Parallel II - The Gift

by Paul Rice

  Looking at their paltry belongings, Jane said, “Well, that’s not much to show for nearly forty years of life, is it?” The reality of their decision had suddenly washed over her and the sight of the bare walls, lonely picture hooks and barren cupboards saddened her.

  Ken saw her melancholic look as he walked over to join her. Standing by the kitchen sink, he said, “Hey, come on there now, baby… everything will be fine! New horizons, big adventures and plenty more craziness to come – what more can you want?” He leaned over and pulled her tightly towards him with his left arm.

  Standing there, arm in arm, they gazed out of the kitchen window and looked up at the beautiful green countryside as it sloped upwards behind the Lodge. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “We’ve had some good times here and I’ll miss them, I guess?” She turned towards him and they kissed gently.

  When they parted, Ken held her at arms length and said, “I don’t care about anything, Jane. We can sleep on a park bench for all I care, just as long as we’re together then the rest will be easy, life’s just a game anyway?” He smiled at her and she smiled back. They were together and that was all that mattered.

  Later, they sat with Mike and did one final check of all their paperwork and finances – all those things they would never have the chance to do again, not in this place they wouldn’t. Ken had been very assiduous and the final check was nothing more than a quick role call. Jane called out the item and Ken checked it off on his list. “Done, sold, done…” He confirmed the list with a quick tick next to the item in question. Mike looked at his friends, laughed and said that he couldn’t even remember where his wallet was, never mind compile a list… Ken looked at him, then smiled and shook his head in dismay at his friend’s pathetic lack of organisation. Once they had finished, he put the last remaining things into the old rucksack, he’d had it for years now and the faded black bag had been with him on all of his previous travels – he was damned if he was going to leave it behind on this trip? “Right folks, that’s it,” he said. “We are ready to rock, what now, Mike?”

  Mike reached for the Communicator, flipped the lid open, and said, “I’ll contact George and find out shall I, we’re a day early, but what the hell?” The reply from George was almost instantaneous.

  “Be ready in fifteen minutes – ensure you are wearing the suits and that you have all taken the appropriate tablet. At exactly midday you should be in the vehicle. Good luck!” The screen died and they looked at each other in silence, the rush of reality suddenly heading straight towards them – it was to a long time before they would hear from George again, a very long time.

  “Oh God, I’m so nervous… I just can’t tell you!” Jane said as she stood and made her way upstairs to get changed. Ken followed her; he knew what she had meant as the butterflies in his guts were starting to grow fingernails, sharp fingernails.

  Mike was a cool as ice. He had already changed into his suit and popped one of the blueys. He calmly sat on the window ledge and listened to his friends laughing upstairs. It was time to go and he was ready. He was going to have to be and he knew it.

  Twelve minutes later they were seated in the Spear with their seatbelts tightly fastened. Mike switched on the Navigator and watched as a timer appeared in the top right corner. The digital counter was clicking down. The words above the decreasing timer said: ‘Time to jumping: 02:27’ the numbers slowly counted down towards the inevitable zeros. With eyes wide and mouths as dry as cream crackers, they sat and waited. Waited for zeros all round.

  The inevitable numbers arrived, right on time too…

  Chapter 22 - Down on the Farm

  His old man had been missing for more than two weeks now but it wasn’t reciprocated, young Dwayne Tolder never missed the fiend at all, not one bit. He had long since stopped doing the chores as there weren’t any, all he had to do was clean up behind himself, he wasn’t messy by any means, and so that took hardly any time at all. Instead, the boy’s days were filled with early morning walks, fishing, reading the magazine, and above all, sketching. Now he was free from the chains of his father’s shackles, the young man’s talent no longer lay hidden. It flourished like a lily in springtime. From the small bulb of ideas grew a beautiful stem, a stalk, topped by endless pages of pencil drawings; he sketched everything he saw, smelled, touched and heard. The ‘flowers’ he produced were wonderfully articulated upon the creased canvas of old bills and crumpled envelopes.

  Yes, it was a good time for him and was only tempered by one thing and even that wasn’t even really a ‘thing’ as such… It was the dream, a horrible little play that appeared in his head every night. At some time after midnight he would have the same dream, over and over again. The vision he had of himself running across the oceans, with a burning green stone in clutched in his hand, disturbed him. He couldn’t seem to wake from the pantomime, felt himself held prisoner, clamped into place by some unseen force. He shook himself violently, trying to break free, but escape was not to be an option. The ending was always the same, too. Red felt himself lifted and then fired, like one of those crazy ‘Human Cannonball’ folks he had watched at the fair one time, fired into a long, black tunnel. Spiralling upwards, whirling through bright green light and rocketing towards the darkness that waited in hunger for him. His black destination took the shape of an enormous spinning whirlpool and he was propelled into it, again and again, Red was launched into the darkness. The boy’s own echoing shriek became his nightly alarm call. Jerking upright in the bed, covered in sweat, he would sit with the sound of his own voice still ringing in his ears. Untangling the knotted sheets, the young man would go back to sleep. Or try to, tossing and turning until he eventually fell into a restless doze.

  The dream, it seemed, was the only thing that distracted him from his peaceful new life. Well almost the only thing, there was also a strange stirring in his loins, a hunger, one which seemed to have been bought about by the rather revealing picture of a young lady on the second to last page of the magazine. Those long, smooth legs reached up into her tiny skirt. The white tennis shoes on the girl’s feet were brilliantly contradicted by the glossy red of her lips and the shock of black hair tumbling onto her slender shoulders, whose shining ebony highlighted her beautiful face in the frame of its fragrant lustre – he could smell it. Red could not remember noticing her before. “How come, I must o’ read this here book a thousand times or more?” Still, he had found her now and she took his breath away. It was a picture that did not leave a lot to the imagination, an imagination the young man was just starting to develop. He stared at it and felt the heat within himself. She almost seemed to smile at him and he swore he could hear her in his head: “Any day now, my sweet, one day I will see you. One day soon…” It was a distraction that helped to save Red from the inner pages of the magazine, and he now began to spend more time looking at the girl than he did reading those familiar words about the Army and the men in grey suits.

  The time dragged by and he savoured it. Occasionally, depending on the wind, he would catch the sound of a vehicle slowing on the main road as it approached the farm’s distant turning. The noise would make him pause and stand with his head tilted towards the gate, trying to catch the sound of his father’s cog-crunching gear change. There was no mistaking that noise and his pulse quickened in fearful anticipation of it. For a long time it never came, the sound of the engine accelerating away, humming softly in the distance as whoever it was, kept on driving towards town. After a while he learned to discard that awful sense of trepidation that filled him every time he heard the sound of an engine.

  Red had taken to living off the land, and to his great shame the boy had used his father’s shotgun on several occasions. After each successful hunting trip, he would slowly carry his prey back to the kitchen, whereupon the brace of wild birds, which he had shot, would be treated with a respectful reverence as he plucked and gutted their ruby feathered bodies. They, like the fish, provided a feast fit for a king. After cleaning his plate
, he would carefully inspect the roasted remains of his meal and then proceed to pick it spotlessly clean with his teeth, he enjoyed the birds even more than the fish, sitting and noisily sucking the marrow from within their fragile carcasses, by the time Red had finished there were never more than a handful of splintered bones remaining in witness to the meal. He also kept a careful eye on the small supply of vegetables, which remained in the plot behind the kitchen. There were still a few turnips in there, along with a handful of carrots and some onions too. At one stage the boy had eaten nothing but apples for three days on end; the tree down by the lake that was starting to bear fruit and he made the most of its tasty gifts. He was careful with all the plants and animals on the farm and they in turn rewarded him with their bounty. It was a meagre existence but he revelled in the freedom. Plus, he had the woman in the magazine to keep him distracted when things got too lonely…

  Then one day the noise of the slowing vehicle didn’t fade away. As he stood and listened, Red heard the dreaded sound of its wheels rumble across the cattle grid, and then in horror he listened to the engine that accelerated as the vehicle began the journey down the long dirt track leading towards the farm. “Shit, Poppa’s back, shit!” He raced into the house and hurriedly put the twelve-gauge back into the cupboard. Eyes racing around the house, looking for any mess, the boy stood and trembled. “No! I don’ want him back. No please, I’m happy hear, please no!” Taking a deep breath, he stepped onto the porch and prepared for his father. Red could feel himself shaking as he tried to force the fear away. As it headed his way, the noise of the approaching vehicle began to growl. The boy knew if the noise did belong to his father, then the older man must have got himself a new truck; the engine noise echoing towards him sounded nothing like the worn out old smoke-blower, which his father mistreated so badly. Red sometimes felt more sympathy for the old Chevy than he did for himself. No, this engine sounded like the most sweetly tuned V8 he’d ever heard. “Yeah, listen to that baby growl!” He thought, as he watched the trail of dust head towards the farm. Then, in a cloud of the same red dust, and amidst a loud honking of an air-horn, the young man’s life changed, and changed radically.

  His face broke into a toothy grin as he ran down from the wooden steps and onto the weed riddled patch of earth in front of the house. A brown pickup truck skidded to a halt in front of the young man’s bare feet. It was the truck he had hitched a lift in before, weeks before. “I thought they’d forgotten…” he thought as he ran towards the truck.

  Red heard the words: “Hey there big guy, how are things going?” The driver shouted through the open window and then stepped out of the truck, leaving the door open behind him, the man stood and waited for the other two people to join him. The other tall man with the jet-black hair and the big white toothed smile came around the front of the truck and he was soon joined by a tall, equally dark haired, woman.

  Red smiled, huge teeth shining whitely in the bright sunshine. “Howdy folks, howdo ma’am… Gee it’s so good to see yoo all, I ain’t seen folk fer days, week’s maybes!” Red grinned again and ran over to shake hands with them. “How yoo doing ma’am, yoo weren’t lookin’ so fine before, the last time I seen ya, yoo look better now tho, a whole heap better! If’n yoo don’ mind me saying so, sir?” He said and looked at the driver hesitantly – the big man still had an icy look to him and, although he was smiling, the expression stopped at his eyes. “Still, he shore is friendly enough?” The kid guessed it was just him imagining things and turned to listen whilst the woman told him that her fever was all better now. The tall dark haired man with wide shoulders said his name was Mike. The woman reached out with her hand, and upon shaking Red’s large paw, told him that her name was Jane. Putting her arm around the slightly shorter of the two men, she said, “This is my husband and he goes by the name of Ken, or Kenny?”

  Ken reached out and Red felt the steel once again. “How is yoo sir?” Red looked at the man.

  Ken said, “Yeah, I’m good, Red – how about you, pal?”

  Red said he was fine and looked at the truck, which sat behind them with the engine ticking as it cooled. He looked back to Ken. “That shore sounds like a finely tooned motor, yes sir, finely fettled!” Ken said he would let him look under the hood some time, he actually said ‘bonnet’ but Red guessed he meant hood as Ken had slapped the brown metal cover when he said it? Interrupting them, the woman reached into the back of the truck and said, “Red, honey, would you give me a hand with some of this stuff?”

  He almost leapt across in his haste to help. “Yes ma’am, what do yoo need?” She passed him two brown paper grocery bags, they bulged with their contents and he grasped them carefully to his chest. “Where do yoo want them to go, ma’am?” He stood looking at her.

  “Well,” she said. “You can stand there all day and let that beautiful steak go bad or…” Jane laughed. “You can take them inside before everything falls through the bottom of those bags!” He looked at her in bemusement and shook his head. Jane laughed again. “Yes Red, they’re for you, love – now come on, chop-chop!” She shooed him inside and told the other two to help out as well. “Come on guys, let’s get this inside, I’m starving!” Red heard them laugh and held the door open with his large foot. They, all three, filed past him with arms full of supplies.

  “Supplies for me…” He felt the juices flood into his mouth and rushed in behind them, leaving the fly screen to clash shut of its own accord. In no time at all, Jane had organised the unpacking and it wasn’t too long before Red’s previously bare cupboards began to take on a much healthier look. There was every conceivable item of food he could have wanted, they consisted of a large array of tinned goods, fresh steak, red apples, cartons of apple juice and almost everything in between. He recognised all of them, and if he hadn’t of known better, Red would have thought the woman had somehow managed to look on the inside his head, picking out all his favourite food stuffs as she did so… there was even a large stack of freshly cut farm ham. He had peeked inside the grease proof paper when they were looking the other way. The only items that didn’t find a home were the pile of fresh meats and dairy produce.

  “Where’s the fridge, big guy?” Mike asked as he looked around.

  “The fridge, sir…?” Red said, looking at him in confusion.

  “Yeah, you know… where you put stuff to keep it cold?” Mike smiled at the blank look, which the young man gave him.

  “Oh, yoo mean the cooler, like Missus Jones has in the shop. Oh, well, I mean, we don’t have one o’ them Mister Mike, sir?” Red felt the hot flush colour his face. They laughed and Jane told them not to worry as she was going to make some sandwiches anyway.

  Ken went back out to the truck and returned with arms full of fishing equipment, Red said he should dump it on the porch and gave him a hand to ferry it across. “We still OK with the deal we made, buddy?” Ken asked. Red looked hesitant, Ken helped him. “You know, we’ll bring the grub and you let us put some lines in your lake. Remember?”

  Red grinned again. “I shore do sir, and a deal is a deal!” Ken looked at him and Red saw for that first time the man’s smile actually reached his eyes. They twinkled with a green light – he thought of the dream and shut the door in its face.

  They laid out the gear and then Ken suddenly said, “Oh damn, I’ve forgotten the floats! You go and get some of that food and tell Jane I’ve just gone into town. I’ll be back in a bit, OK?” He walked over to the brown truck and with a roar of the engine, hurtled back towards the main road. Red watched the dust that Ken’s passing left. It rose into the air like clouds, red storm clouds… he watched them hang over the hedges for a while and then, with his stomach rumbling, turned back into the house. He was tucking into his fifth sandwich, the thickly-cut ham, which Jane had smothered with something called ‘English mustard’, hardly touched the sides of his throat, the yellow sauce burned his mouth and left him wanting more, it was delicious! With a mouth full of meat and farm bread, Red looked up a
t his two guests and offered them an enormous smile. Jane had just passed him yet another sandwich, along with a large glass of milk, when they heard Ken pull up in the truck. “Give us a hand guys!” He shouted from outside.

  Red rose quickly, and still chewing on his latest mouthful, ran to the door. Pushing the screen to one side, he looked down at Ken. He saw that the man was manoeuvring a large white box over the lip of the cargo area on the truck. “They must be mighty big floats…” the boy thought, as he stepped down to help. Fifteen minutes later he was standing in the kitchen and looking at his new ‘Re-fridge-er-ator’. The boy stood and gawped. It was so big that he felt as though it would contain a whole cow, and it made ‘ice-cubes’ too. Red had no idea what they were, but they sounded pretty cool...

  Mike said they should leave it for a few hours before plugging it in. He turned to Red and said, “The power works OK around here doesn’t it, Red?” The boy heard Ken laugh and looked across to where he stood leaning against the sink.

  “Sorry, Red…” the big man said, “That never even occurred to me, but you do have power out here, don’t you?” He smiled and raised his eyebrows. Red said he did and then proudly showed them the single light bulb that hung above their heads on the kitchen ceiling. He reached across to the switch and showed them that he did indeed have power.

  “Only thang is,” he said. “Is that I don’ have much need fo’ it, being as I don’t have no electric machines, well nothing except that there light and an old radio that I woodent even know how to turn on?”

  They all laughed and then listened to Jane whilst she vowed to: “Fix all that!” Red laughed with them and then took a seat; in the meantime he had a mind to: “Fix all those sandwiches right up as well.” He sat with Ken and together they managed to finish off the whole loaf and most of the ham, too. Jane just kept it coming until they were done. Red couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten so much and in between mouthfuls, talked endlessly to his guests. He told them all about himself and his life down on the farm.