The Chair

by James L. Rubart

  “Really? Why not?”

  Corin grimaced. “That’s a long story we probably don’t have time for today.”

  “Okay.” Brittan leaned against the back of the chair so his feet stuck out and he closed his eyes. “I feel a little sleepy.” A peaceful look settled on his face.

  “Even though I’ve been through it hundreds of times, it still scares me when an asthma attack hits.” Tracie leaned over and brushed Brittan’s head. “I think this is the fastest he’s ever recovered.”

  “He’ll be okay now?”

  “Fine. Until the next time he runs.” She smiled her sad smile again, then spun to her right and looked down aisle two. “Now, I’d love to see if you have any other baseball treasures from the 1950s and 60s.”

  “I might have a few things.” Corin motioned with his hand down the aisle. “After you.”

  Ten minutes later they returned to Brittan with a LIFE magazine with Ted Williams on the cover and a signed Joe DiMaggio auto card.

  Brittan’s eyes were still closed and his breathing was deep and rhythmic.

  “I think he might have fallen asleep.”

  “Brittan?”

  The boy’s eyes fluttered open and widened as he stared at the magazine. “Wow, where did you get that?”

  “I don’t have a lot of baseball things, but this is definitely a classic. It’s the issue from September 1941 and even has pictures inside of Ted’s famous swing.” Corin opened the magazine and held it out for the boy. “Take a look.”

  “Is that his signature?” The boy glanced back and forth between Corin and his mom.

  “The genuine article.”

  “What’s an our tickle?”

  Corin laughed again. “You’re a great kid, Brittan.”

  “Thanks, I think you’re a great mister.”

  Tracie said, “Thanks for your kindness toward Brittan. Most people don’t know what to say when he has one of his attacks.”

  “My pleasure. I hope he grows out of it someday.”

  “Me too.”

  Tracie turned back to Brittan and gazed at her son. So did Corin. Innocent, full of wonder and anticipation. How did you protect a kid like Brittan, or any kid, from the ravages life would pitch at them?

  “He looks good in that chair and it’s beautiful. I don’t see a price tag on it. Is it for sale?”

  “It should be soon. I think.” He hadn’t decided whether he would sell it or not. But he needed the cash. The elderly lady’s statement floated back to him about the chair being for him, but he batted the thought away. “I just got the piece in and need to determine how much it’s worth.”

  “Well, I doubt we’d be able to afford it, but we can at least dream, right? It would look good in Brittan’s room. When do you think you’ll be ready to put the chair up for sale?”

  “It should be ready for purchase in two or three days at the most.”

  “There’s something special about it, don’t you think?” She ran her fingers down the back of the chair.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Tracie gathered up the baseball antiques, walked over to Corin’s sales counter, and set them down.

  Corin glanced at Brittan, then strolled behind his sales counter and rang up the items. “Four hundred thirty-seven dollars and eighty-two cents.”

  “Oh yes.” Tracie’s face flushed and she stared at her purse. “I should have asked. We can’t—”

  Brittan’s face pinched together but he didn’t say anything.

  “Wait, I forgot to tell you about our discount.” Corin smiled. “You didn’t realize this, but anyone who becomes Grand Champion Baseball Trivia Quiz Master of the Entire Universe gets a 70 percent discount on anything in the store.”

  “What?” Brittan said from across the room. “So I helped with my mom’s finances?”

  “You did, champ. Nice work.”

  “No.” Tracie looked up and whispered, “You don’t have to do that. I know these things are valuable and you’re in business to make money.” She fumbled in her purse, her fingers bumping against what looked like a VISA card. “They have to be—”

  “Seventy percent off.” Corin motioned toward his office. “I can show you the official company policy if you like.”

  “I . . . we . . . I’m not sure what to say. Thank you.”

  “You and Brittan are entirely welcome.” Corin placed the items into a large plastic bag and handed them to Tracie. “Just make sure you keep loving on Brittan his whole life.”

  Tracie closed her eyes and smiled. “Thank you again. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  “Are we going now?” Brittan slid out of the chair and skipped toward his mom.

  “Brittan!”

  “Sorry, going fast is my favorite thing.”

  “Can you say thank you to Mr. . . . ?”

  “Roscoe.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Roscoe. Maybe I can come back sometime and we can talk more baseball together.”

  “I’d like that, Brittan. And if it’s okay with your mom, you can call me Mr. Corin.”

  Brittan glanced at his mom and she nodded. “See you soon, Mr. Corin.”

  Corin gave him a two-finger salute as Brittan and his mom eased out the front door. If God was still alive in the twenty-first century, Brittan would get Corin’s vote for being healed.

  CHAPTER 6

  That evening Corin picked up the November 1963 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, brought it over to his couch, and escaped into its pages. Spidey versus The Lizard. Their first battle. Why did he still read these things? The counselor he saw for the first year after his divorce would say the explanation was easy. Corin still felt like Peter Parker inside, the skinny scared kid who finally became something more. Who overcame his fears and became a hero. Became more than he ever expected himself to be. And Corin longed to be those things.

  Longed to have special powers that would free him from the mundane place the world had become. A power that would crush his fear of tight spaces and the lake.

  A power that would give him ability to slay The Dream and keep it from ever torturing his nights ever again.

  The power to heal a kid like Brittan and let him run with abandon every day of summer.

  The power to heal his brother and make things go back to the way they’d been before.

  Or maybe he still read comics because he simply liked being a kid again, pretending there were such things as superheroes. Maybe it was because it made him feel like doing things only superheroes could do. That wasn’t a maybe. It was a definite. One reason his marriage fell apart.

  She never could understand his obsession with extreme sports. Every time he went skydiving she shouted, “You’ll never fly like the Human Torch.” She thought he’d “grow out of it.” It didn’t happen. In their final months together, he tried to explain why he did it, but how could he get her to understand the reasons when even he didn’t know what they were?

  Of course, her choice of extracurricular activities didn’t exactly solidify the marriage either.

  He closed the comic and looked at the cover again. Spidey was in fine form, web shooting out from his wrist, hanging forty stories above Manhattan.

  He pushed the self-analysis from his mind and decided on option number two. He loved comics simply because he longed to go back to being ten again.

  The way he was before the day he had died.

  When it happened there was no white light. No soloing angels with voices of silver. No gates welcoming him to a garden of utter bliss.

  There had been only nothing.

  He wanted to return to the innocence before he’d sputtered back to life, hacking up brackish lake water and having his world turned inside out.

  Corin’s thoughts drifted to the chair sitting in his store. What if Jesus really had made the chair? Would it be full of power? Tori had been joking, but what if she was right? The lady had talked about him sitting in the chair when he was ready. Maybe it could give him visions about th
e future.

  Sure, and maybe there was hidden gamma radiation trapped inside the chair that would turn him into the Incredible Hulk.

  At the very least he’d give it a close examination in the morning. Corin rubbed his thumb and fingers together—to see if the tingling feeling returned.

  CHAPTER 7

  How did she ever get this old? It was criminal.

  Nicole gazed into the bathroom mirror and stared at the old woman looking back at her. Inside she was still twenty-eight. Maybe not twenty-eight, but thirty-eight at the most.

  Certainly not the eighty-eight years the calendar claimed.

  At least she didn’t try to wear clothes made for women in their fifties. Not a chance. She stuck with the clothes styled for women in their forties. Because she could pull it off.

  Nicole walked out into the hallway then into the kitchen where she eased into the oak chair next to the table in her breakfast nook and picked at a spot of strawberry jelly she’d missed the day before.

  Had she given the chair to Corin too soon?

  Maybe.

  But when would the time have been right? If not now, when?

  She had prayed for days, seeking confirmation this was the time, but the only answer was a hollow silence in her soul.

  And why give it to Corin when Shasta was the logical choice, the one who seemed to need the chair more?

  But while doubts skittered around the edges of her heart, deep down she knew what God had told her and she believed it. Corin was the one. He was older.

  She shook her shoulders as if to throw off any last vestiges of doubt that might try to imbed their claws in her faith and rip it away. Of course he was old enough.

  She was much younger than him when she’d been given the chair. And more foolish. She laughed. Certainly more foolish. But God had seen her through it. And He would see Corin through his leg of this never-ending journey. She would finish the race strong and then trust that Corin would continue on.

  The clock on her wall above the table chimed eleven o’clock. Not much time before the day was done. How much time did she have left on this earth? Years? Days? It didn’t matter. His will would be accomplished.

  She reached for the picture of Corin that sat in the middle of her breakfast table and turned the photo over. Summer 1996. His hair was longer and there were no lines in his face yet. But he didn’t look much different now fifteen years later. There was strength behind his eyes. And fear. The fear she had watched him struggle with most of his life. The fear she would ask him about when the time was right.

  Soon she’d reveal herself to him. Not all, but enough. As much as he needed.

  Was he strong enough to face the trial coming his way? Was his fear too great for him to break through to the other side?

  She stood a moment later and pulled the worn leather-bound journal off the bookshelf lining the walls of the nook, sat again, and started to write.

  Half an hour later she shelved the journal and patted it twice before turning and walking out of the kitchen.

  The journal would be his someday. Lord willing.

  CHAPTER 8

  On Friday morning Corin walked into his store and stopped just inside the front door and looked toward the chair. He’d covered it with the tan blanket after Brittan and his mom left; he wasn’t sure why. It just felt right. Maybe because if there was something more to it than just an ancient hunk of wood, he didn’t want every shopper through his door pawing at it.

  More than just an ancient chair.

  Right.

  He needed to stop his comic-book imagination from flying into the realm of the ludicrous.

  Corin glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock. An hour before opening. Plenty of time to give the chair a meticulous examination.

  After dropping his keys and wallet on his sales counter, he flipped on the radio to 88.7 KCME FM. Classical seemed the appropriate music to set the mood.

  He eased over to the chair, drew back the blanket, and started with a visual inspection. Like before, the coloring captured him. It was surprisingly even for a chair this old that there were no cracks in the finish.

  Beautiful. Looking at it stirred images of standing on Pikes Peak as dawn broke into the eastern sky.

  Time to touch the chair. See if the tingling in his fingers was imagined.

  Corin walked around to the back of the chair and held his fingers just above it. Then he lowered them to the chair as if he were touching a newborn’s cheek.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  He slid his fingers back and forth over the surface. Still nothing.

  Must have been his imagination. Had to be. At least that’s what he told himself.

  He circled around to the front, then placed both palms on the sides of the seat and slid them back and forth.

  Still nothing.

  After twenty or thirty more seconds he shrugged, leaned in close, and ran his forefinger along the seams where the legs met the seat of the chair.

  Then where the seat met the back.

  Marvelous.

  It was so precise it looked and felt machine created. No gaps anywhere; no bumps where the pieces came together; no cracking in the wood, which meant previous owners over the years had either taken great care with it or the wood had been cured in such a way that the changes in climate and ravages of time hadn’t adversely affected the chair in even the slightest degree.

  He pulled out a small tape measure and studied the chair’s dimensions.

  Amazing.

  The dimensions were perfect. Absolutely even distance along every centimeter between the edges of the seat. The legs were the exact same length. Exact.

  After another ten minutes of examination, he stood back, gazed at the chair, and smiled. He needed to do research before he could set a price, but his instinct told him he had a piece worth thousands on his hands. Maybe hundreds of thousands.

  God’s chair? Maybe not, but it still might be manna from heaven.

  Could he sit in it? Was it sturdy enough? The woman had said he shouldn’t sit in it till he was ready, but what did that mean?

  Brittan sat in it, why couldn’t he? He couldn’t be more than 120 pounds heavier than the kid.

  Corin grabbed the back of the chair with one hand, the seat with the other, and gave it a gentle twist. Solid. He set it down and leaned into it with most of his weight. No movement. No creaking. It was as if the chair was carved out of a solid block of wood.

  He squatted in front of it and rapped the seat with his knuckles. It could take his weight easily. Corin stood ready to sit but something stopped him. The feeling was like the time in high school where he’d been part of a trip to the state capitol and had been invited to sit in the governor’s chair. The same nervousness he’d felt twenty-one years ago filled his mind.

  Corin sniffed out a laugh at his foreboding and sat.

  It was comfortable and fit his body well.

  Another few seconds and he’d need to get up and open the front door. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to wait for . . . what?

  Don’t be an idiot.

  What was he expecting? A spiritual massage? A vision from heaven? It was just a chair.

  Old, yes, maybe very old, but just wood.

  It felt like a thousand other chairs he’d sat in over the years. Hard seat. Constructed well. End of story.

  But still, the lady was right; whoever crafted it had considerable skill. And to make the sales copy more interesting when he started advertising it, it would be nice to know who built it.

  After grabbing his camera and taking thirty or thirty-five shots of the chair from all angles, and then ten more with his cell phone, he threw the cloth back over the chair and clipped toward his front door to welcome the hoards of customers who would fling cash his way today.

  Early next week he’d spend some time on the Internet and maybe head for the library to dig up any info on the chair.

  If he lived through the weekend.

  CHA
PTER 9

  The sun crept over a small tree behind their camp at 5:45 a.m. and splashed its light on Corin’s face, reminding him where he was. Seven thousand nine hundred and forty-one feet above sea level. But not for long. He stretched and breathed out a hard yawn. Too early for most Saturday mornings, but this wasn’t most Saturdays.

  He was already awake—thinking about the jump—and the sunlight peppering his eyelids convinced him to get up. A hint of blue spruce filled his nostrils and the deep cold of the morning almost felt like splashing water on his face.

  He glanced at the others. Still sleeping but he’d need to wake them as soon as he made coffee. Instant java yes, but it was still coffee. The forecast said no wind, but he didn’t want to take chances. This would be the lowest jump he’d done in two years, and he didn’t want any uninvited breezes to crash the party.

  The lower the jump, the higher the adrenaline factor. He smiled and rubbed his hands together.

  By the time the water boiled like a minicauldron, Tori had crawled out of her sleeping bag and sat on a boulder next to the Soto OD-1R Micro cooking stove.

  “Morning,” Corin said.

  “Barely.” Tori frowned at him. “Ugh.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Remind me.” Tori pulled off her stocking cap and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “Why did we hike for three hours yesterday to get up here?”

  “Are you kidding? Look at this view.” Corin motioned to the stunning display of the Rockies in the distance. “Plus no one has ever BASE jumped from this spot.”

  “I’m feeling better already.” Tori extended her coffee cup and Corin filled it halfway.

  “No, I paid for a full cup. I need it to the brim.”

  He laughed and complied.

  “This coffee looks thin.” She stared into her cup.

  “Jittery and jumping only should get close to each other in the dictionary.”

  “Coffee doesn’t make me jittery. Jumping does.” She took a sip and grimaced. “Should I get the others up?”