Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection (16 page)

One of the fugitive’s eyes, open already and glassy in the sepia-lit room, twitched once in its socket, fastened upon a blurry profile. The part of himself that had been burrowing deeper into the mud of his sleep halted then and turned its lizard snout back to the light. He shut the eye and opened it. A man there, or a picture of a man, sat beside his bed, aspect steady and meditative. The edge of the profile--squarish forehead, a long nose bridge--produced an image he in some way recognized.

When at a small sound he opened both eyes this time, the face was hovering suddenly inches from his own, and he got a strong whiff of stale breath. He let go an unwilling vowel, startled and bolted upright, scrambling like a cornered crab back in the bed.

But his observer did not move or speak, watching instead through clear, gray eyes narrowed at what he must have taken as a guest. Across the back of the chair in which the old man was sitting the oil-skin coat hung, bulging pocket dragging one shoulder downward. The man sat, hands on his knees. He watched his visitor without fear but with an awe the fugitive could have deciphered as amusement or reproach but settled on neither. He decided to speak, for the man made no other sound than a tiny rhythmic wheeze accompanying his breathing.

“I…I was out….” He stopped himself, collecting saliva into his throat. The words sounded confessional, absurd: a boy explaining his absence at school, a child caught stealing candy.

“Been lost. Went hiking and got lost,” he said to the man. When he glanced down to his arm, thinking of other words he might use, and noticed the sleeve of the dark plaid shirt he’d donned. How long ago? She’d been alive then, complimented his choice as they’d dressed.

He looked at the man abruptly. “How’d I get here? Where’d you find me?” He remembered dragging himself from the river, falling and crawling, but nothing later came to his mind. He searched the face of his host and saw there again a familiar feature, a shadow at the temple, a slope of cheekbone. Something came alight in the fugitive’s mind like a hand-written note, burning.

***

The old man watched him, but his eyes shifted and fixed periodically on a place on the wall beside him, a scrap of something pinned there. No change in his demeanor indicated he’d comprehended what the fugitive had asked, nor had he moved his hands from his knees. A shock of gray crossed one brow while the rest lay about his head in uneven clumps. A beard deeply tangled obscured most of his lower face and neck. He had on the blue-gray coveralls a mechanic might wear, far too large a fit.

The fugitive understood only they were deep in the valley into which he’d thrown himself, that only one or the other would remain there. One man waited for the other to rise, speak a sentence, fill the void with a meaningful gesture, a single phrase. For at least the duration of a minute, the old man wheezed in the chair, and then stood, finally. He shuffled to the door of the room, which had been ajar, and began to exit but stopped to again face his guest. One hand on the wooden handle, he looked at the fugitive and the beard at his jaw dropped a little, appearing as he had before, vaguely perplexed. He passed into the next room with the door swinging lightly shut.

The footfalls crossed the floorboards of the cabin, steady as the second hand on a watch. When they hushed, he threw back the quilt and swung his feet onto the floor where he noticed his shoes had been placed carefully side to side, toe outward. Before mustering the strength to make for his coat, the door edged open and he lurched forward in a lunge from the bed to the chair, collapsing to the floor. Objects receded momentarily from his vision, and he recoiled into blank nausea. He came to with his host standing over, holding in both hands a slab of wood. The fugitive put his palms on the seat of the chair and rose to it, groaning.

He sat in the straight-backed chair with arms hanging limp as the board was set at his feet. Upon the flat of the plank was a row of items carefully positioned to span the distance end to end: a tin bowl of gray porridge, three crab apples, and a crazed mug of tarrish coffee. Beside the cup lay a book of matches and two cigarettes, one of which had rolled off the end of the board. He looked up at the man’s face grateful, uneasy. The breakfast was presented with a ceremony that made him unsure of how to proceed. It occurred to the fugitive that perhaps the man feared him, having heard the recent news, and was trying to pacify him. To be calmed was not his wish. He wanted oblivion.

The fugitive regarded the porridge for a beat longer and overcome, collapsed to the floor again, this time to crawl around to the bowl, which he grabbed and raised to his mouth in a panic of hunger. After coaxing with his fingers a couple of mouthfuls of the thick fibrous stuff, he saw that the man was holding a large spoon out to him. The fugitive grabbed it and set to finishing the contents of the bowl. He’d been kneeling as he ate, and when the porridge was consumed, he took one of the apples and fell to his side. He laid the side of his head on the floor and watched the hermit, who had retreated to stand in the corner, shadowed by the open door.

He chomped half the apple away and swallowed before his tongue retracted at its bitterness. “How did you find me?”

The face peered from the corner. Years in growth, the beard veiled any signal of speech. The hermit regarded the scrap on the wall again which the fugitive could see now was an old black-and-white photo. His host was conversing, in his wordless manner, with a figure in the photo, consulting a third person in the room. When he raised himself to look at it, the man took a step back and gestured with an arm sweeping outward, indicating a place beyond the walls, somewhere in the forest below the cabin. He pointed at the fugitive and mimed a sleeper.

“Yesterday?”

The hermit held up two fingers. His eyes glistened.

“Two days?”

The hermit stared at the fugitive.

“Two days.”

The fugitive reached for the mug and by its chipped handle raised it to his lips and gulped a liquid the taste of burnt leather. It leaked from the cracked corners of his mouth. He slid over to the bedframe and slumped against it. “You know who I am, then.”

The hermit stared at him.

***

When the old man left the room, the fugitive lit one of the cigarettes and came to a hesitant stand. He walked to the fading photo on the wall: boy in a tire swing laughing, barefoot toes rising to the camera; older boy behind him grinning in the instant of his playful shove. The fugitive stepped back and put a hand on the wall, leaning in to squint at the scene. The photo was blemished, badly creased from handling; but the composure of the older boy’s face clearly betrayed the much older version of the hermit’s. The swinging boy was caught in flight, and the fugitive stared a long time at him.

***

He crossed the room to the window, pausing at the chair to slip a hand into the pocket where the .45 was cool metal waiting. The window glass was long missing and daylight shown in dimly through gray plastic sheeting. He put his shoulder to the swollen frame. It budged open, shuddering on its hinges. When he blew out a stream of smoke, he found he was looking at columns of massive trees populating a steep slope.

He turned to reach for the coat, clear out, keep moving. But his host had re-entered the room silently and was now standing beside the chair, holding the gun out to him by the barrel. The fugitive stood without motion, cigarette smoldering in his fingers. He looked into the man’s rheumy eyes intent upon his own and unsmiling. The hermit nodded at the fugitive an acknowledgement.

They peered at each other like facing mirrors before the older reached out with his free hand and placed into the palm of the younger the pistol stock. Then, from the baggy folds of his coveralls, he produced a piece of curved iron, nicked and dark with wear. The bar had been flattened at one end, and the hermit stooped, applied it to a nail-head in a floorboard at his feet. He labored over the next minute with great energy and made small grunting noises as he worked. When the board creaked and popped off the joist, he straightened and faced his guest. The visible flesh at his forehead was creased and reddened from exertion, and the fugitive saw in him a new semblance, a picture of himself through a filter like distance or time. The hermit gestured at the long gap in the floor; the fugitive without consideration threw the pistol into it and stepped back. The older man quickly replaced the plank and pounded the nails back down using the handle-end of the iron. When he was finished, he stood and regarded the photo on the wall for an instant, before shambling out of the room.

After an hour the fugitive was ready. The hermit held open the door, lifted to the fugitive a pint bottle of murky water and a ragged shirt knotted to contain a load of crab apples.

When, after rising some minutes into the big forest above the dwelling, he stopped to look behind him, he saw that practically nothing of the hermitage was distinct from the undergrowth. All was knit gently into the garment of wilderness. Only a square of gray plastic lay nestled within, camp trash drifted in by the wind, beside it a narrow wedge of shadow.

By afternoon he’d not yet made the ridge, but he pushed on. He flew up the scree of a rockslide, up the root-tangled face of a cliff, the muscle of his heart a hammer in his chest.

PAULA ALTSCHULER

And You're Okay With That?

_{(an excerpt from a fictionalized memoir)}

IN THE VICTORIAN HOUSE on Officer's Row, the breeze rising off the Puget Sound rocks the weathered windows. It's creepy. You’d almost expect to see cobwebs festooning the double-door archways. The brick duplex on the end of the Row is supposedly haunted, but I wouldn’t know; I won’t go inside and I don’t even believe in ghosts. Fort Worden, which was once an Army fort and then a juvenile detention facility, is a rather choice location for creative writers.

“Our school is a graduate program for people with special needs,” says Jump, resembling an androgynous leprechaun in brown polyester pants and a red bandana. Jump leans back on the couch across from me, laughing, popping mini-Reese’s peanut butter cups into their mouth like potato chips. Jump legally changed (their) name for gender neutrality. They—I’ve learned this week at school—is an acceptable pronoun for Trans-boys or T-taking girls or phe’s. As a former college cheerleader, I think Jump is a pretty rad name, regardless.

Jump and I are two peculiar peas in a pod. Our friendship sketched entirely in words—long-distance phone calls and emails over the last six months, coincidentally the hardest six months of my life—that we now draw on to rehash this past semester.

“But I’ve had it pretty good. Led a fairly normal life,” I say, wishing the fireplace was burning to add to the room’s charm. “Nothing that bad has happened to me.”

“That’s why your mother died!” Jump’s voice rises.

“You’re right. Now I’m wounded too. I finally fit in!” I say.

Later when I repeat this story to my therapist, she’s nonplussed. “And that was okay with you?” she asked.

“Of course, I thought it was hysterical,” I said.

“Interesting,” she said.

Six months ago, I began my MFA in creative writing and a manuscript about an outrageous character based on my mom. Yes, yes, everyone's mom is wacky, but trust me, not like this. I have yet to meet a parent that rivals her "outgoing" personality with such sagacious advice as in middle school when Ma told me conditioner would soften my pubic hair. This character-
slash
-book idea was a long time coming, born into scribbled notes on yellow scraps of paper and a Wonder Woman notebook years ago. I yearned to write this book like dreaming of visiting a far off land, but only seeing it on a map. Back then, the closest I scored to creative writing was drafting press releases and web copy. It took longer than I hoped, but finally, I was going for it. The first of my family in graduate school, leaping into the overpopulated artistic cesspool, our realized dream coming true: mine to write this book and Ma's to
star
in it.

But then Ma died. Suddenly.

A month later, I was non-celebrating my second wedding anniversary to my husband, still in my pajamas at four in the afternoon trying to shape fits of despair into meaningful narration. The fictional story of Ma’s wild life so quickly turned into a memoir of circumstance about
my
sadness and
my
longing. Maybe I should have taken the semester off, but it felt disingenuous to my Ra-Ra Attitude. Then, in the midst of my anguish, something magical happened. Creative inspiration
whined
in my subconscious ear: "What about my book?" When a Funny Person Dies, They Don’t Stop Being Funny. That's it! Ma must interrupt my sorrowful word vomit. I didn't have to be a downer. I wasn't a woe-is-me type, so why was my writing portraying me as one. I could jump-kick grief where the metaphorical sun don't shine. I could sever sadness with a sarcastic sword (albeit, while gravely overusing alliteration in a sentence). I could write whatever-the-fuck I wanted! Fuck, I could even write—
fuck
. Well, maybe fuck was too much. It is. Isn't it?)
⁹²

______________________

⁹²
Of course it's not too much. You got my chutzpah, kid. Now use it! She was always so worried. "Ma, are you sure?" "What do you think of this outfit, Ma? Is it too revealing?" "Honey," I would say, "if you got the body, go for it." Drove me crazy. Always so nervous about what people would think. About everything she did or said. "Who cares?" I would tell her. "I don't. If someone doesn't like me, it's their loss. I have one life and I'm gonna have some fun with it."

"Ma, you're embarrassing me." Everything I did was
embarrassing.

This one time I went to visit Pauler in Utah and she took me to a concert. Finally! I always begged for her to take me to watch live music, but she didn't want to show up with an old lady. I looked good; what was her problem? We went with a few of her friends, lovely people. Anyway, the concert was in a small bar, very dark, packed to capacity. People crowding the main dance floor and lining three-deep on the mezzanine above us. Once the music got going, I wanted to smoke a little pot. Everybody else was. "No, Ma," my daughter said. "People will see you. Don't embarrass me." Who cared? I was a sixty-five year-old grandma of eight. What would happen? They probably wouldn't arrest me. Maybe we'd get kicked out, but what a story we'd have to tell. And I did look good that night. A young guy started dancing behind me. You know, putting his hands on my hips and standing real close. I turned around at some point to reveal who he was dancing with, but it didn't seem to bother him. You see, and my daughter was worried I wouldn't fit in.