Return To Lan Darr (5 page)

Chapter
5

The Big ‘Duh’

The yellow and black Handi-Taxi pulls up to the curb, and a platform lowers. Allan rolls onto it and lets it lift him into the spacious van. He knows the driver. “Hey, Charlie.” Charlie is a large-nosed Italian man with thick eyebrows and a brain full of bad jokes.

“Allan, ciao, my main man. Where you goin’?”

“Somewhere kinda far.”

“No problem, anythin’ for you.”

“I’m going to Blue Mountain.”

“Whoa, by yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m meeting friends for a hike.”

“You hike?” Charlie eyes Allan in his rearview mirror.

“Yeah, I’ve got an All-Terrain Apex Chair 690. It can take me anywhere.”

“Rock and roll! Or should I say, roll over rock. Pun intended.” The driver chuckles and hits the gas.

An hour later and a dozen bad jokes, the cab pulls off the freeway exit ramp and hangs a right on Pine Road. Only a few more miles, past some shops and a large visitor center, which houses a well-staffed ranger station, before Pine Road ends and the Blue Mountain Road heads up and into the dense forest.

Allan needs to find the flower. He needs to prove to Laura he’s not crazy. He takes out a map of the canyon. All the safe trails are marked in green, and the sections of the canyon he’s explored are crossed out in red. The only section of the lower canyon left to explore is the lower field by the Boy Scout camp. If he fails and cannot find the Hubbu, he’ll start to make his way back up to the dam. It’s only five or six miles total. If he has to, he’ll make a bed out of pine needles and sleep overnight.

A delivery truck blocks Pine Road, and the taxi driver slows to a stop. He honks.

“Hey, get outta the road!” He honks again.

The driver opens the truck door, hops out, and waves the taxi around. She’s a larger woman with the most colorful patchwork dress Allan has ever seen. A gray parrot perches comfortably on her shoulder.

The Taxi drives around the disabled truck. “You can’t pull to the side? Eh?” He mumbles.

Allan turns and looks out the back window. The truck sits crooked on the road, the front tire flat. The woman inspects the tire and climbs back inside at which point the passenger, a man, hops out with a tire iron. He starts to remove a spare tire off the back of the cab.

Allan notices the truck’s logo above the cab. It reads, ‘Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things’ and is surrounded by graphics of roses, tulips, orchids, weird statues, and symbols Allan doesn’t recognize.

The woman leans out the window and speaks to the man. The man stands up and throws his arms out over his head and yells something at her. The woman throws her shoe out the window, and it hits him in the head. Allan laughs at the fighting couple.

The light turns green, and the taxi continues down Pine Road. Blue Mountain Road is only a couple miles up ahead. He stares at the dark green of the pine trees and knows he is making the right decision. The forest beckons him. The Hubbu wants to be found.

A block before the mountain road, Allan sees a small strip mall with a post office, a hardware store, and Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things. He wonders what kind of ‘odd things’ she has. “STOP!” Allan calls out.

The taxi driver hits the brakes and pulls off the road into the strip mall parking lot. “What’s wrong? I yeye yeye, you make my heart explode.”

If Allan was in a cartoon, he’d have a glowing lightbulb over his head. For months he’d gone to the mountain to look for the Hubbu flower. Even though he didn’t find it, he kept looking instead of trying something new. Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere.

“Go to the flower shop, and can you wait for me?” Allan asks.

“Not a problem, anything for you.” Charlie pulls to the front of the store and stops. Allan unhooks his chair from the support pole and rolls to the platform. The taxi driver hits the button, and Allan is lowered to the sidewalk. The flower shop is still closed, but he knows they’re on their way, having only to change out a flat tire.

Fifteen minutes later, the Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things delivery truck pulls into the parking lot and drives around back. The interior lights of the shop flick on, and the woman unlocks the door, wearing only one shoe. Her bird is still on her shoulder.

“Hello, lad,” she says after she opens the door. “What’ll it be t’day?” She has light skin, is covered in freckles, and has bright orange hair. Long beaded earrings dangle from her ears and a necklace, made of the same style of beads, hangs around her neck. She smiles bright and has kind eyes.

“Uh, I’m looking for a very special flower.” Allan rolls himself through the tight doorway. The woman lets him pass and follows him into the shop. The shop is packed with flowers in pots filling the shelves and cut flowers petal to petal in the coolers. Allan sees birdhouses made from beer cans, wind chimes, mugs, beaded lanterns, chocolates, candies, T-shirts, and strange statues. It overwhelms Allan’s senses.

“Who’re the flowers for now, lad?” The woman digs into her hip pack and pulls out a pinch of seed. She raises her hand and feeds the large gray parrot that happily sits on her shoulder. She kisses the bird on its large gray beak.

“My, uh, girlfriend.”

“Oh, I’ve some lovely roses. Roses, red ones, tell ’er ya love ’er.” She walks to the nearest cooler stuffed with roses.

“No, I’m looking for a special flower. I only know what it looks like, but it’s her favorite. I’m not interested in any other kind of flower.”

“Is tat so? Yer girl knows what she wants now, does she?” A smile crosses the woman’s face.

Allan takes a deep breath. “It can be many colors…”

“Can it now.” The bird picks at something inside the woman’s ear. The woman strokes its back, returning the grooming favor.

“Any color will do.”

“Any color. I see. Colors are very important, ya know.”

Allan nods. “Yeah. It’s the type that matters. It’s large like a sunflower with small petals, lots of petals. And a huge bulb of pollen in the middle.”

The smile on the woman’s face relaxes. “Odd that you might be lookin’ for such a flower.” She shrugs. “I’ve just been brought such a plant, not even a week ago. Never seen such a breed meself. The grower tells me ’tis a new hybrid. Sunflower mixed with Dahlia Pompons. Tis a strange one, not a fan of the huge bulb of pollen. I can-na a think it’d be too popular, what with allergies ’n such.”

“Show me. I must see this hybrid!”

The bird turns to Allan and shrieks, reacting to Allan’s intensity. The woman’s eyebrows lift high on her forehead. “Keep yer skirts on.” She turns and walks to the back of the shop, passing the cluttered shelves and the sales counter. “Ye comin’ lad?”

Allan rolls quickly to catch up.

The back of the shop has a desk next to a huge insulated walk-in cooler. A man sitting at the desk types on a computer. The desk is trashed with papers, receipts, and books. He grunts. “Arrr, woman! You litter my desk like it’s the bottom of your birdcage! It pisses me off.” He realizes the woman is not alone and looks at Allan with narrow eyes. The woman ignores him and yanks the cooler door open. Allan peeks inside and sees plastic buckets filled with flowers and racks of sodas and teas. The bird hops off her shoulder and flies out of the cold and into Allan’s face.

“Your parrot!” he yelps, waving his arms. The bird dodges Allan’s thrashing and lands on the handle of his wheelchair.

“Don’t be a bollix, lad. Tis just tryin’ ta be friendly now,” she hollers from the cooler.

Allan looks at the bird, which glares at him. It must have decided it doesn’t like Allan because it pecks his head.

“Ow, get lost,” Allan hisses and rubs the pecked spot.

The woman emerges holding a bucket of Hubbu flowers, deep purple and as large as cereal bowls.

“By the look in yer eye, I’d say I’ve found the right bud.” She chuckles.

Allan stares at the flowers. Tears swell up in his eyes.

“How many do ye want?”

“All of them.” There are a half dozen flowers in the bucket.

The bird flies to the woman’s shoulder as she goes to the cash register. Allan pulls out some cash and pays. “Tis lookin’ like yer the one the flowers’re for. Don’t ya worry, I donna judge. A man that a likes flowers is a man all the same.” She wraps the Hubbu flowers in tissue paper. “How ’bout a bit of blue?” She winks and selects blue ribbon to tie around the tissue.

Allan thanks her and rolls to the taxi as fast as his wheels can carry him. Once inside, he unwraps the flowers and stares at them. He’s so gentle with them, like they’re radioactive cores from a nuclear power plant.

“Got a lucky lady waitin’ for you on the mountain, eh?” Charlie asks.

“Yeah, but I just learned that she’s meeting me at my house. So I guess I need to go home.”

The driver turns to look at Allan, his brow furrowed. “Your meter says you owe me eighty-nine dollars.”

Allan frowns. “Oh.”

“Look, buddy. I’ll shut off the meter for ya. The system will say I dropped you off here, capiche? It’ll save you some of that hard-earned allowance.” He drives off.

“Thanks, Charlie, I owe you one.”

“Donna worry ’bout it.”

Allan cradles the Hubbu flowers. They are just like the one he saw in the woods a year ago but a little more purple than he remembered. It didn’t matter, they were the same. The little purple petals are waxy and thick, the bud of pollen in the middle, thick and fragrant. He touches the pollen with his finger and inspects it. Nothing strange about it. All he did was sneeze into the pollen and they swirled around him. He remembers sparks, and a bit of pain, but was instantly transported to Lan Darr.

He’ll have to try to recreate the same situation to cause the same reaction. Lyllia of Meduna had a small room that filled with pollen. That room brought Allan back to Earth. So he’ll sneeze into the flower in the bathroom to keep the reaction contained.

The taxi speeds down the freeway, and in an hour, Allan is dropped off in front of his home in possession of six Hubbu flowers.

Rubic is gone, which is odd. Allan expected him to still be asleep on the couch. Allan wonders if Rubic’s new job makes him work Saturdays too. He shrugs. The house is all Allan’s. Excitement flows through his body, an excitement he’s never felt before.

Allan goes inside and directly to the bathroom. But the bathroom feels too big. It had been remodeled to fit his chair so it’s twice the size of a normal bathroom. “This won’t do.” Allan rolls to his bedroom and opens the closet. “Perfect,” he mumbles. Allan opens his pack, which hangs on the back of his wheelchair, and tucks four of the six flowers carefully into the pack.

The closet is already roomy enough. It’s where the All-Terrain wheelchair sits when Allan doesn’t need it.

He backs into the closet and closes the door. The light fades to shadows and he can barely see the two flowers on his lap. He picks them up and strains. As his eyes adjust he can see them again. He sniffs the flowers, deeply inhaling their perfume. No sneeze. He sniffs them again, but not an itch or twitch in his nasal cavity. He considers a fake sneeze, but decides against it. A real sneeze travels at a hundred miles an hour and a fake sneeze won’t. It’s too risky, and he’s got to get this right. The pollen has to swirl around him. “I need to make a vortex or wind.”

First, he needs something to hold the pollen above his head. Allan rolls to the kitchen and tears through the cabinet. He pulls out the largest Tupperware, paying no attention to the mess he makes. He grabs a knife, pokes a few dozen holes in the bottom of the container, and wheels to the garage. He piles a fan, two golf clubs, and a roll of duct tape onto his lap and returns to the closet.

He tapes the two golf clubs around the Tupperware like chopsticks holding a sushi roll and scrapes the pollen from the two flower buds into the container. The pollen is the consistency of flour.

He stretches to the highest shelf he can reach and tucks the golf club handles under a shoebox. When he lets go, the shoebox lifts up and the contraption falls. Allan catches the Tupperware upside down. The pollen spills out and onto the carpet. “NO!” he yells, seizing up. He sees the precious powder fall to the carpet leaving a fog-like cloud behind. A couple of sparks fire off. The thick carpet prevents him from picking any of the pollen up. “Come on! Don’t be stupid!” he lambasts himself. Allan rolls to the kitchen, forcing himself to relax. He retrieves the lid for the Tupperware.

He gets two of the flowers from his backpack and scrapes the pollen into the container. He methodically tapes the lid on. The two flowers in his bag are the only buds left. It will be enough to get him home.

Allan grabs a textbook off his desk and tosses it on the shelf. He uses his trigger claw to lift the book up and rests it on the golf club handles. The weight barely holds the Tupperware. Allan uses the claw to place a thick dictionary on the textbook, then one more book for good measure. After he plugs the fan into the wall socket, he sets the fan inside the closet. 

Nervousness replaces his excitement as he backs himself up into his closet and closes the door. “Here I come, Lan Darr. Here I come, Asantia.”

Allan clicks on the fan and rotates the dial to high. The wind swirls around feverishly. Too much wind. Allan lowers the fan speed and points it to the back of the closet. He can feel the air circling him. It’s just like Lyllia’s travel gates.