The Other Mr. Bax (22 page)

Roland glanced up ahead, beyond Fred. Mineral Butte was directly in line with the path they were on. As they stepped by a thorny bush, Roland said, “You know what that is?”

Fred reached into the bush and lifted a branch. “Like string beans, huh?” Long, thin, seed pods dangled from its branches. “My people used to grind the seeds into meal for bread. That was good bread. Now they go to the supermarket and buy fortified white fluff.”

“If you could go back in time… I mean, back before the Europeans came, back to live, would you?”

“Hmph,” Fred snorted. “There are some I know who’d say yes, but not me.”

“Why?”

“Blondes.”

“Blondes?”

“Not really.” He smiled. “It’s a big answer. Maybe another day.”

Another day
… Roland could not imagine another day like this one. He was reluctant to count it among the days prior, as it seemed somehow disconnected from the past.

About fifty yards ahead stood an ancient saguaro cactus. A memory of him and Joyce, walking toward this very same scene, was there in his mind.
When
?
Yesterday
? The optimism he’d been slowly building began to crumble back into the muck of fear and confusion that it had risen from. He struggled to identify the source of his apprehension, glancing about as though he might spot it among the rocks and shrubs, while at the same time bracing against its discovery.

“I’ve been here,” Roland said. “I was here yesterday.”

“Ah… so, that
was
you.”

“What?

“Up there.” Fred lifted his arm.

Roland glanced toward the ridge where Fred pointed, then off to the north, the direction he imagined his house was. He pictured Joyce pacing the kitchen floor with the phone pressed to her ear, calling everyone, searching everywhere for him, furious with panic. He gave Fred a sidelong glance, and realized he owed him more than a mere “thank you,” and “see you later.” He couldn’t simply walk off and leave the old man. So he followed Fred up to the ridge, to the spot where he and Joyce had stood the day before, and lowered himself to the ground, next to him.

“I had this crazy dream the other day,” Fred said. “I was sitting here. A man and a woman walked by.” He waved a hand down toward his feet as if suggesting the couple had passed right there, inches from him. “They crossed to the opposite side of the gulley.” He nodded. “The woman was wearing pants about the same color as that boulder”—he tipped his head toward his right—“with seams around the knees”—then gestured, drawing a line back and forth across his knee.

Roland recalled that Joyce was wearing pants such as Fred described, the last time he saw her.

“I come here often.” Fred twisted his head, and glanced back over his shoulder. “This circle. The Earth shares its secrets with those who understand their relationship to it and respect it. My people used to understand… my grandfather and his grandfather.” He nodded. “This was once a place of vision, a place to connect with our spirit guides.” He turned toward the cactus.

“So, what was it? What happened in your dream?”

“Well… the man in the dream… I believe that was you. Things kept shifting though. The old cactus was over there.” Fred pointed to the opposite side of the gully. “Wrong place. Which makes me think the dream was not about this world.”

As a young boy, Roland had had a dream that foretold, in vivid detail, an absolutely insignificant event that came about with astonishing precision the following day. He had not, to this day, had another dream like it. Though, having had the one was enough to convince him that reality was not what it seemed and dreams could skip around its stubborn facade.

“And the lady… very pretty… long, light-colored hair in a single braid.”

He didn’t say, but Roland knew it was Joyce he was describing.

“You were both on this side of the ravine. First here, then there.” Fred wagged a finger toward the other side. “Not the woman though, just you. She stayed put.” He pointed toward the ground at his feet. Then, reaching into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, he gazed off toward the opposite ridge. “I suspect maybe you didn’t belong there, that you were lost.” He dug out his lighter and lit a cigarette. “Then the woman was gone, and everything was just as it is now.” A cloud of white smoke drifted up past the rim of his hat. “Sounds crazy, I know.”

A collage of disjointed moments shuffled around in Roland’s mind: the man with the cowboy hat, Joyce standing by a tree, the cigarette in her hand,
four flats
…
four
.
A dream
. The notion that his house had vanished was just one of many flitting about in his mind, blending with the dream. The memory of standing in the road, surveying the plot of land where his house was later built was a part of it, as was his confusion and terror.
A dream
… But then his eyes dropped again to his scuffed pants. He turned toward the base of the cactus—yet another memory, like a ghost teasing him from the corner of his eye. Before he could grasp it, it dissolved into the background.

He rose to his feet and scanned the area around him. “I was here twice yesterday.” He worked his way down to the bottom of the ravine—“Yes, I remember”—then followed it north, his eyes intent on the ground. A few yards up, he stopped and turned back toward Fred. “Joyce was with me, but there’s only one set of foot prints here.” Fred’s face was expressionless.

Roland closed his eyes and willed his mind to focus. He skipped through the events from the morning before: coffee in bed, Joyce at his side, a granola bar and banana, the pine tree, the butte, and Twin Peaks. He recalled Joyce climbing the rocks ahead of him—the details, as vivid as the moment before. He pictured her stopping, picking up a pebble and examining it. He remembered the hike back to the house, their discovery of the medicine circle, and the cactus, the same cactus that now grew from the ledge above him. The whole story, up to his being in the kitchen, making lunch—nearly every detail was there.

Returning to where Fred sat waiting, Roland said, “Do you know Olberg Road, just north of the butte?”

“I’ve been here longer than that road’s been here. North of the butte…”

“That’s my house.”

“The Browns moved?”

“The Browns? No, they’re a half-mile to the east of me. I built the house before the pine tree, directly north of Mineral Butte. A tall pine… in my backyard, about fifty feet from the backdoor.”

Fred shook his head. “What house?”

“Olberg Road… it’s been there for five years.”

The old man gave Roland a moment of scrutiny. “I was by there maybe six weeks ago. Wasn’t a house there then. Half-mile west of the Browns’ place… west of Gary Road.”

“But there
is
. We built that house. There’s a house there.”

“Same as your footprints?” He pointed down into the ravine.

“I know it was real.” A picture of the house stood as clear as the day in his mind. “It is.” His words however, hardly more than a whisper, were shrouded in doubt.

“Here”—Fred gestured with his hand— “this place”—in a low, sweeping motion. “Don’t look for answers, or expect them. Just allow it… anything, everything. You know what I mean?”

Roland lowered himself to the ground and sat down next to him.

“It may seem that this is nowhere and nothing, but things are happening around us that we cannot perceive. You are sometimes closer to this than you can know. Pay attention, maybe you’ll see it.” Fred worked his way up to his feet. “You’re welcome to stay at my trailer. You know how to find it now, right?” He looked at Roland. “I wouldn’t wait till dark though, if I was you.”

Roland watched as Fred climbed down into the ravine and wandered off toward his home. His eyes slowly panned the horizon from the South, to the East, and North, until they came to Mineral Butte. What exactly had happened, and how and why it happened, was far from clear—that something extraordinary had happened was undeniable.

T
he house appeared tiny
, dwarfed by its two nearest neighbors. To the east was Grey’s Funeral Home—a massive, three-story Victorian, separated from Dana and Roland’s Cape Cod by a narrow, asphalt driveway. A house, almost as large as the Grey’s, crowded theirs to the west—a space of only six feet separating them. The Cape Cod was small, but much roomier than was apparent from its exterior.

It was an unusually spacious Monday, two days since Roland’s disappearance. Dana stood in the living room gazing down the length of the house into the kitchen at the far end. The place felt oddly untouched by his presence—his energy missing, as though he’d never been there. She had repeatedly assured herself that this, his absence, would soon end, though doubts were beginning to interfere with that assumption.

Upon her family’s urging, Dana had gone to the police to file a missing persons report, though it seemed that doing so constituted permission for the possibility to exist that Roland was the victim of some unthinkable crime, a possibility she’d not previously allowed herself to consider. She’d called his brother, Brian, the evening before, and informed him of the situation. Sometime later, her sister-in-law, Kate, phoned her, offering to stay with her for a while, stating, “I just can’t wait around here doing nothing.”

While convinced that her sister-in-law’s companionship would be a welcome comfort, she had, at the same time, worried that their shared concerns would feed on each other. She really wanted to say, “No thank you,” but refusing the kindness struck her as disrespectful.

She glanced at her watch—about two hours before Kate’s expected arrival—plenty of time for a
walk.

It was a cloudy day, cool, much like Saturday, the day she’d spent helping her mother make pizzas—the day Roland had disappeared. She stood at the end of the driveway, glancing up and down the street, waiting for a break in the traffic, then hurried across to the other side. A woman, coming down the post office steps, acknowledged her with a wiggle of her fingers and a “Hi.” Though her face was instantly familiar, it took Dana a moment to connect a name and place.
Janis
…
from the video rental store, down the street. Janis would often engage her or Roland in casual conversation when they’d stop in for a movie.

A small town. She wondered if people knew. She hated that—hated all the assuming, the judgments, the conclusions, the premature sympathies. She returned the lady’s greeting, but then wondered if her hesitation was noticed. Braking eye contact, she quickened her pace, as though in a hurry—to go where? The park? This too bothered her: the insincerity of it, like being nonchalant about a death in the family—a thinly veiled brush-off.

Adjacent to the Post Office, the park served as the town square, taking up a small, city block. It featured two wide, asphalt paths, crisscrossing, connecting the four corners, intersecting at a large, octagon-shaped gazebo. Cutting through the park diagonally, Dana arrived at the corner of John and Clinton Street, where she again stood waiting for a break in the traffic.

The tightness in her chest would not let up; the stress, the tension, and the fear that drove it, persistently pressing upon her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. A picture of Roland popped into her head—there for only an instant—a flash. Its memory, however, clung to her like light burned onto film—Roland, standing on a street corner, his head turned to the side, as though he too was waiting for cars to pass—as if she’d only just seen him there.

She searched her mind for an incident from which the memory might be tied, but nothing came to her. She closed her eyes and pulled the image up, noting the details she’d overlooked before: a fire hydrant to his left, bushes behind him bordering the sidewalk, white siding on the house behind him sprinkled with patches of light—mid-morning sunlight punching through shade trees. She peered at the house across from her, the opposite corner of the street—that same house. The fire hydrant, the sidewalk, the shrubs bordering it—every detail identical to the picture in her head—minus Roland.

Backing up into the park behind her, Dana lowered herself onto the grass, again, studying the scene before her, reconstructing the picture. Nothing about it stood out as particularly odd. Yet, the way in which it had come to her, at that specific corner, and at that particular moment, struck her as
especially
odd.

Another synchronicity
…

She knew that, as in the often-disconnected images of a dream, the face of synchronicity had little or nothing to do with its meaning. Images would at times appear in her mind while deep in meditation, but like the images from dreams, she could only speculate over their meanings. This, unlike a dream, was simply a single, frozen moment in time—Roland standing on a street corner—nothing more.

What was he wearing
?—a detail she had overlooked. It was still there, still accessible—a blue shirt with thin, red vertical stripes, one she couldn’t recall having seen before.

A murmur of voices came from her right—an old couple, shuffling along down the sidewalk toward her. She got to her feet and crossed the street.

A memory
? She stepped up to the curb where, in her vision, Roland had stood, and wondered if she was
making too much of it.
The shirt though
…
what was that about
? She pictured the shirt—not quite a navy blue, but a dark blue, which appeared almost violet when combined with the red stripes. No, she’d not seen the shirt before.
How odd that he’d be wearing unfamiliar clothes. She made a mental note to have a look through his closet once she had finished her walk.

As she arrived at the head of the bike path a flock of noisy geese passed overhead—the beginning of their winter migration. Through most of autumn, thousands of Canada geese from a nearby wildlife refuge flew over Akron on their way south. But, like the snow of winter and the blossoms of spring, the locals hardly took notice. Outings and nature trips were something she and Roland rarely disagreed on. She recalled picnicking in the refuge with Roland—the two of them walking along a grassy lane, numerous families of geese waddling away as they approached, fuzzy, gray goslings weaving along in line behind their mothers, like train cars linked to an engine, and an occasional adult standing its ground, putting on a convincing show of aggression.

Halfway across Murder Creek, she stopped and gazed down at the stream below. A pair of mallards floated quietly into view from under the bridge. Sunlight reflected iridescent-green from the male’s head. Dana watched as the two birds, having no apparent agenda, paddled slowly up the creek.

A short distance from the bridge, she heard the distant honks of more geese—a flock, far off to the west—tiny, shifting black dots working themselves into a row. Curses from a red-winged blackbird came from the giant reeds, to her right. A male, clinging to a long thin stem, just below the bushy top of the wheat-colored plant, swayed back and forth, like the arm of a metronome ticking off an adagio—the bird’s angry chipping, poorly out of sync with the count.

A walk
…
went for a walk
… He had stepped over the very spot where she now stood, though she had no way of knowing that
.
She turned and took a step back.
Akron
,
for crying out loud
.
Really, what could’ve happened
? She turned, searching, as if a sign, some indication or clue, was hidden within the nearby trees and bushes. A number of dreadful ideas competed in her mind: an affair, an injury, a heart attack, kidnapped… Attempting to clear her head of them all, she took another slow, deep breath.
The woods
?

Just ahead, opposite a small farm to the left of the bike path, was a thick wall of bushes with a tunnel passing through, which opened to a large, grassy meadow. At the far end of the meadow was a woods, about six acres of maples, which she and Roland had explored in the recent past. They were primarily young trees, no more than a foot in diameter, and for the most part clear of underbrush, making it easy to walk about.
Could he have?
she wondered.
The woods
?

She checked her watch. With her sister-in-law due to arrive, she wasn’t sure she had
enough time.

Come 4:40, Kate was at the front door, followed by greetings, hugs, and questions: “How was the drive?” “How long?” “How’s everyone doing?” “Have you eaten?”

And answers: “A nice trip.” “Eight and a half hours.” “Everyone’s fine.” “No, but I’m not especially hungry.”

Then another question, which had been waiting impatiently behind the general niceties, “Would you be up for a walk? A short hike in the woods?” The idea that Roland could be incapacitated within that tranquil little forest seemed at first ridiculous, grabbing at straws, but then morphed into the stone that had been left unturned.

After cautiously presenting her suspicions to Kate, she added, “It’s a stretch, I know, but I can’t think of any other…” She stopped and shook her head. “It seems stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No, no, not at all. This is why I came. Really, I wouldn’t know where to start.” Kate turned and looked up the street, to her left. “It’ll be nice getting out. Walk off the road jitters.”

Dana left her car in a small gravel parking lot, just south of where she’d, earlier, ended her hike. She and Kate walked up the bike-path to the wall of bushes where the beginning to the trail was. To the opposite side of the bike-path was a wide gate, which opened to a barnyard. Three chickens stepped jerkily about, pecking at the ground along the bottom edge of the gate.

Dana stepped off the path, toward the woods. “Just a quick look around.” She ducked as she entered the tunnel through the bushes. “Might as well, right?”

“Absolutely,” Kate said.

“I know, I know… I can’t help it. I keep wondering—”

“Don’t apologize. This is why I came. To do something.”

“Yeah, right. Sometimes you just have to do something—anything. It keeps the energy moving forward.”

The tunnel opened to a field of late-blooming wild flowers—a clearing of tall grasses, goldenrod, New England asters, and purple loosestrife. The meadow was aglow from the low sun directly ahead. A narrow, grassy footpath wound through the meadow, then disappeared into the woods, fifty yards away.

“It’s beautiful,” Kate said, trying to take it all in while keeping up with Dana.

A short distance before the edge of the trees, Dana stopped and turned. “You think we should call for him?”

“Call?”

Dana turned toward the woods, then after hesitating, regretting she’d not come earlier, she called, “Roland!” With Kate just behind her, she stepped past the first trees. Beams of sunlight angled through a canopy of fall colors, producing scattered patches of light on the leaf-covered floor of the woods. With the exception of a small number of beech trees, the woods were maples, all relatively young, most, near thirty feet in height. She again called, “Roland!”

There was no one among the trees, nothing to disturb, yet her intrusion felt blaringly irreverent; the woods were too beautiful, too serene to harbor anything analogous to her fears. She turned to Kate, and pointed south—“You want to go that way?”—then, indicating the opposite direction, she added, “I’ll go this way.” She pivoted to her right, taking in the woods, sizing it up. “It’s not very big; you can’t get lost in here.”