Soul Mates (35 page)

Chapter 21

Jim ran quickly, not only for his age, but by any high school football coach’s standards...with a bum knee to boot! It was a picturesque and flawless day in Copake, New York, so Jim had decided to take a jog to the liquor store rather than drive. He liked to keep in shape. “All of us old queens try, but few are successful like you (Jim),” the liquor store owner, Kyle Beecher once told him. Since he had become a permanent resident of Copake, Jim lacked fulfillment of one of the physical needs in his life. Kyle would not only do, he’d do just fine. Jim found himself making weekly treks to the liquor store not only to restock his liquor cabinet, which was plenty stocked to begin with, but to run into Kyle. Jim knew that he had to make his move soon, because if Kyle was even paying semi-moderate attention to the frequency of Jim’s visits to his store, he would think that Jim had an alcohol problem that would have Mickey Rourke’s character in Barfly lending Jim some life advice.  

He thought that he could do better than showing up to the store all sweaty from the jog trying to score a date, but he had stalled long enough, and he also got the impression that Kyle would be into this in some way since he liked to comment on Jim’s fit appearance. Not to mention the fact that the liquor store was only a couple of miles away, so he would not be in too bad of shape when he had finally arrived.

So, Jim ran. Jim ran and saturated himself with the scenic exquisiteness which drew him back to the old childhood sanctuary where he spent countless summers hiking, swimming, and building fires in the stone fire pit his father had put in after getting special permission from the actual homeowner. That fire pit had been reason enough for the owner to give Jim’s father a considerable break on rent when they visited. Jim waved to the familiar faces that were once unacquainted with him as they drove by on route 7A. Twenty-something minutes later Jim arrived at Spirits of Copake and took a minute to catch his breath before going into the store to speak with Kyle.

As he began to walk up the wooden staircase that was built over a small hill in front of the property, he thought he heard someone whisper his name. Jim stopped, halfway up the staircase, and looked around to engage whomever called out to him, however subtle. Jim saw no one and climbed the remaining stairs and entered the store.

“Hey you! How’s it going? Out for a jog huh? Why not though; it’s a beautiful day for it,” Kyle greeted him.

Jim answered, but it came out in what sounded like Mandarin Chinese, or perhaps Cantonese. Kyle didn’t seem to mind the casual shift in language one bit. Jim thought that Kyle didn’t even
notice
, let alone mind.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Jim asked hypothetically.

“Sure are, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have some fun! You can also learn a lot from your dreams, am I wrong?” Kyle said with a wink. Before Jim’s eyes, Kyle materialized right next to him and put his hand on his shoulder. It was not a gentle or kind grip, but the grip of a corrections officer leading a prisoner back to his cell after starting trouble in the cafeteria.

“You’re hurting me,” Jim whined.

“Well,
you
keep ignoring his signs. What do you need? You need him to jump up and slap you right in the forehead?”

“Who?” Jim asked Kyle, who was now coming across as someone who not only was disinterested romantically, but someone who didn’t even like Jim platonically; a complete 180 degree turn.

Kyle slapped at his own face in frustration, not unlike the way Curly Howard used  to entertain millions. “The Swanson kid, you oblivious fag! Jeez!” Kyle boomed, his voice knocking bottles from the wall with seething sonic magnitude. Kyle looked at a bottle at his feet, snapped the cap off of the whiskey bottle, took a long swallow, recapped the bottle and tossed it over his shoulder where it rolled across the floor and came to a stop against the wall.

“Oh, I see. I’m dreaming,” Jim concluded.

“You said that, and I already said you were. No wonder you got out of teaching early, you can’t remember two minutes ago, let alone who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo!”

“The Duke Wellington!” Jim fired, snapping his fingers like a contestant of a quiz show.

“Touché. Ah! What am I saying? For all I know it could’ve been Judy Garland. Anyway, I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun, but get in touch with the Swanson kid, for the love of Pete, before it’s too late.”

“Before what? What’s going to happen?” Jim almost plead.

“Apoyo-gee, fuck-head!” Jim’s unrequited love called to him as he exited his own establishment straight through the ceiling in an explosion of dust and sheetrock.

Jim woke up in his bed with a jerk and sat up immediately for a second time that night. “Apollo tree,” Jim said to his solitary bedroom. Jim slid to the edge of his warm bed and slid his feet into his frosty slippers.

Jim made his way through the dark house, no longer half asleep. Something was going to happen that night. Good or bad, he did not know, but it was about time he found out.       

*   *   *

The hinges moaned like a wendigo stalking its prey in a distant timberland as Jim opened the backdoor of his house leading to his spacious backyard. He tried not to think about the phenomenon of how a door creaking in the light of day was exponentially less disturbing than a door creaking at half-past three in the morning as he braved his dark backyard. Jim tried to focus on the tree slowly edging closer and pushed away dark thoughts, cursing himself for not fixing the flood light that hung lifelessly on the corner of his home, pointing uselessly into the vast opaque backyard. The wind whipping off of the lake (pond) stopped him in his tracks for a moment. It wasn’t just the chill of the air, but the banshee cry that brought it.

Jim finally reached the Apollo tree perched ominously over the onyx colored water. “Alright, I’m here. What now?” Jim asked nature over his tightly crossed arms and through chattering teeth, which, by the way, were not chattering exclusively as a result from the cold. Now, Jim asked the tree directly, and why not? He was alone. “I’ve sat under you in this chair here day after day either with my book or cocktail and nothing. What is it? What am I supposed to do?”

The tree did not speak…not
really
, but while looking at the branches swaying in the steady wind, they seemed to beckon Jim closer. Jim moved closer and closer until he was right next to it. A strong wind grew from behind Jim, a gale so strong that it unsteadied him on his feet.

As Jim grabbed the tree trunk to regain his balance a magnificent jolt surged through his body that was not unpleasant but was, by no means, pleasant. An electric shock, yes, but with no kick of voltage whatsoever. Jim tried to let go of the tree trunk but could not. The Apollo tree had wanted his attention for so long, and now it finally had it. Jim struggled to lift his head but managed, looking out over Robinson Pond, perhaps for a mystical being to come to his aid? Instead of finding a harbinger of salvation, he saw images. It was like watching a movie on one of the film projectors he used to use in his classroom, but instead of showing footage of D-Day, Jim saw a hand moving back and forth over typically lined stationary with fervor. The images that flashed next were what Jim concluded to be excerpts of whatever the person whose hand he saw was writing. He would see words like “immoral,” “evil,” and “unacceptable” in conjunction with phrases such as “All of the bodyguards in Nevada won’t help you!”, “I won’t rest until your resurrection of the Colosseum falls like Rome!” and “The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast (Proverbs 5:22).” There were other words and images just as grandiose that flashed before Jim’s intent gaze. The final vision, before the Apollo tree was through with Jim, was a picture of Tyler from the 2019 senior yearbook with a large “X” drawn through his picture, before the picture spontaneously combusted into an amber flame.

All was dark and cold again in the middle of the night, at the edge of Jim Colabza’s backyard. Jim fell to his knees and stayed there for a minute to catch his breath. The unnerving call of a loon from across Robinson Pond snapped Jim back to attention. Jim ran back into his house, knowing exactly what he needed to do. His idea was unorthodox, sure, but he would deal with the fallout of that in time if he was wrong. For now, he believed that Tyler was in grave danger.

Jim ran up his staircase and to his study and leapt at his writing desk, jerking open his desk drawer, one after the other until he finally came to his teacher’s companion. Jim’s teacher’s companion was a thick spiral notebook, complete with old auburn coffee stains, which contained the names and phone numbers of all of his students over his twenty-plus year teaching career. Well, it held the student’s names, but no doubt the phone numbers belonged to the parents with whom the student resided. Jim flew through the pages in a panic until he reached the year 2019. There he was, Tyler Swanson, with the phone number. Jim battled in his mind whether or not a current phone number in 2019 remained current in 2029. Jim thought his chances were very strong that the number still belonged to the Swanson residence. But what would he say?

Jim hadn’t spoken to anyone in the Swanson family, including his former student, in years. So now he was to call someone in the family and say what? “Hello Mr. or Mrs. Swanson, this is Jim Colabza, remember me? Well, I’m fine, thanks, but I feel like Tyler is in danger because my tree out back said so,” Jim thought to himself sardonically. He decided that yes, it sounded impractical, but if he cared as much as he did, the embarrassment was a negligible price to pay; and at least it wasn’t face-to-face! “There’s that,” Jim said to his tranquil, yet cold study. Jim picked up the receiver briefly, then re-cradled the handset. He quickly picked the phone up again and dialed the number from his teacher’s companion without even giving himself a chance to think or chicken out another time. The thinking was that if he
did
hang up at this point, at this ungodly hour to reach out and touch someone, Mr. or perhaps Mrs. Swanson would surely reverse-dial his hom
e–
which they regionally referred to as “star-69-ing” in the Empire State…and how humiliating would
that
be? So, he waited with the handset pasted to his ear, waiting for someone to pick up and take his urgent reveille.

“H-Hello?” It was a female, no doubt Cindy Swanson.

“Yes, Mrs. Swanson, hello. I am very sorry for disturbing you at this late hour, truly I a
m–
”

“Who is this?” Cindy asked.

“Mrs. Swanson, this is Jim Colabza.” Not wanting there to be an unknowing silence stabbing his ear through the receiver, he prattled on. “I don’t know if you remember me, but years ago I was Tyler’s social studies teacher at Alan B. Shepard High.”

“Oh hello, Mr. Colabza, what can I do for you?” Cindy asked, with shockingly little surprise in her voice regarding the unexpected early morning/middle-of-the-night phone call.

“Jim, please. Mrs. Swanson
I–
”

“And Cindy to you, or Cynthia if you’d like.”

“Thank you. Again, I apologize for this phone call and I know it sounds crazy,” he just could not ditch his preamble, “but I think that Tyler may be in some grave danger.” Jim was immediately reminded of a line from one of his favorite movies, A Few Good Men, in which Tom Cruise was cross-examining Jack Nicholson in court and Nicholson barked “Is there any other kind?” when Cruise asked if the subject was is grave danger.

“W-What do you mean? What’s happened? Are you with him?” Cindy inquired in rapid-fire sequence. Jim could hear rustling on the other end of the phone, most likely Cindy sitting up in bed.

“No Cindy, I’m not with him. I’m at my home in Copake, NY and h
e–
”

“
Copiague
?” she asked, as had everyone else to whom Jim had told the name of his town who was not from Copake.

“No, it’s Copake, C-O-P-A-K-E. It’s upstate a bit, about three hours away from you.”

“How do you know about Tyler then?”

“Again, this will sound crazy, but, I get these suspicions at times, and typically they come to fruition. Not
all
the time, mind you, but enough for me to justify calling you out of nowhere at four in the morning after not being in touch for years.” Jim had decided to give a veiled version of the truth. He feared that if he told her exactly how his trepidations came to him that she would not only slam the phone down onto her receiver with enough force to give him an ear ache later that day, but she would also have men armed with nets visit him to haul him off to the basket factory. No, the veiled truth would suffice in giving her enough information while still allowing Jim to maintain the projection of sanity that he deserved, given the circumstances.