunk.

  “How did he die?” I asked.

  “He breathed in too much of that gas they used in the First World War. Mustard gas. Suffered from bad lungs for the rest of his life. I never had any brothers or sisters. My mother always said it was a miracle I was conceived.”

  I thought I could see the years slowly draining away, leaving him back in time when he was a teenager like me again. And then one day he’d go so far back all traces of him would disappear. I knew I’d be left with regrets if I let him go off by himself, with no one to mark that time for him. Someone had to remember.

  “Remember,�
� he said when I finally got in my car to leave, and for a second I thought he was talking about his life. But he wasn’t, of course. He was only talking about the girl in the window.

  Event number three began later that night.

  It was the time of night which I like to think of as my reward for completing another day and hopefully doing it well. Achievements or enjoyments, anything beyond just marking time. My reward could be playing a video game, or reading a book, or even just lying in bed daydreaming which usually led to nightdreaming. The point was that nothing had a claim on me then. Nothing beyond my own desires.

  That night I laid on my bed thinking about Fritzy’s kiss, wondering what Alana would think if she knew, wondering if I could somehow cause her to know—let it slip accidentally on purpose. I thought about Bryce who worried about losing Alana but skipped doing the easy things that would make her happy.

  How this muddled brew of subconscious meanderings led to what came next, I’m not really sure. But somehow, on legs that didn’t seem to be my own, I walked to my desk, and with similarly disconnected hands, I picked up my pencils and sketch pad and began to draw. Soon, words fell into place. Perfect words. And for the next four hours I didn’t move from that spot. When I finally stopped to review what I’d done, it was like I was seeing it for the first time. Ghost Soldiers, I wrote without hesitation in bold block letters across the top of the page.

  There were five ghost soldiers, all Americans. The young father killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The high school dropout from West Virginia, drafted and sent to fight and die in the jungles of Vietnam. The marine who lost both legs and his life on the bare rock of Iwo Jima. The wheezing, gasping WWI vet who made it back home only to succumb to the ravages of mustard gas. The teenage boy conscripted to fight in the Civil War after all the grown men had already been called up—dead from diphtheria and a hundred miles from home.

  The ghost soldiers move together as a band of brothers, traveling backwards and forward through time to fight and die again and again in each other’s wars. Young and old men battling ghosts and their own demons. Fighting alongside their brother ghosts. Every battle deepens their compassion. Deepens their understanding of the forces that dragged them into wars not of their own choosing. They watch over their loved ones from the spirit world. They relive their greatest sorrows and happiness, strengthened and supported by that brotherhood of five. They succeed in finding the humanity in their enemy. In themselves.