“Not just yet.” I had come to the realization that this stunt was so well done that I was going to get nowhere unless I played along. Eventually whoever was behind it would slip up. “Say, why don’t you tell me how you came to do limericks?”
“If you stood in one place for almost a hundred years, you’d do limericks, too.”
With that I granted he had a point. I studied the tree for a foothold. The speaker was probably hidden in the limbs somewhere and I was going to have to climb up there to find it. Best thing to do was keep humoring the voice while being quiet while climbing the tree. “What’s this about you not having much longer?”
“Tomorrow, to be exact,” Fred said. “That’s why I decided to talk to you. Do you realize that I have only talked to seven people in one hundred years. I look back and find that fact most amazing.”
“What’s going to happen?” I picked my way carefully up the bark like a rock climber going up a sheer face. Finally I got my arms around the lowest limb and pulled myself up.
“See the stakes in the grass?” Fred said. “The ones with the orange ribbons on them?”
I looked back down through the branches. “Sure.” They were scattered across this corner of the park. I hadn’t noticed them last night with Annie.
“I overheard workmen talking about widening the road. I’m scheduled for the chain saws tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding?” I finished checking out the limb I was on and climbed higher where I could see the stakes better. They did show a pattern that looked like the street was going to be wider right through the big tree.
“I am afraid I am not kidding,” Fred said, his voice almost too faint for me to hear. Then he got suddenly louder. “But, that is life. Or death. And please do be careful. I’ve had fifteen children and three adults fall out of my limbs. It is always so painful an occurrence. Actually, the first person who fell out of my limbs was killed by a dinosaur. It was a very sad experience since his wife was standing nearby in the park at the time and never really understood what happened.”
“A what?”
“A dinosaur. Actually a Pterosaurs angry that he was there. You know that Pterosaurs were large flying reptiles that...”
“Now you have gone too far. First you expect me to believe you are a talking tree and then you expect me to believe that you have been around since the dinosaurs. There were no men during that time. That much I remember from grade school. And you said you were not even a hundred years old.”
“You are quite right,” Fred said. But we oak trees have family memories that go back, for lack of a better way of putting it, to our roots, which incidentally, were in the early Cretaceous period in this part of the world.”
“Fine,” I said, glancing down at the ground below, wondering when the funny farm wagon was going to come and take me away for talking to myself in a tree.
“I can tell you do not believe me.”
“No shit,” I said. “I am still looking for the microphone so I can get this joke over.”
“Please hold onto a limb and I will take you back. Do you have a favorite dinosaur you would like to see?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said and started down. “And next you will be telling me I can ride a Triceratops if I want.”
Fred laughed softly. “Not hardly, but I can certainly show you why you wouldn’t want to ride one.”
THREE
Around me the air suddenly shimmered and the branches of the oak seemed to move and sway, as if there was a slight earthquake shaking the roots. I grabbed tight around a limb and held on as I was suddenly hit by a wave of hot and very humid air that smelled of swamp and fresh greenery.
Below me there was a crashing of brush and again the tree seemed to shake. Through the shaking leaves I could see that the city was gone. There was nothing except trees and brush. And below me was the ugliest, most scarred-up Triceratops I could ever imagine.
“Hold on,” the voice of Fred inside my head said as the dinosaur bumped into the tree and then started using it to scratch itself. I thought I was on a ride at a carnival.
The dinosaur bumped the tree and I bounced among the limbs. Then the Triceratops backed off, looked at the tree and hit it again.
As I held on for dear life I heard Fred’s voice in my head. “See why you wouldn’t want to ride one?”
Somehow, as the dinosaur took aim once more on the base of the tree I managed to scream, “Get me out of here!”
And I was back in the tree in the park.
A tree that wasn’t moving.
I looked slowly around to make sure that I was where I seemed to be, then carefully pulled my fingers out of the grooves they had dug into the bark.
“Pretty amazing beasts, weren’t they?”
I took a deep shuddering breath and let it out. “How did you do that?”
“How do you walk around and drink water without roots? It is just a part of what we are. We can move our conscious minds back and forth through our ancestors and through time. I guess it makes up for not being able to move in real time. You didn’t actually leave the park, but I took your mind back with mine. Fun, huh? Now, would you like to hear another limerick now? I have one about a dinosaur.”
“No. Thanks.” I gave one more quick look to make sure the city was where it should be and there was no Triceratops lurking behind the hedge, then climbed down. Once I was back on the ground I walked quickly around the tree, then sat down.
“You seem upset,” Fred said.
“That ride you gave me was really something. I am not saying that I believe you, but can you take me to any time at all?”
“Sure,” Fred said. And to almost any place as long as the oak at the location is, as we say, in my family tree.”
I groaned.
“Sorry,” Fred said. “But,” his voice suddenly sounding sad. “I am afraid that today will be the last day for you to experience any other time, so we should make the best of it.”
I climbed back to my feet and walked along the line of stakes in the grass. They did start at the corner and go inside the edge of the tree. “Just for the sake of argument,” I said, “is there something I can do for you? I doubt that I could stop the street from being widened, but—”
“Oh, my dear man,” Fred said quickly. “It is so kind of you to ask. I was hoping you would. I have studied the problem at some length and I feel the only solution would be to repeat the process from which I came.”
“What?” I asked. I had lost whatever Fred was talking about halfway through.
“In other words,” Fred said, “get a rubber, ejaculate into it, put one of my seeds in the resulting solution, and plant it. Very simple, really.”
“No way! You must think I was born yesterday?” Now at least I was starting to see the joke. I didn’t know how they had pulled off the voice and the dinosaur schtick, but someone was having a great laugh on this one and I wasn’t going to play along any more.
“I’m afraid I do not know when you were born,” Fred said. “But I got here by exactly the method I told you. I have watched it happening. I have studied the event many times and I fear it may be my only chance of survival.”
“Sure.” I made one more quick check of the tree, then studied the stakes. I had to admit it was sure one elaborate gag. And it looked like the only way I was going to get to the prankster was go along and get it over with. Then I could prove to Annie that I didn’t say anything and get back on her “good” side.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll bring back the part of the deal you need from me. Where will I find a seed from you?”
“I will drop an acorn that is ready to sprout,” Fred said. “And thank you.”
“No problem,” I said.
I made one more quick check around the area of Fred to make sure no one was hiding in the bushes laughing their fool heads off, then headed for Annie’s house in hopes of her giving me a helping hand. She still wouldn’t talk to me or even let me explain what I was trying to do. Not th
at I really blamed her. So I went back to my place and did it myself. I was back at the tree in an hour.
I checked quickly around to make sure no one was watching, then held the rubber up. “Here you go.”
An acorn hit the grass right at my feet. I picked it up, looked at it, then stuck it inside the rubber. “Got any place special you think I should plant it?” I asked, checking the area of the branches it fell from to make sure there was no one sitting up there.
“Anywhere that will be safe,” Fred said.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning early.” As I headed for the park gate, I heard Fred start into a limerick about a girl from Troy.
FOUR
I took my “package” to mom’s house in the suburbs and planted it off to one side in her back yard. She didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, I was always doing strange things. And she hadn’t even seen me in my Buckey the Space Pirate costume.
I staked out where I planted the seed. I told mom it was a special seed for an exotic tree and needed really special care. She liked that.
I made it back to the park by ten the next morning, but I was way too late. The old tree was in a hundred pieces piled in neat stacks. I watched while the workmen used chain saws on what was left, but I couldn’t take it for very long. Even though I knew the entire thing had just been a joke, I couldn’t shake the feeling of pain and sadness coming from that wood.
I never did get back with Annie. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. And no one ever came forward and laughed at me about jacking off into a rubber and then planting it. If it was a practical joke, or a hidden camera stunt, I never found out about it. Seems to me that I would have, too. I don’t understand why someone would go to all that trouble without pulling the final “gotcha?”
Since I never uncovered the joke, every time I visited Mom I found myself checking on the spot where I had planted the tree. Nothing. Over the winter I pretty much forgot about it.
It wasn’t until the following May, while I was mowing Mom’s lawn, that I almost ran over the little oak tree. I spent an entire hour cleaning the weeds and grass away from it, then putting up a solid, two-foot-high wire fence around it. It felt kind of funny to know that my sperm had worked as fertilizer for a tree.
I checked back on the little tree all through that summer and fall, telling myself I was crazy each time I did, but yet doing it anyhow. It became one of those little obsessions a person has that they can’t explain. I sure in hell made no attempt to tell anyone. Mom loved it. Said she’d never had so much help on the yard.
It wasn’t until the following May that something finally happened. I was carefully mowing around the now almost four-foot tall baby oak tree when I heard this high, child-like voice. At first I thought it was something going wrong with the mower, but after I turned the engine off, I heard:
“A bather whose clothing was strewed
By waves that left her quite nude,
Saw a man come along
And unless I am wrong
You expect this line to be crude.”
I sat down hard on the grass. I couldn’t believe it. I was either going completely crazy, or it had worked. I had actually planted a tree with my sperm that grew and could talk. No way. That was just too stupid. Just like before, I figured it was either a joke or I had imagined it.
“You know,” the little voice said from what seemed like the direction of the little tree. “I have this strange desire to do things to a woman dressed in a costume.”
I stretched out on the grass with my face real close to the small trunk of the tree.
“Fred?”
“Hi, Dad,” the little tree said. “You want to hear a limerick? Or maybe go see a dinosaur?”
In the second of four parts, Poker Boy and his team must confront the worst enemy they ever faced. The dreaded Slots of Saturn once again.
But the Slots of Saturn died years before. How could they be back?
The sequel to the novel The Slots of Saturn, this short novel appeared first in Fiction River.
THEY’RE BACK
A Poker Boy Short Novel
Part 2 of 4
CHAPTER SIX
A Nightmare
I dozed, lying there on the bed.
In the dream, I was back in that old Standard Warehouse, and Patty and I and Screamer were madly trying to save people as the big machine spit them out, one per second.
Patty had slowed down time just enough that, as the people appeared, Screamer could shove them out of the way onto a big tarp. It had taken us a couple hours to get everyone out that way, with a few problems, but we had done it.
And then the memory dream turned to a nightmare as the ghosts of the people we had saved just wandered the old warehouse full of dead slot machines, not knowing where to go.
And no one would believe they were there.
I woke up with a jerk, sweating.
Patty had gone into the bathroom and was taking a shower.
I lay there, letting my heart slow down, trying to figure out what that dream was all about.
And coming up with nothing.
Ghost slots. Ghost people. That made no sense at all.
Then my cell phone rang. “Sherri’s fine,” Screamer said. “Meet in your office in an hour for dinner?”
“We’ll be there,” I said.
I took off my coat and hat and then the rest of my clothes. The nightmare had caused me to sweat right through them.
I headed into the bathroom and crawled into the large shower with Patty, who kissed me, then climbed out.
“What fun is that?” I asked, teasing her, even though I had no intention of fooling around.
“Lot of time for fun when we find those damn machines,” she said. “And hurry up, I’ve got an idea I want to check out.”
“Sherri is all right,” I said as the cool water rinsed over me, chasing some of the nightmare away. “We’re meeting in the office in an hour for dinner.”
“Perfect,” Patty said, heading out to get dressed.
Twenty minutes later I jumped us across town to a secluded spot near the front gate of an old wrecking yard.
The heat from the desert slammed in on us like a hammer. It always seemed hot in the city, but out in the desert, it always felt worse. And jumping from a comfortable air-conditioned apartment into the direct sun and heat wasn’t fun. Especially wearing a black leather coat.
I looked around to make sure we hadn’t been spotted. There was no one to see us. The place was acres of dead cars in a small valley to the east of Las Vegas, hidden from sight from just about anything. Sitting in long rows, the old and wrecked cars seemed to just be waiting patiently to be picked apart by car enthusiasts like vultures over dried bones.
A wooden building just inside the open chain-link gate served as an office. They were clearly open. Beyond the office was a huge machine that was in the process of crushing a car, making a noise I didn’t want to really listen to for very long. At least not without some great earplugs.
We headed up the dusty gravel road and then into the wooden building that looked like it hadn’t been painted since the area was settled.
The door creaked as we went in and a bell rang, as if the door creaking wasn’t enough to shout that someone had entered. The cool insides of the office felt like I had dipped my face into a cold drink. We were greeted by an elderly woman who had to be in her seventies. She had on a nametag that read, “Denise” that looked like she was attending a convention more than working in a dusty office in the middle of nowhere.
The place smelled of auto parts and oil and grease, and there were pictures of racing cars on the walls and a large glass case full of trophies, some of which looked to be fifty years old. Some of the pictures jammed all over the walls were clearly of Denise in much younger and thinner days.
“What can I do for you kids?” Denise asked as she climbed to her feet and headed toward us from her cluttered desk.
“We’re wondering if your smash
ing records still go back ten years,” Patty asked, giving Denise her best smile and charm that was part of her superpower at front desks.
Patty could calm the most angry customer with a wave of energy and a smile. I could feel the waves of it coming off of her now.
“Oh, sure, dear,” Denise said, her voice sounding like a grandmother’s voice right out of the movies. “We have records back for forty years since we bought the Big Bully, as we call the noisy old thing.”
“Any chance you might have records of crushing an antique three-chair set of slots ten years ago, almost to the day, give or take a few?”
“Let me check,” Denise said.
She went to some huge metal filing cabinets that lined the back wall and stretched down one side of a hallway that led to a back office and bathroom.
I wasn’t sure exactly what Patty was thinking, because if the slots never arrived here, we were still at the same spot. But I agreed with this search just to make sure they hadn’t arrived here and then were sold from here.
Denise pulled open one drawer with a bang and thumbed through a few files for a moment, then checked a few more, and pulled one file, shaking her head.
“We only crushed one slot grouping that entire year,” Denise said. “I remember they were really nice-looking old slots owned by Standard, but the guys from the shipping company insisted they help us put them into Big Bully themselves to make sure they were destroyed. Something about them being haunted. It’s in the notes here.”
Denise shook her head again. “Can you believe haunted slots?”
Neither of us said a thing. I wasn’t sure what I believed any more.
Then Denise slipped the manilla file folder across the counter toward Patty.
Patty looked at it and gasped.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing either.
Someone had taken a color Polaroid of the Slots of Saturn half crushed by two huge metal crushing arms of a big machine.
Smith's Monthly #15 Page 4