The Great Forgetting (6 page)

“Okay,” said Jack, trying to keep up. The trail was steep and the footing precarious, the path slick with fallen leaves.

“The question is, do you save these people if you have the chance?” asked Tony. “I mean, think about it. These people think reality is just these shadows on the wall. If you could set them free, their minds would have no concept of our three-dimensional world. You show them a flower, they wouldn't know what the hell it is. You'd have to show them the shadow of a flower for it to have any meaning. If you showed them the trees and the sky, they'd freak the shit out. They'd be terrified. Isn't it better to just keep them chained up?”

Jack thought it over. It was another one of Tony's nightmarish
Twilight Zone
y brain-stumpers. “I'd still rescue them, set them free,” he said, finally, sniffing away the cold.

“Why?”

“I think because I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to help them.”

“Yeah. I guess. Me, too.”

“It's creepy, though.”

“Guy named Plato came up with that crap like three thousand years ago or something.”

“Cool.”

Somewhere nearby, a crispy twig cracked loudly.

“Who's there?” called Tony.

A fat head poked out from behind a white pine. The boy had a mess of tangly red hair. “Hey, guys,” said Nils.

“Were you following us?” asked Tony.

The fat ginger trundled out from his hiding place and joined them on the path. He was huffing from the exercise. But he was smiling. A big, wonderful kid smile. “You're going out to the Indian mounds on the edge of camp, right? Can I come?”

Tony looked to Jack, who shrugged.

“Okay, but you have to carry our canteens,” said Tony. He handed a metal army-surplus canteen to Nils, who slung it around his shoulder dutifully. A trio now, they walked together through the empty forest and spoke of scary things.

That night Jack pulled his sleeping bag close to Tony's on the floor of Concord Lodge. Close enough so that he could feel his friend's breath on his face, and like that he drifted off to sleep.

*   *   *

Jack's breath caught in his throat. He was surprised to find he missed his friend.

He picked himself up off the hard clay and dusted off his jeans.

He couldn't get Tony's bones out of the lake.

But he knew who could.

4
    Sam was there when Jack got back. She was in the kitchen, talking to his sister, a glass of red wine in her hand. She still wore her work bibs, splattered with white paint.

“I heard the Captain's back,” Sam said to Jack as he walked through the door. “I had to come over and say hi.”

He nodded and looked to Jean. “What did Dr. Palmstrum say?” Palmstrum had been their family doctor for a quarter of a century, a wizard of a man who worked out of a ranch home in Ravenna.

“Says it's probably not good. He's seen this happen before and it's always near the end. Like the mind's last rally. It could be a sign of another stroke, actually.”

“Great,” Jack mumbled. “Where's he at?”

“Getting dressed,” said Jean.

He nodded and then helped himself to a bottle of Yuengling from the fridge. He shot a hot glare at his sister that Sam couldn't see. She rolled her eyes at him.

“What were you doing out at the lake?” asked Sam.

“I have an idea. Want to see if it pans out before I talk about it.”

“I knew you'd figure something out.”

“Might not pan out.”

“Oh, holy hell!” shouted the Captain, ambling down the stairs, eyes on the woman with the copper hair. His face was one big, wrinkly smile. “Sam Sanders. Get your little ass over here and give us a hug.”

She moved to his side and gave him a soft squeeze. “It's back to Sam Brooks,” she said.

“What the fuck did Tony do? I go away a while and everyone thinks they have a free pass to be assholes?”

“Daddy, Tony's been gone three years now,” said Jean.

The Captain's face drained of color. He looked at Sam for confirmation.

“He walked into the lake,” said Sam. “He committed suicide, Walter.”
Walter.
Sam was the only one who'd ever been allowed to call the Captain by his given name.

The Captain pulled Sam close again and kissed the top of her head. “What a pisser. What a fucking pisser. That's just … terrible, Sammy. I'm so sorry. And my stupid mind is all muddy and you've probably told me all this before.”

“It's been long enough that I don't think about it all the time,” Sam offered.

“I should pay my respects before the lights go dim again. He up in St. Joe's?”

“No plot, Dad,” said Jack. “His body's still at the bottom of the lake.”

“Jack has an idea, though,” said Sam.

The Captain looked over to his son, alarmed. “No, buddy. No. I don't want you going down there.”

“I'm not,” he said. “Don't worry about it. Can we just fucking please talk about something else? It's so goddamn depressing.”

“Let's order food,” said Jean.

“Now you're talking,” the Captain said. Only Jack saw his face as everyone else turned toward the dining room. And so only Jack saw the look of fear in the old man's eyes. Stark, overwhelming fear. And then it was gone.

5
    The closest Chinese restaurant was Chen's Green Dragon in Kent, a forty-minute round trip. The Captain wanted something called yum cha. “Just ask for dim sum, dummy,” he barked. Paige, who had just been deposited by the school bus, requested “those crab cheesy hot pockets,” and Sam was in for an order of chicken and snow peas.

“I'll pick it up,” said Jack, grabbing his wallet.

“I'll go with you,” said Sam.

Before he could protest she flitted out the door. He looked up at Jean.

“Life's short,” she said.

He nodded, but it wasn't true. Life is long. Longer than we allow ourselves to remember. “Is he going to be all right until we get back?”

“You mean, am I gonna go bug-eyed again while you're gone?” said the Captain. “I feel fine. Don't be such a wet towel. So sensitive. You know, you used to cry during
Scooby-Doo
sometimes? I mean, who cries at
Scooby-Doo
? Jee-zuss. I thought you'd turn out gay. I really did. I'm not going to die while you're out getting Chinese. I refuse to, because the thought of you crying at my funeral makes me generally too embarrassed for you to allow my body to shut down.”

“Okay then.”

“I feel better than I have in months. Maybe I'm coming out of this thing.”

Jack crossed over to where the Captain sat in front of the TV. He kissed his father on the cheek.

“Fuckin' fairy,” the Captain whispered, but he smiled.

“Nice to have you back, Pop.”

Sam was sitting in his Saturn looking at her teeth in the mirror when he climbed behind the wheel. He turned on the radio and 98.5 was halfway through “Crazy on You.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sam.

They listened to classic rock for some time without speaking. It was just warm enough that they could crack their windows a bit to let in the air. The aroma of cut grass quickly filled the car. They looked back at houses where friends once lived, fallen into disrepair, draped with ivy. He felt himself blush as they passed the oil well drive where she'd given him his first blow job.

“Do you remember how hot it was that summer?” she asked. “Do you think it'll ever be that hot again?”

“I don't remember,” he said.

“Yes, you do.”

He smiled.

“You got a girl back in Lakewood?”

He looked at her sideways and then turned off SR 14.

“Just making conversation, Jack.”

“You're never just making conversation, Sam.” He sighed. “No, I don't have a girlfriend.”

“Ever?”

“No, not … what do you think? Not, not ever. A couple. One was pretty serious.”

“What happened?”

“She moved away.”

“And you stayed?”

“That's right.”

“If you don't want to talk, we won't talk.”

“You always have a motive.”

“I'm not that person anymore. I grew up.”

“So you keep telling me.”

6
    Later they sat at the dining room table gorging themselves on cheap Chinese, waiting for the pizza to arrive.

“This is not yum cha,” the Captain said, mushing a greasy dumpling around his mouth. “But it's fuckin' good.”

“Daddy,” scolded Jean, canting her head toward Paige, who rocked in a chair as she picked apart a crab rangoon. She had changed into her nightclothes: pastel-green footie pajamas.

“Does this feel like a blip, or something more?” Jack asked his father. “Does it feel like you're getting better?”

The Captain thought about it while he chewed his food. “I don't know. You know what it feels like? It feels like hash. Like the hashish I smoked in Saigon.” He caught his daughter's disapproving eye and waved it off. “Back then the hash wasn't mixed with anything except more hash. No angel dust, heroin, meth, none of that shit.”

“Dad!”

“Sorry. Anyway, I had this beautiful kiseru, this long mothertruckin' pipe, right? A work of art. Kept it at my place in the city. Put a little Yellow Brick Road in there and you're over the rainbow. With the hash in 'Nam, you got these few minutes of clarity. Total clarity. The kind that only comes in those big moments. Like, all right, there was this astronaut, Edgar Mitchell. Never heard of him?”

“Apollo 14,” said Jack.

“That's right,” said the Captain. “Apollo 14. Moonshot. 1971. Anyway, Mitchell, in space, he has this profound moment of clarity in which he realizes that we are all connected. All of us. To each other. To the planet. To the universe. It changed his life.”

Sam stopped eating. She was staring at the Captain with concern.
Had Tony's paranoid delusions sounded something like this toward the end?
Jack wondered.

“That's what it feels like. Like waking up. Will it last?” The Captain shrugged.

Lights flashed against the kitchen walls. A truck was pulling into their drive, a rusty green S-10 with a Georgio's magnetic sign stuck to the roof. The vehicle listed to the side as the large Viking stepped out. Nils waved at them and then reached back in for the pizza and soda. Jack stepped outside to meet him. Through the picture window they could see everyone seated around the table. Nils smiled at the Captain. “He looks okay,” he said.

“He's having a good day.” Jack took the food and handed Nils a twenty. Then, instead of going in, he set the pizza on a stack of firewood by the door. “Wait a second,” he said. “Your dad. He still run that excavating business?”

“Yep. Septic tanks, mostly. City sewer still hasn't made it past SR 14. He replaced that tin shack with a pole barn two years ago. Got a small crew. He'd like me to help, but…” He looked down at his girth and smiled. “Hard labor doesn't agree with me.”

“Does he have any cranes? Cranes you can drive?”

“He's got a Link-Belt Speeder. It's slow, but it moves. Rents it out to contractors for lifting trusses. Why? Having problems with your tank?”

“I was thinking about getting a crane out to Claytor Lake.” He pointed through the trees. “I … I think Tony's down there.”

“Uh…” Nils's eyes grew wide. “Holy shit,” he said. “For reals?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, man. Yeah. Yeah, we could do it. You'd need a spotter, of course. Someone down in the water to place the hook and net. Yeah, that's what you'd want to do, I think. There's this guy out of Kent State. He helped us pull out a backhoe that fell into Lake Milton. 'Course that was only fifty feet of water. But he could do it if anyone could.”

“How much?”

“Got to clear it with the property owner, a'course. Not even sure who that would be. The lake went into foreclosure in '84 after the beach shut down. Someone'll have to pay the scuba guy from Kent State. Couple hundred bucks?”

7
    The Captain thought he'd have time to tell Jack why he shouldn't go searching the bottom of Claytor Lake. He thought they'd have some time alone once everyone went to bed. Time enough to explain everything that needed explaining before Jack truly fucked them all. But as soon as Jack stepped outside, the Captain felt his clarity dim like someone had placed a sheet of muslin over a lamp.

No
, he thought.
No, no, no. Not yet. Five more minutes.

He pretended nothing was wrong and kept eating. Smaller bites, though, in case his mind blew out like a candle and he forgot how to swallow. He willed himself to remain focused. He read the ingredients on a soy sauce packet to busy his brain.

“I'm going to take a trip to Giant Eagle later this afternoon,” said Virginia, sitting across the table from him. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon, highlighted by strands of coarse gray hair. She was feeding Jean, who drummed her fat little arms against her high chair between bites of rice cereal. “Do you want me to pick up anything?”

“Some Yuengling,” he said.

“Daddy, we're out of Yuengling,” said Jean, beside him, thirty-one years old again. “And you've had whiskey. How about some milk?”

He was slipping. Worse, he was slipping and not noticing the transitions from here to
there
.

His chair leaned forward as they banked the jumbo jet toward Queens. “La Guardia, this is Continental 161 on approach,” First Officer Bill O'Shannon said into his headset. “Watch out for the towers, Walt.”