The Chair

by James L. Rubart

  He had time to say one more thing. And since Corin was already over the edge, he might as well see if the parachute would open. He ran his finger along the back of the chair and a current of warmth ran up his arm.

  “I think I’ve found a way for you to be healed.”

  “Don’t do this to me.”

  “It’s something you need to try.”

  “Have you wiped the days after you did this to me out of your memory? I’ve tried everything. Even drinking special concoctions of foul-tasting herbs four times a day for a month.” Shasta let out a disgusted laugh. “Everything.”

  “A few weeks ago I was given a—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Do you remember Avena? A. C.? He was healed. He sat in this ancient chair I was given and two day later an old shoulder injury that’s bothered him for years vanished.”

  Corin could still hear Shasta’s breathing so he plowed ahead.

  “And this kid who came into my store and almost keeled over from an asthma attack sat in this chair, and the next day he’s completely cured.”

  Shasta stayed silent, sighed through the phone, and then finally spoke. “I don’t care what worked for A. C. I don’t care if this kid thinks the chair healed him. I don’t need you stirring up hope where there is none and never can be. I don’t need you pretending you can fix my life like you’ve been trying to do for the past ten years through gifts and e-mails saying you’re thinking of me and expressing an interest in my son. You already changed my life once. That’s not enough for you? ”

  “When this woman showed up in my store three weeks ago with the chair and told me the next month of my life would be heaven or hell and that I would be given hope for restoration, I thought she was loco. But I’ve seen a slice of heaven and, yeah, these healings have given me hope.”

  “So I sit in this magical chair and suddenly I can move something below my neck?”

  “I don’t know.” Corin gripped the leg of the chair. “I hope that will happen.”

  The electrical whirl of Shasta’s chair echoed through the phone. Probably his brother turning to look out the picture window in his den, staring at a playground he hadn’t stepped into in ten years.

  “Have you sat in it?”

  Corin hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Were you healed?”

  “Yes.”

  Shasta took in a deep breath. “What part of you was healed?”

  “My claustrophobia.”

  “I see.” Shasta paused again. “And your feelings about being underwater?”

  Corin stared at the chair. He knew where his brother was going and didn’t know how to respond. If he lied and said his deepest fear was healed, his brother would see through it like a window. If he told the truth—that his fear of the water was as deep as ever—he’d be handing his brother a verbal baseball bat.

  “No, not that.” Corin wiped the moisture from his forehead.

  “What about your right knee? Still stiff in the mornings?”

  “Yes.”

  “So nothing physical was healed, and not your major malady, just a small neurosis in your mind.”

  “Shasta, you—”

  Shasta laughed sarcastically. “But you’re sure this chair will work for me, why? Because I’m a cripple and am more worthy to be healed?”

  “If I hadn’t seen the healings with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have called. If it hadn’t healed me. There’s power in this chair. Isn’t it worth trying?”

  “No, it’s not. Hope is better left dead. Each time it’s resurrected, its subsequent death is a little harder to take. So I’ve killed it for good. Or I’ve tried. But you and I know, and the whole human race knows, you can’t kill hope entirely because there’s always one little bubble willing to rise with the slightest encouragement. And that would happen if I let you put me in that chair. I would hope once more, I would let it sweep me into your little shop, and I would sit in your ancient artifact and nothing would happen.”

  Corin let go of the chair. “I had to ask, Shasta.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Corin climbed the stairs up from the basement one at a time, resting for a second or two on each step. “Do you remember when Dad taught us to fly those stunt kites the summer of 1985? And we started having dogfights in the sky? Do you remember what he called us? Snoopy and the Red Baron. You were Snoopy; I was always the Red Baron. I was the bad guy.” Corin walked across his living room and stared out at the same gray sky his brother was probably looking at.

  “No, Corin. You weren’t the bad guy then and you aren’t now. I know you didn’t mean to shoot my plane down.”

  What? He slumped onto his couch. Was Shasta saying he didn’t hold what Corin had done against him? “If . . . then why won’t—?”

  “Because when the night goes silent and I fall asleep and enter the world of dreams, I do fly, and I dream of the adventures you and I used to have, and I can’t live with those memories filling my mind.” His brother’s voice trembled and he stopped talking for thirty seconds.

  “And every morning when my eyes flutter open, I remember I will never get in the cockpit again. And do you know who I see sitting in the seat behind the cockpit?”

  “No.”

  Shasta sniffed. “I see my son. I see Robin. I see other friends who I will never be able to take into the sky. I see the longing on their faces to watch me do more than sit in a chair, a longing they try so hard to conceal from me but can’t entirely. They pretend it’s okay that I can’t throw a baseball or stake a tent or take a stroll through gold and red leaves scattered in the park.

  “I sit on that tarmac in my wheelchair almost every night and fight through the despair almost every morning.” Shasta coughed, from emotion or something caught in his throat, Corin couldn’t tell. “And do you know who I miss sitting in the cockpit with most of all?”

  Shasta sucked in three heaving breaths. “Do you know who I dream about at night the most often?”

  Corin knew.

  “We were free together. We were free.” Shasta didn’t try to hide his emotion any longer, and the sound of his tears filled Corin’s phone. “I have to fight the dreams every night, brother. I can’t do it in real life as well.”

  Corin glanced around the room as if he could find something that would tell him how to react, what to say next, but there was nothing to save him. “Shasta, I—”

  “Good-bye, Corin. Don’t call me again.”

  Corin watched the display on his cell phone hibernate into darkness.

  He slipped his phone into his jeans, then picked up the chair and moved it to the hidden bunker he’d constructed, which sat in the woods behind his home. Corin spent the rest of the day at his store trying to push his way through the haze of disappointment and trying to figure out what to do next.

  He drove home that evening wanting only one thing. A night without having to think about anything other than if The Avengers movie next summer would be any good. But a nagging voice inside said he was about to be given a lot more to consider.

  CHAPTER 38

  Corin pulled into his driveway that night at seven thirty wanting to escape the pain of Shasta’s reaction but refusing to give in. He thought his brother hated him all these years. But it wasn’t hate. It was regret and longing mixed into an emotional Molotov cocktail Shasta refused to drink.

  He sighed as he slid his satchel onto the kitchen counter and stared at Outside magazine sitting next to his espresso maker. It sat further forward than he remembered leaving it. The mind was already going and he was still six years away from forty.

  Given the stress he’d been under lately, he was surprised he remembered anything.

  He stopped in the bathroom, doused his face with cold water, slicked his hair back, and walked back to the kitchen. After grabbing two hard-boiled eggs out of the refrigerator, he trudged toward his dark living room, flopped onto his couch, grabbed the remote, and flicked on the TV.

&
nbsp; Wait.

  Movement. His heart pounded.

  Something in the corner of the room had moved. Heat filled his body as he stared at the outline of a figure sitting in the chair in the far corner of the room to his right. A second later the lamp next to the chair snapped on and bathed Mark Jefferies in a soft gold light.

  “Hello, Corin.”

  “What are you doing in my house!” He leaped up and backed up toward his kitchen.

  “Trying to get your attention.” Mark smiled, his ultrawhite teeth shouting confidence along with a dash of desperation at the same time. “I think it worked.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk.”

  Corin waited for his heart rate to ease back toward normal. “Looks like you’re flying solo tonight.” Corin glanced around the room. “Where are your thugs?”

  “They don’t like being called thugs. I don’t either. Don’t do it again.”

  “But isn’t that what they are?”

  Mark drilled Corin with his green eyes. “You want to die on this hill?”

  “No worries about guilt by association?”

  “I only have one person I’m worried about appearances for.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Christ.”

  Unbelievable. If this guy was a representative of Jesus to the world, then the future of Christianity was in ocean-deep trouble. “I see.”

  “No, I don’t think you do see.” Mark waved his hand around Corin’s living room. “I’m not interested in houses or cars or boats or vacation homes or fame. I’m interested in the truth. And speaking the truth makes some people mad.”

  “And that’s why you have your, uh, bodyguards?”

  Mark and stretched his neck. “When I talk about the gay agenda and rights for the unborn, death threats fly at me like a hive of mad hornets. So I make the target on my back as hard to hit as possible.” Mark crossed his leg and beat out a rhythm on it with his hands.

  “What do you want?”

  “Like I’ve said from the start, I want to help you. You need someone on your side.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t sign up for this mission. If I could make the chair disappear tomorrow I would. The only reason I’ve hidden it is because of people like you.”

  “Really?” Mark uncrossed his leg and leaned forward. “You would walk away? I don’t think so. If that were true, you would have jumped at my offer to buy the chair. I think you want answers.”

  “Not interested.”

  “I believe I have something that will persuade you to think differently.”

  Corin strode to his front door and held it open. “Time to go, Jefferies.”

  “No problem.” Mark raised his hands, then stood and lumbered toward the front door. Just before he got to Corin, he took a small dark book out of his coat and smacked Corin’s shoulder with it. “I came by because I thought you might want to take a look at this.” Mark held the book with his fingers on the edge as if displaying a framed photo. “Definitely interesting reading. It might enlighten you considerably.”

  The cover read, The Chair of Christ: The Reality Among the Legends.

  Adrenaline surged through Corin.

  “I take it from the look on your face you haven’t read this.”

  “Can I see it?” Why hadn’t Tesser talked about this book? Maybe he didn’t know about it. Or maybe he had the entire text memorized, but it wasn’t worth bringing up because Tesser considered it—in his words—“bunkum.”

  Or was it a fake?

  “Of course. But I’d want something in exchange.” As he passed Corin he held the book out just beyond reach. “Why don’t we plan on talking about this more tomorrow morning? Let’s say ten o’clock at Forest Lawn Park? I’ll bring a football and we’ll toss a few while we talk, all right?”

  Football? This guy was swimming in the deep end without a paddle. “I need to think about that.”

  “You need someone on your side, Corin. And you need to see this book.”

  “I have plenty of people on my side.”

  “Who? Your mysterious lady friend? Tesser?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re not on your side.”

  “Why do you say that?” Corin leaned against his front door and stopped a few feet from Jefferies.

  “What do you really know about Tesser? You took some classes from him? You went on some trips together? And what do you know about Nicole?”

  “I know enough.”

  Mark waved his hand. “Yes, of course, you know her name. Her first name. What else? I haven’t been able to find anything on her.” Mark squinted. “We’re coming up blank. Which means unless she’s spilled her life story to you, you don’t know any more than I do.” Mark cocked his head. “Am I right?”

  Heat rose to Corin’s face. Mark was right. Tesser he knew. But Nicole? He knew nothing about her. Only what she’d told him. And why had he taken that as truth? True, his gut told him he could trust her. An extraordinary lady. Wise. Caring. But he’d believed his ex-wife was telling the truth the whole time she was having an affair with his cousin. Ex-cousin if that was possible.

  “How do I know you’re worthy of my trust? That you’re telling the truth?”

  “You don’t.”

  “But you’re still asking me to trust you, just like Nicole.”

  “Yes.”

  “I let you see the chair, you let me see your book.”

  “Exactly.” Mark licked his lips. “Plus I want to meet Nicole.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “You can at least ask her.”

  Corin looked at the book and at Mark. Then he dropped his arm and took a step back. “I’ll think about it.” Corin motioned for Jefferies to leave. “I’ll let you know in twenty-four hours.”

  Mark stared at him for ten seconds before turning and walking out the door.

  Corin settled onto his couch, flicked on the TV, pulled up Iron Man on Netflix, and watched it for an hour. An hour in which he wrestled with the possibility of Nicole having fooled his gut into trusting her when her trust wasn’t warranted.

  As his clock struck midnight, he still hadn’t reached a conclusion.

  Time to go wrestle his dreams.

  Just like Shasta. Like brother, like brother.

  Mark had planted a seed of doubt, and Corin wasn’t sure if that seed was a flower to be watered, or if he should take weed killer to the idea and scorch the life out of it.

  Tomorrow after he closed the store, he’d try to get an answer straight from the gardener.

  CHAPTER 39

  Corin watched Nicole sit as if carved in stone on a park bench too close to the waters of Woodmoor Lake. Only ten yards between her and the lapping waves. Had she sat that close to the lake with intent?

  The sun lit her hair and turned its white shades whiter in spots and made her profile stand out in stark contrast to the gold and red shades of a November afternoon behind her. It looked like her eyes were closed.

  As he stared at her all doubts Mark Jefferies had stirred the night before were swept away by the breeze meandering off the lake.

  He was still staring at her three minutes later when she turned and spied him. She smiled, blinked, then closed her eyes again and resumed her imitation of Lady Liberty.

  As Corin approached Nicole, he studied the undulations in his nemesis and for the millionth time tried to make peace. You survived. You were a kid. Let the fear go! But the roar of his heart said never.

  “We have to stop meeting like this. People will start to talk,” Corin said when he reached Nicole and sat beside her.

  “Let them.” Nicole turned and rested her elbow on the back of the bench. “How have you been, Corin?”

  “The chair continues to make life interesting.”

  “That I don’t doubt.” She smiled. “Did you keep your commitment? Did you call your brother?”

  �
�Yes.”

  “And?”

  “We had the longest conversation we’ve had since the accident.”

  “Did he give an answer to your invitation?”

  “Yes.” Corin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers intertwined. “He will never sit in the chair. And probably will never speak to me again. I took my shot.”

  “So what do you do now?”

  “You don’t have that answer for me?” Corin tried to smile, sat back, and folded his arms. The sun spread diamonds across the surface of the lake, which made him squint against their power. But their power was nothing compared to the hold the water held over him. It squeezed him in the middle of the night when the nightmares came and he drowned again and again. It pummeled his mind as if he were in a washing machine.

  Why hadn’t the chair healed him of that fear?

  “And what about you, Corin. Did you sit in the chair again?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “It healed me.”

  “Of what?”

  “My claustrophobia.”

  “I’m glad.” Nicole nodded as if she had been expecting him to tell her that. “Do you believe now?”

  “It’s crazy to say this, but I’m still not sure, even after being healed. Maybe Tori is right and all the healings came from our minds.” Corin kicked at the stones at his feet. “Do you really believe this chair was made by the Son of God?”

  “I’m not sure it matters what I believe as much as what you believe.”

  “I believe there’s some type of power attached to it.”

  “Then you have your answer.”

  “But it’s not the way you would answer the question.”

  Nicole shook her head. “No.”

  “Then what type of power do you think is in the chair?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet, what?”

  “It’s not time to answer.” Nicole reached in her pocket, took out a handful of seeds, and tossed them toward a sparrow that flitted on the grass on the other side of the path.