The Ambrose Beacon

by Alena Gouveia

  Chapter 7

  Saturday Afternoon, January 8th

  The car ride home from the karate studio had been the complete opposite of nearly every car ride that Jerry had shared with Vaughan in recent memory. There had been no tension between them and they had talked easily about the morning lesson as they picked up lunch at one of the local fast-food drive-through windows. Jerry still couldn’t believe what he had seen at the karate lesson and he hadn’t been the only one.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mr. Tanaka had told him. “You say he’s never had a lesson in his life?” When Jerry shook his head, Mr. Tanaka continued, “He fights at the level of students I’ve had for ten to fifteen years. It was like he knew what I was going to do – like he had seen the moves before and knew how to respond. But if he’s never had a lesson in his life, that shouldn’t be possible.”

  “I can’t explain it either,” Jerry answered. “He’s never really participated in any type of athletics. Other than dance, I mean.”

  Mr. Tanaka frowned for a minute before he responded, “Dance. That would explain the way he moves. It’s far more graceful than someone who’s practiced karate for a long time. But it doesn’t explain how he’s able to learn the karate moves so quickly and how he was able to use them to react to everything I did.” He rubbed his chin and looked at the floor for a minute before adding, “He could easily compete, you know. The way he fights and how quickly he learns - I could have him ready for a tournament in a month.”

  Jerry’s hesitation was obvious as he responded, “I’m not sure about that. A month doesn’t seem like a very long time for someone who just started.”

  Mr. Tanaka held up his hands. “It’s just something to think about and to discuss with your son. For now, I’d like him to join the advanced class, if it’s okay with both of you.” Jerry had told him that he would discuss it with Vaughan.

  He finished recounting his conversation with the sensei to Vaughan as they turned onto the long road leading up to their house. “So, what do you think?” he asked his son. “Are you up for joining the advanced class?”

  Vaughan nodded, “I think that would be cool, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my dance lessons.” He looked over at Jerry hesitantly, as if he was worried about bringing up the topic.

  “I agree,” Jerry said, the excitement in his voice obvious. “I honestly think Mr. Tanaka would hold a private class just for you if it meant he could teach you,” he said with a chuckle. “Vaughan, how did you do that? It’s like you knew what he was going to do before he did it.”

  Vaughan thought for a moment about what had happened during his sparring match with his sensei. The exact thing had happened in his encounter with Emmitt Smith the day before. As Mr. Tanaka had attacked him with either kicks or punches, everything had seemed to slow down. Vaughan had been able to see where the attack was going and either move out of its way or block it. The only difference with Mr. Tanaka had been that time hadn’t slowed down nearly as much as it had with Emmitt and it had taken a moment before happening, so he had had less time to react. He suspected that it had something to do with the fact that his sensei was a much more skilled fighter than the school bully, but he wasn’t sure. His father was silent, and Vaughan realized that he hadn’t responded to his father, so he decided to tell him a version of the truth.

  “I just watched him carefully and could tell what he was going to do,” Vaughan finally said.

  Jerry smiled at what he mistook for humility. “Well, whatever you did, it sure was something to watch. The only time I’ve ever seen you move like that is when you’re dancing.”

  Vaughan looked over in surprise at what his father had said. He knew that he had seen Vaughan dance before, but had always assumed that he hadn’t been paying attention. Watching his son dance had never seemed important to his father. “You know what I look like when I dance?” he asked softly.

  It was Jerry’s turn to seem surprised, “Of course I do.” He was quiet for a moment before he added, “You’re amazing when you dance, Vaughan. You look like your mom anyway, but when you dance it’s like I’m watching her again.” Jerry stared out the windshield as the automatic climate control kicked on the heater. He spoke softly then, “I’m sorry that I haven’t come to watch you dance more often. It’s been really hard for me to see you dance, since it reminds me of your mom so much.”

  He looked over at Vaughan, “But that’s not fair to you.” He chuckled wryly as he added, “Or to your mom. She wouldn’t be too happy with me if she knew that was why I was missing your dance recitals.” He looked over at his son and his voice broke only slightly as he said, “I promise I’ll start coming to your dance recitals, Vaughan.”

  Vaughan was silent as he processed what his father had just told him. He suddenly felt very ashamed of himself. He had always assumed that his father didn’t attend his recitals because dance wasn’t a manly activity – that it was too girly for him to appreciate. But he had unfairly misjudged his father in this assumption. His father always seemed to be so solid and strong that Vaughan forgot that he was dealing with a kind of loss that Vaughan was unable to comprehend.

  “Thanks, Dad. I’d like that a lot,” he answered dumbly. He wanted to apologize, to say something more, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He decided that it was best not to say anything at all. He and his father had resolved their relationship issues unintentionally, but the bottom line was they were being resolved. He thought of something suddenly and asked, “I want you to come to the karate tournaments too, okay?”

  Jerry smiled over at him as they pulled into their long driveway. “Of course, son.”

  Cole sat against the wall in the garage and stroked the strange dog that he had befriended behind the ears. She closed her eyes in pleasure and leaned against him. They were both sitting on the pile of blankets that Cole had used to create a makeshift bed for her the night before. He couldn’t believe that his father had failed to notice her the two times that he had been through the garage, but she was a quiet dog and he had built the bed in the corner next to the spare refrigerator. He figured the warmth the appliance produced from its bottom would help to dispel the slight chill that was ever-present in the garage.

  Her quietness wasn’t the only thing that was strange about her. Her reaction to Cody was one that he had never seen between dogs. She just completely ignored him. Cody was in the garage with them, but he had refused to sit near them. He just sat on the other end of the garage and stared quietly at her. Cole at first mistook Cody’s aloofness as dislike for the new dog, but when he listened to Cody’s thoughts, the only thing he could understand was curiosity. Cody didn’t like or dislike the stray dog – he was just curious about her. And the stray continued to pretend that Cody wasn’t there. He had expected them to behave as normal dogs by going over and sniffing each other’s butts, or even to be aggressive toward each other, but nothing had happened.

  Cole hated thinking of her as “stray dog”, but he hadn’t decided on a name for her. He had decided that he was going to ask his father to keep her, though he hadn’t yet told Uncle Harper. There was something about her that seemed so familiar and she had proven herself to be extremely protective of him. He remembered his father’s reaction when Uncle Harper had brought Cody home and cringed at the thought of asking him to keep another dog. But he had planned a speech in his head on how he would do everything to care for her so that his father wouldn’t have to do anything. He just hoped that it would be convincing enough.

  The dog opened her eyes and stared up at him and Cole was struck again by the sense of familiarity. She had pretty, if rather typical dark brown eyes. They had the look of liquid sadness that the eyes of nearly all dogs had and that convinced potential owners to make impulse purchases at pet stores. But there was something deeper in her eyes. It was the kind of depth that he saw when he looked into Cody’s eyes, but this was different. When he
looked into Cody’s eyes, the depth there was alien to him. He was looking into the mind of a creature that he could never fully understand because it was of another species. When he looked into the stray dog’s eyes, the depth there was familiar. It was like looking into the eyes of another human being. The thoughts that were running through the mind behind those eyes were unknown to him, but would have been fathomable if he could see them.

  She continued to stare back at him and he thought again of what he should name her. He wondered if she already had a name, since she seemed to be relatively clean and well-fed, as if she had belonged to someone before. He looked into her eyes and smiled before saying, “I can’t keep thinking of you as stray dog. So, I need to give you a name, unless you already have one.” She cocked her head to one side as he spoke. “Do you already have a name?”

  Aidan

  Cole sat back slightly in shock. He had heard the name loud and clear in his head. It was a name that he had heard before, but never for a dog. As he looked into the dog’s eyes…into Aidan’s eyes, he knew that this was indeed her name. He wasn’t sure what Aidan meant, but she even looked like an Aidan to him. He wondered what kind of name Aidan was and what it meant.

  He felt a thought coming from her as if she were responding to his thought. He saw a small, but bright single flame, similar to the flames on the hurricane lamps that his mother would light during power outages before they had purchased the generator. He had always been amazed as a child at the ability of such a small flame to cast so much light. It was as if the darkness gave way willingly to it and the warmth that it gave off.

  “Does it mean flame?” he asked her. He got the sense from her that he was close, but not exactly right.

  The garage door opened and he decided that he could look up the meaning of the name later. It was time to convince his father that they needed another dog.

  The car pulled in to the garage and he could see Vaughan waving from the passenger seat. Cole waved back and saw the surprised look on his brother’s face. He had seen Aidan. The somewhat darker look on his father’s face told Cole that he had seen the dog too. His brother got out of the car first and hurried over to see the new addition to the garage. She wagged her tail at him as he leaned down and reached out his hand for her to sniff. She licked his hand warmly and he smiled.

  “Where did it come from?” Vaughan asked, still smiling.

  His father walked up behind Vaughan and looked down at the dog. “Yes, Cole. Where did it come from?” he asked with barely-veiled disapproval. Vaughan must have detected the tone in his father’s voice, because he stood up and walked into the kitchen without another word.

  “Her name’s Aidan and she followed me home yesterday,” Cole answered as he stood up. He was as tall as his father, so he was looking him in the eyes. He could tell from the look in those eyes immediately that it was going to be difficult at best to convince him that they should have another dog.

  “Cole, you know how I feel about dogs,” Jerry said. “They require a lot of work and we already have a full schedule as a family with one dog. Having two is going to make it that much harder.” He suddenly realized something that his son had said, “What do you mean she followed you home?” The only place Cole had been the day before was school. He knew that Harper had taken Cole home and the distance from the school to the house made it unlikely that such a thing could have happened. He looked down at the dog in confusion. It looked like it was well-fed, which meant it wasn’t likely to have been wandering in the woods in the middle of winter. He wondered if Cole’s story was an attempt to hide the fact that he had brought the dog home. He even thought about asking Cole if he was telling the truth. But Cole always told the truth and Jerry didn’t want to insult him by questioning him. “She followed you home from school?” he asked simply.

  Cole nodded as he answered, “Yeah, Dad. She came up to me at lunch yesterday and again after school.” He purposefully left out the ominous encounter with the wolf-like creature that same day. He didn’t want his father to worry unnecessarily and knew that the story didn’t sound plausible. He had already told his uncle, and he had asked Cole not to mention it to anyone else. He felt guilty for keeping part of the story from his father. It felt like lying. “When I was grabbing some firewood from the shed last night, she just…showed up.”

  Jerry knew that his son was telling the truth, in spite of the fact that the story was pretty far-fetched. He tried to think of another reason not to let the dog stay. It wasn’t that he disliked the animals, but he hadn’t been raised around them like most people had. He tolerated Cody because of the obvious connection he had with Cole, but that dog made him slightly uneasy. He always felt like there was too much thought behind his crystal blue eyes. Arianna had loved dogs, but knew that her husband thought them an unnecessary burden. When Harper had brought Cody home, he had felt a strange compulsion to allow him to stay. He thought that he was feeling the same compulsion about Aidan, but tried to fight it.

  “Two dogs mean twice as much work, Cole,” he finally said. It was a lame attempt since they both knew that Harper was home during the day. And Cole never shirked responsibility, so Jerry honestly couldn’t worry that the dog wouldn’t be cared for.

  “Dad, I promise I’ll take care of her too,” Cole responded. “Uncle Harper won’t mind taking care of her either. I’ll even pay for the extra dog food with my allowance.”

  Jerry knew that he meant what he said, though he also knew that he would never allow his son to use his well-earned allowance on something as mundane as dog food. He felt his resistance waning and was about to say yes when Billie came running through the door.

  “A new dog!” she squealed with delight before running up and hugging the dog. Cole and Jerry both tensed at such a boisterous greeting, hoping that the dog wouldn’t mistake it for aggression and bite her in response. But Aidan just rolled over on her back and licked Billie’s face repeatedly. Billie giggled infectiously before looking up at her father. “Thanks, Daddy! She’s really pretty.” She looked over at Cole and asked, “What’s her name?”

  Cole smiled at his little sister. He knew that there could not have been a more convincing reason to keep the dog than her reaction and was now sure what his father’s response would be. “Her name’s Aidan,” he answered his little sister.

  Jerry looked down at the dog as it licked his daughter’s face. The dog finally looked up at him and met his stare. He noticed for the first time that she had the strangest eyes that he had ever seen on a dog. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on what that was. As Billie smiled up at him, he nearly swore out loud as he knew his decision had been made. They had a new dog.

  “What does Aidan mean, Cole?” Billie asked.

  “It means little flame in Gaelic,” Harper responded in a quiet voice. None of them had realized that he was standing in the doorway to the kitchen until they heard him. He looked at Cole and asked, “What made you choose that name?”

  Cole was immediately uncomfortable. He couldn’t tell them that he hadn’t chosen it and that the dog had told him her name. Even the thought of it sounded crazy, much less saying it out loud. “Um, it just seemed like a cool name.”

  Uncle Harper stared back at him for a second before looking at the dog with an expression of obvious curiosity. He looked back at Cole for a second more before finally nodding.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he told them as he turned around and walked back into the kitchen.

  Cole suspected that his uncle hadn’t believed him for a second.

  Jerry walked into the kitchen after changing out of his winter clothes. Harper was readying dinner, which smelled delicious as it always did. His brother-in-law had the same flair for cooking as Arianna had and they continued to have gourmet, but healthy dishes for every meal. This was another reason Jerry had to be grateful for Harper’s presence. Jerry was a terrible cook
and the transition from his wife’s amazing cooking to the slop that he was able to produce would have been another difficult change for the children. Though he would never admit it to anyone, Harper’s cooking was even better than Arianna’s, if only by a small margin.

  Jerry asked Harper if there was anything he needed help with, but he said that he didn’t. So, he walked into the family room to see if there was anything interesting on TV. He walked up to the back of the couch that faced the TV and saw some kind of action movie playing. It was one of the newer films that was based on some sort of comic book characters that Jerry could never remember the names of. The scene changed to a more subdued one in which two of the superhero characters were having a conversation. It was then that Jerry noticed something odd about the sound. He realized that the words the characters were saying were all being repeated half a second later.

  At first he thought that he was hearing things, but when he stopped and listened there was no mistaking it. Everything the characters said was being repeated. He swore silently at the thought that something was wrong with the TV. He had just bought it six months before and had spent quite a bit of money on it. The thought of having to take it back to the store or have a repairman come out to fix it irritated him. He had been assured that it was a quality brand and that he shouldn’t expect any issues with it.

  The scene shifted again to an action-packed fighting scene and the strange echo stopped. Jerry listened closely but it had disappeared completely. He wondered if the movie playing was a DVD and if there was something wrong with the disk. As if answering his unspoken question and ruling out the disk as the problem, the scene shifted yet again to a commercial for a local car dealer. The man had a gray pompadour-style hairdo and what looked like a spray tan. As he animatedly described the amazing deals he was offering, you could see the numerous rings on his hands. He actually looked like a car salesman, which Jerry always thought was funny.

  Halfway through the commercial, the strange echoing suddenly started again, suggesting in his mind that there might be something wrong with the cable. But this time Jerry was able to discern the fact that it wasn’t actually coming from the TV. It sounded like it was coming from the couch. He leaned over the console table and noticed the back of Louis’ head. He was sitting low on the couch so Jerry hadn’t seen him at first. The echo started again and Jerry realized that the sound was coming from Louis.

  “Louis, is that you?” Jerry asked.

  Louis turned his head in surprise and looked up at his father, “H-hey, Dad.”

  The echoing immediately stopped. “Were you talking to yourself just now?” Jerry asked.

  Louis immediately had the look that he made when he was caught doing something wrong. It was a look that he made pretty often since he was frequently up to something, so Jerry recognized it instantly.

  “Um, no. I wasn’t talking to myself,” he answered.

  Jerry could tell that he was hiding something. He didn’t think Louis would actually lie to him, but he got the sense that he had carefully chosen his answer.

  “That’s strange,” Jerry said as he looked at his son. “I swear I heard something echoing the TV just a second ago.”

  Louis shrugged his shoulders unconvincingly before answering, “Maybe something’s wrong with the TV.”

  Jerry stared at him a minute more to make him squirm. He knew Louis was up to something, so he wanted him to know that he knew. That was usually enough of a deterrent to keep him from doing something he shouldn’t. “Hmm, maybe there is. Turn the volume down a bit, will you? I bet the neighbors can hear it.”

  Louis smiled as he said, “Okay.” The nearest neighbor was so far away that the TV could have been on full blast and they wouldn’t have heard anything.

  Jerry turned around and walked back to his bedroom to read for a bit before dinner. He heard the volume lower and could hear that the echo had stopped. He still wondered what had caused it and suspected that Louis was somehow involved, but he was still too happy with the breakthrough with Vaughan to worry about it further.

  The children cleared the table after dinner and wiped down the stove and counters before heading into the family room to watch a movie. Harper started loading the dishwasher as Jerry put away the leftover food. It was a nightly ritual in the Ambrose house and one that had started when Arianna had still been alive. It was another example of how easily Harper had managed to fit in with the family in such a short time. Jerry assumed that the ease in which Harper had fallen into the routine was because he and his sister had been raised in the same house. But he had a hard time imagining Harper growing up in a household that had required him to do chores. There was something almost…aristocratic about him and while there was no doubt that he knew what he was doing in any domestic duty, Jerry got the sense that it was not something that he had been accustomed to prior to coming to live with them. But Jerry had to admit that he had gotten the same sense from Arianna when they had first moved in together. She had watched him load the dishwasher as if he had been assembling a rocket or something equally as complex. He thought it likely that his wife and his brother-in-law had grown up in very privileged surroundings. It was something Arianna had alluded to on several occasions, but never outright said.

  While it had always been obvious to Jerry that both Arianna and Harper had come from a different class than him, he had never felt uncomfortable around his wife. She had always seemed to relish doing things around the house and never cared about getting dirty. She had never seemed aloof with anyone, even though the way she had carried herself had made her seem wealthy and even regal in a sense. Harper had the same way of carrying himself as his sister, but Jerry had always sensed a faint disdain that accompanied it. He couldn’t decide what the disdain was for, but he knew that he had been one of its chief causes when he had first been introduced to Harper. And the feelings of dislike had been mutual, causing an instant rift between Jerry and his brother-in-law. The only people that Harper had always seemed genuinely warm with were the children and surprisingly, his partner Larry. It was during his interactions with them that he reminded Jerry the most of Arianna.

  Over the years he and Harper had arrived at what appeared to be a grudging, but mutual respect for each other. But recently even that had changed. He had sensed a softening in Harper’s demeanor toward him in the past six months, though he couldn’t understand why. Out of habit, Jerry had mistaken the change to be the usual sarcasm that he had grown accustomed to. But he had realized recently that this was not the case and that Harper seemed to be making a genuine effort to get along with him. And he knew that he had not been making the same effort, which he inwardly acknowledged was unfair. Harper had saved his family from what they could have become after Arianna’s death. He deserved better treatment than Jerry had been giving him lately, especially considering how his demeanor toward Jerry had changed. He wondered if there was a way to let Harper know that he appreciated him and thought that the best way was the simplest.

  “Harper,” he said quietly as he stopped wiping the counter.

  Harper looked at him as he placed another plate in the dishwasher. “Yes, Jeremiah?”

  “Thank you,” Jerry answered. “For dinner, I mean.” He felt like a coward for not even being able to genuinely thank him, but didn’t know how to put what he felt into words that didn’t sound disingenuous.

  Harper smiled and Jerry swore that his smile indicated an understanding of what Jerry was trying to say, in spite of his inability to say it.

  “You’re very welcome, brother. As always,” Harper said, and there was no mistaking the genuineness in his voice.

  Jerry nodded and continued wiping down the counters as his brother-in-law continued to load the dishes. As he finished the last of the counters, he realized that a change had come over the room – fort the first time in his relationship with Harper, he no longer felt tension between them.