by L. Brown
“Nah, they’re together,” her mother explained. “But yeah,” she agreed, not quite so loud, “they do look pretty ragged, I wonder if they’re homeless.”
“In Bloomfield Hills?” asked the larger Wookie, hot cheese stringing her fur.
“We got a home!” Ryan declared, his hearing apparently sharp. “A big one, we just don’t have parents or suits or an ice hockey rink. But we do have names, and I’m Ryan, and him, that’s my new brother, Garth!”
Garth cringed, just slumped by a pumpkin and waited for Ashley’s gasp.
“New brother?” Ashley replied, now biting a slice. “Huh, how weird is that.”
“And we’re the Allezahrs,” her Mother chimed in. “So, when you’re done, just—”
“Allezahr?” interrupted Ryan. “Hey, do you know an Ashley?”
Ashley stopped her chew.
“Excuse me?” asked her mother. “You’ve heard of my Ash?”
“Heard of her? Hah, for three years, I’ve heard nothing else, she’s in love with my bro’!”
“Ryan!” snapped Garth, but the torpedo had struck and life was sinking, going down fast. So no choice, he had to man up, and wobbling upright, he faced, head on, his middle-school crush.
“Hi, Ash.”
But Ashley just squinted, resumed her chew.
“Ashley,” Garth tried again, but the added formality failed to rouse.
“It’s me,” Garth persisted. “We — today at the fields, you waved, remember? It’s Garth.”
Still squinting, she took another bite.
“Smith,” he added, hoping this moment could get no worse.
“Smith?” Another guest now stepping from the house, a girl in a Queen Amidala costume scratched, as if trying to remember, her bullhorn hat. “Wait, did you once make her a card?”
“The valentines, yes!” Ryan confirmed. “We made them every year, and last time, we even used perfume!”
Garth died a little.
“Well,” Ryan elaborated, “it wasn’t real perfume, all we had was Old Spice. But the year before? Hah, he actually made you a superhero card, do you remember the Bride of Hulk?”
Ashley’s eyes widened at this, lit with sudden recollection.
“Buddys!” interrupted a half-dozen boys, and rushing from the house with light sabers drawn, they swarmed the food bearing the same name. But as the Wookies whispered and word of the outlier spread, heads turned toward the driveway, toward the boy standing alone.
“It’s him?” asked a Stormtrooper.
“That odd guy?” queried another.
And though masks hid faces, Garth knew their voices, the same from his school.
“That’s him!” shouted someone large. Dressed as Jabba the Hut, maybe vice versa, young Mr. Meier now pointed his meatball sandwich at Garth. “The guy from history who cut up his book, is that Garth Vader?”
“Ah, don’t you mean ‘Darth’?” asked Mrs. Allezahr.
“Actually, Mrs. A, I mean ‘Garth;’ see, he always ran so slow in P-E, wheezed so much through his mouth? Well, it sounded like a blower, like he swallowed a pump.”
“And he could have used one, too,” a squat Yoda opined. “He always finished last.”
The Stormtroopers laughed.
Floundering now, this social grinder chewing him up, Garth couldn’t help it, he had to ask. “Ashley!”
Laughter fading, the cantina went still.
“But today after school, didn’t you say, ‘see you soon’?”
Hearing the quiet and feeling the glare, Ashley Allezahr sensed a disruption in social media, a force of hashtags under an army of thumbs.
“Who — are you!” she finally squealed, and then she fled, Ashley as Leia just raced to the house. But she never quite arrived, never made it past the star from American history who now caught her up. Princess in his arms, light saber in hand, Travis Austin as Luke delivered a sequel-worthy kiss.
“Well played, Mr. Austin,” Meier cracked.
Scene complete, the Allezahr pre-Halloween bash dissolved in laughter and dance. But as loud music erupted, some Grammy-studded mix, as Wookies hoofed it and Jedi and Sith bumped fists, Ryan turned to the driveway, to the wagon standing alone.
And wondered what just happened, where his new brother had gone.
Two hours later, a Superman poster sagged from Garth’s bedroom ceiling.
And Spiderman hung by a thread.
Secured by old tape, aged posters and aging action figures clung to the room’s dusty heights. Every square jaw was set for battle, each gaze steeled for some malevolent nemesis or maniacal rogue — yet nothing came but scratching, the faint paw of a mouse.
Still restless to nest, now hungry as well, the mouse from the yard skittered through Garth’s open bedroom window. It rode the curtain down to the floor, then followed its nose to a shoebox labeled ‘M–Q.’ The mouse climbed up and in, then sniffed a chunk of marble, then a black obsidian arrowhead and polished pink quartz — then found the prize, a stale bag of chips.
But before it tore in, a faint symphony perked its ears. It didn’t know symphonies, had never heard one before, but the disturbance turned it, made it look toward the bed.
Suffused in Bruckner, Garth hid in his earphones, in spliced wires hauling melodies freighted with bleak, a bass-heavy wall against shouts of Garth Vader and finished last and the eviscerating worst, Who — are you!
But wall or not, thoughts of Ashley crept in, haunted the hollows of his mind. How long she’d remain, he couldn’t tell, but right now, her memory seemed permanent, a lease without end. Pitiful, this moment, yet so was the night, and as he replayed it once more, it seemed less suited to symphonies and more for twang, his humiliating ordeal a country music cliché. No doubt nominated, the song called Ash would win the CMA.
Ashley, he grimaced, sweet Ashley was gone. But why the promise of See you soon? Had it been some joke, was she out of her mind? Am I? Reflecting on sanity, if he imagined her entire wave-and-shout, he now recalled its unexpected end, the football that bounced at her feet. Did Travis throw that flirtatious pass, had she waved and shouted at him?
Maybe. But though that might explain Ashley, he knew he’d lost much more.
Luke and Leia, Jedi and Jabba — in all his years and waystation homes, these characters weren’t just fantasy, they were family, or at least close enough. And certainly, closer than his, because neither his mother nor father had left a name, note, or past, at least none he knew. So once more and again, he chased the same questions, mysteries of who his parents were and where they had went, but the real mystery was why, the reason they both skipped out. Then again, maybe his parents never skipped at all; had Garth simply been concocted, conceived in a dish?
A faint voice now called, but Garth ignored. Sensing freefall, he waited for the crash.
“You asleep?” whispered the voice, but Garth kept falling, kept sinking through Bruckner into squeezing despair. Things had collapsed, no longer stood, and whatever remained defied repair, life had broke. From Luke and Leia to Yoda and Ash, he’d lost them all, and Garth, finally, had no one else left.
“Hey, Bro’!” shouted the voice, a shock springing Garth nearly straight up.
“Good,” Ryan greeted, now grabbing the broken chair, “you’re awake. Want to hear the news?”
But Garth said nothing, just slumped back down.
“Okay, so, the bad news? You were right, we got there too late and Igloo’s was closed. So yeah, just like last year, no ice cream. But the good news?”
“Go,” muttered Garth.
“The good news is, Miss Kang unlocked the freezer, so pick a color, which one you want!” And showing his hands, Ryan offered two frozen ice confections, a choice of cherry or grape.
“Just go,” said Garth.
“Ah, forget her,” counseled Ryan, now unwrapping the grape. “There’s lots of girls in the world; four billion, give or take. And yeah, most aren’t in Detroit, and there’s probably none as pretty as As
hley Allezahr, but my brother deserves someone nice, a girl who actually knows your name.”
“Just leave me alone, alright?” Garth lurched out of bed. “And get a new brother, I’m nobody’s bro!” he yelled, and after grabbing his boots and coat, he pounded downstairs.
Ryan absorbed the stomp and waited for the slam. And when it hit, when the door to the garage banged in the usual way, he dropped his grape ice into the trash, a basket stuffed with pages cut from a book. He never understood why Garth preferred comics to history, nor did he get what happened with the girl. But had he not opened his mouth, those at the party would never have laughed, and Garth would have Ashley and Ryan would have his bro’; but now?
Hoping it would soon blow over, knowing it never would, Ryan tossed the cherry ice into the trash, then turned to go. But down in the wastebasket, something caught his eye, and reaching past the cut-out pages and melting ice, Ryan fished out a notebook.
“Dreams” the title, Garth had scrawled the letters himself. Ryan had seen it before, but he’d never asked about it nor looked inside, for the notebook seemed not just personal, but a thing to hide. And it had been hidden, at least until now, but as Ryan held it, as he reviewed the legalities of reading people’s trash, he recalled no rules. At least nothing black or white, so assuming a gray area, a discovery time out, he opened it up.
Ryan flipped to the first page, then riffled the rest, but regardless of where, every malevolent sketch looked the same, just a faceless being in chains.
Ryan flinched at a crackle. No longer alone, he shared the room with an entity, something close, but when he peered toward the sound, he saw only a shoebox — and a tiny gray nose. An invader, he knew, that was also his fault. He’d never closed the bedroom window, so along with humiliation and pain, Garth would also, this night, share his room with a mouse.
Fixated on rodent, on the face of Disney and famine and plague, Ryan hurled the only weapon he had. The notebook flipped end-over-end, but as every page riffled, it sailed off course. Watching Dreams veer to the right, the mouse ducked when it struck a pole, a seven-foot fishing rod now toppling down.
Ryan caught the pole, a last-second stop that kept a shiny, silver lure just short of his face. But as he eyed the hooks, he caught something else, a fantastical way to save the whole night.
Alone in the garage, a cobwebbed realm of cold and mold, Garth sat in a ’64 Plymouth. A dark harbor of vinyl and steel, the two-door Savoy served as sanctuary, a home away from the Home. But his sanctuary showed cracks: a symmetrical shatter scarred the passenger-side windshield, damage seemingly spun by a spider in glass. Yet the cracks, Garth knew, came by accident.
‘It was late,’ Miss Kang always began. Sunday night on the interstate, driving home with her husband, they’d spent the day at Bavarian Fest. That’s why she drove and he sang, that’s why they both sang until headlights behind got their attention, some black BMW weaving, cutting people off. Nothing new, that’s what BMW drivers did and always will do, but as this driver swerved alongside, her husband yelled “Schnell!” So, they did, Miss Kang tromped the gas and the little Plymouth roared. But as the Max Wedge Savoy ripped a five-length lead, her husband laughed so hard, she feared he might lose his last liter of beer, so she slowed, let the car pass, but since new BMW’s shouldn’t lose to old Savoys, well, Miss Kang’s last memory was a sideswiping clip that slammed her into a tree, a collision ending with a sickening crack of glass.
And when the young Paramedic gave her the news, she knew it wasn’t just her husband who had gone. Because whatever she was before impact, this woman who survived Mao and famines and one-child enlightenment to somehow settle in Detroit? That woman, Miss Kang confessed, she was gone, too.
And the point?
None. At least none Garth knew, because based on experience, his and Miss Kang’s, life seemed without point, we simply exist, then don’t. Yet still he sat in the Savoy, still searched for meaning in thirty-year old cracks. And wondered, sometimes, if something like this also took his parents. Did they die by accident, is that why they left?
A mystery, his past, so many questions just bubbled and stewed. Nurtured by Children’s Protective Services, suckled by the state, Garth had no idea why he’d been abandoned, and despite all sobbing request, every counselor answered with shrugs, at best a sigh.
His iPod fading, batteries in decline, Garth now heard Bruckner leave him as well. But as he sat there in silence and stared ahead, he noticed the silver transmission buttons, five in a stack.
He blinked. Not sure why they mattered, why these same old buttons now roused his mind, he groped at a memory both fresh and vague; and recalled, with effort, the mass transit meanderings of an old man, some guy in a hat who yelled — ‘Matilda?’
A tap on the windshield made Garth jump, and then, so did its cause, a dangling fish lure.
“Got it!” whispered Ryan, now popping up. “I got it, I found it!”
“Out!” ordered Garth, flinging open the driver’s door. “Don’t you get it, Ryan? Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Shh! No, listen, it was there!”
“And quit taking my stuff, alright? Just take this pole and put it back, put—?”
Distracted by the lure, Garth noticed it had caught something shiny, a brass — skeleton key?
“That’s it!” Ryan rasped, trying to muffle his voice. “Mr. Jack’s office, I checked the only place we never looked, the ceiling over his desk? So, I tilted the tile and fished in the pole and—”
“That’s it?” Garth interrupted, fixated on the key.
“It’s got to be! I mean, I haven’t tried it, but—?” Hesitating now, Ryan took a breath. “But maybe the fun was in finding it, maybe — I don’t know, should we just put it back?”
Garth eyed Ryan, then the key, the cryptic cut of its teeth. Both said nothing, but the quiet collapsed in a muffled cymbal crash, the opening note of an old Led Zeppelin song. An eight-minute dirge seeping in from the house, it evoked mystery and peril, the secrets of Kashmir.
One minute later, Garth crept down the basement steps. Cloaked in dark and masked by the song, by the 1980 console stereo shaking Zack’s room, he descended undetected toward the heavy iron door.
“Wait!” whispered Ryan, now the lookout on the stairwell’s top step. “Garth, please, I got a bad feeling about this! Can’t we think it over, maybe just wait?”
Garth answered with the key, with a trembling push deep into the bulletproof lock. He braced for fiasco, for a mismatched fit or a tumult of alarms, but he had to know, had to go on, so holding his breath, he turned the key.
Tumblers clicked and latches let go and before he could breathe, the door shivered with exhale, a puff of stale air. Perched on the threshold of his impenetrable past, Garth tugged the door and peeked in.
But he saw only black, no light revealed the secrets within. Unsure if he should risk it, flail for a switch possibly wired to the police, he slowly reached in, then gasped from a flash.
“Sorry,” whispered Ryan, bobbling a flashlight just behind. “I had to see.”
Shaking off the scare, but acutely aware of the song’s dwindling time, Garth followed the light into a vault, a bureaucratic den of steel cabinets labeled with cards. Suitable containers for old sixties-era enigmas, evidence of a monogamous Kennedy or UFO’s, Garth hoped they now held secrets of real value, the stuff of lives.
“There!” cried Ryan, and trying to steady his light, he flashed a cabinet label with two typewritten words: ‘Adoption Records.’
One-hundred eighty-one miles north-northeast, a freighter plied the Lake Huron night. And with his dinner duty done, the cook stepped out for a starlight smoke.
But as he struck his match, a motion above lifted his head. A thousand feet up, a dark haze distorted the stars from pinpoint to smear while moving, unnaturally fast, in the general direction of Detroit.
Strange, that haze, reflected the cook. And staring after it, he ignored the burn of his match.
“There!” blurted Ryan, pointing to a cardboard file. “That one, is that you?”
The flashlight trembled on ‘Smith, G,’ and without hesitation, Garth yanked it out.
“Wait!” Ryan cried, pushing it back. “Now, I know you want this, but isn’t there a reason they keep this all locked? I mean, do you really, actually, have to know?”
The question had merit, but tilting an ear toward the covering music, Garth figured they had just two minutes left. “Hold the light,” he murmured, and tugging the file, he flipped it open to the first page of his life.
“Yes!” Ryan exclaimed, now illuminating a document titled ‘State of Michigan, Certificate of Live Birth.’ “You were born, you officially exist! And there’s your name, that—?”
Ryan went quiet. And though Garth squinted, tilted his head, he couldn’t do it, just couldn’t square his indisputable self with those two typewritten words, the State of Michigan asserting, without asterisk or doubt, he was someone else.
Chapter 5
The Last Departure
from
Michigan Central Station
“Must… be a mistake,” said Garth, still staring at the two typewritten words.
“On a birth certificate?” countered Ryan. “Your name?”
“It’s not my name, do I look like a — ‘David Redhawk’?”
The syllables sounded remote, utterly un-Garth, but Ryan looked hard, considered the fit.
“Idiots,” Garth sighed. “Someone screwed up, swapped my file with someone else.”
“You sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure, don’t you think I know who I am?”
“Well, no, I mean, isn’t that why we’re here? And look,” Ryan continued, now examining the entries below the name. “What about this, it says you have brown eyes, brown hair, you’re a boy — and here, isn’t that your birthday, March twenty-ninth?”
“It’s the birthday of lots of boys and I’ll bet that’s how they screwed up, this guy’s record got flipped into my file!”