The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Stories
Page 14
“The trip in was completely different to the trip back home. The light for one thing – morning light is just so clear and the meadows and the distant clumps of trees . . . and the little collections of houses, collections too small even to call them villages: Green Hammerton, Poppleton, Starbeck – I remember them all.
“But the evenings, well . . . they were different. The light, as I already said, was just one thing. Then there was the tiredness of the people for another. Folks have just lost their spark after a day at work. I felt that way myself – just a little – and I was only nineteen years old. But the other thing was that there were different people on the bus every now and again.”
“Why should that matter?” Fortesque asks.
“Oh, it didn’t matter exactly,” Edgar says, “But the regular commuters, well . . . they get to know each other. There’s a silent acceptance of each of you by the others – what’s the old saying? Misery loves company. You know?
“So the bus in on a morning had, for the most part, the same folks on it as the bus back home at the end of the day. Oh, there were a few folks going to do some shopping in Branton – the Plains isn’t exactly what you might call Fifth Avenue, though there is a mall there now, around four, five miles outside of town – but back then there wasn’t diddly. And there might be a couple of people going to meet a friend or visit someone. But, like I say, most of them were commuting to work and commuting home. But even these occasional users would be on the bus in the morning and the bus in the evening – they just wouldn’t be on it day after day. You know what I’m saying?”
Jim Leafman watches his friend over hands tented at his chin. “Go on,” he says at last, reaching for his beer.
“Well, my first day on the bus going home, there was one passenger who stood out from the rest,” Edgar says, after a big sigh. “A boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He was . . . he was, you know . . .”
“Give us a clue, Ed,” says Jack.
Edgar sniffs, turns his beer around on his coaster. “He was not the brightest button in the box, you know what I mean?”
“Special needs,” says Cliff Rhodes.
“Educationally challenged?” offers Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat.
Edgar nods in a Tony Soprano way, takes a drink. “Right, those. You got the picture. So this kid, he’s sitting right at the front of the bus staring at the road ahead and at the countryside on either side. All the way from Branton to Forest Plains. I got the seat right behind him so I was able to watch him all the way. And every time we stop – like to let someone off: nobody gets on those evening buses – every time we stop, the kid turns around and makes this noise – wmmgmmm!” Edgar says, hunching up his shoulders and making his hands clawlike. “And I swear he’s trying to tell me something . . . something about the fields and the sky, the far-off trees, the trucks on the Interstate below us when we get into the Plains. He swings those manic arms around, sometimes banging his hand on the bus window, making that noise.” Edgar makes the noise again, and then again. And then he lifts his glass, takes a drink.
“We get to the Plains and everyone gets off,” Edgar says. “Everyone except the kid. I held back because folks had gotten to standing as we got close to town and so there was no room for me to stand up. But when I did stand up and made my way to the open doors, the kid stayed behind. I looked at him and then looked at some of the other passengers and nobody paid him any attention. And you have to remember that this was my first day, right.
“So that was it. Next day exactly the same.”
“What happened to the boy when you got off the bus that first night?” Greenblat asks.
“He stayed on,” says Edgar. “The bus closed its doors and the kid swung right around to look out of the front window and the bus set off again.”
“Back to Branton?”
Edgar gives Jim a single nod. “Back to Branton.”
“No other passengers getting on?”
Edgar shakes his head. “Not that first night. There might be one or two every so often, but most nights, the bus would go back without picking up any new rides.”
“So the next day,” Jack says, glancing around to see how the drinks are going. “What happened then?”
“Same thing,” is what Edgar answers, and there’s a little chuckle in his voice. “I get on at Main Street, kid’s already there at the front looking around at the folks getting on. And again, I sit in the seat behind him.” He shrugs. “From there, the journey home is exactly the same. The same fields, the same sky, the same Interstate. The same stops, the same flailing arms and hands, and the same wmmgmmm! every time. When we get to the Plains, we all get off but the kid stays. Bus moves off and heads back to Branton.
“Next day, same thing. And the next. And the one after that. Same thing the following week. And the one after it and the one after that one. And then –”
“And then you pass your probation period,” Cliff Rhodes says, “and your dad buys you the Mercury.”
“Canary yellow,” says Jack. “Tail fins,” adds Jim Leafman.
“And the big bench seat,” says Horatio Fortesque, getting into it now.
After a few seconds silence, the little Peter Lorre-look-alike says, “Cheerleaders,” making the word sound dirty.
And they all laugh.
“And that’s it?” Jack asks.
Shaking his head, Edgar says, “Not quite.”
“More drinks!” is what Jack Fedogan announces then. “And more music.”
“More Brubeck,” Fortesque says. “And –” He passes a twenty dollar note across to Jack. “– This round is on me.”
7 Thick with possibilities
There’s shuffling then, and leg-stretching, and visits to the restroom. But nobody speaks. When the music starts again – Brubeck, Desmond, Wright and Morello getting to grips with Cole Porter’s “I Get A Kick Out Of You” – it’s a relief in that it eats the silence.
Minutes later, the table re-assembles and Jack says, “So, not quite?”
Edgar nods. “Nothing else happened while I had that job. I never took the bus again, and, a little under eight months later, I got my first adviser’s job down in Miami.” Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “Left home and moved to the coast.” He looks across at Jim Leafman and says, “Moved to the Apple in the spring of ’84 – which is fifteen, sixteen years after the Branton clerk job.”
“And the Mercury?”
“Ah, that went to that great wrecker’s yard in the sky,” Edgar tells Jack. “Transmission died on me in ’71. My dad died on me in ’76. I asked my mother to move down to Florida and then to New York but she refused each time. She visited me a couple times in Miami – she hated Florida, the heat – and then New York but she just couldn’t get to grips with that either. Too big, I guess. I went out to see her – birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas – but we kind of distanced ourselves from each other.
“Then – it must have been the fall of ’99 – mum got sick. You remember, Jim?” Jim Leafman nods and glances down at his clasped hands resting on the table. “I went home most weekends, stayed with her, and for a time we had hopes. But –” He shrugs matter-of-factly. “– It wasn’t to be.
“We got what mom called her marching orders in the January of 2000. Three to six months, they gave her,” he says, his voice sounding a little cracked. “As it turned out, she lasted barely three weeks.” Edgar takes a sip of beer while the others watch him. When he starts speaking again, his voice has regained its former strength.
“I lived at home for that three weeks, the plan being to take her out, spend time with her – say goodbye, I guess – but, after the first couple of days, she went down fast. I tell you, that couple of days were wonderful . . . particularly the first one, when I took her to Branton. And, at her request, on the bus,” says Edgar, pointedly, and then he takes another drink.
“Everything went fine. Didn’t recognize anyone and barely recognized the countryside we drove through – so much building in j
ust thirty-some years. Mom had a fine time in Branton – seeing where my dad used to work, visiting the cemetery out on the Canal road where her own mom and dad are buried – but she was tired when it came time to catch the bus back home.
“We got on over at Main Street, standing in line with the suits and the skirts, reading the evening papers the same way people just like them read evening papers up and down the country. It was busy when we got on but there was a seat free where, at a squeeze, we could sit together – a seat near the front of the bus, behind an intense-looking middle-aged man who was turned in his seat and, with his arms and hands tucked up clawlike around his chest, was staring into the bus interior.”
“The same guy?” asks Cliff Rhodes.
“The same guy.”
“Jee-zuzz,” says Jim Leafman, the words partly eaten up by the big sigh that surrounds them.
“I don’t think my mom noticed him right off but I did. The same actions exactly as he was doing thirty years before, the same turning around, the same flailing hands and arms and the same banshee-like wail – wmmgmmm! – each time the bus stopped and he turned to address his subjects.
“I couldn’t believe it.
“Then, we got stuck in a jam – guys out doing maintenance work on the road up ahead shifting the two directions of traffic into just the one lane, lights controlling that – you know the kind of thing.”
Everyone did and several of them took the opportunity to take drinks. Edgar did the same.
“Then,” Edgar says, setting his glass down on the table again, “the guy turns around just as we pull to a stop again and wmmgmmm! –” He flails his arms around. “– wmmgmmm! he says, saying it like he’s trying to tell me something. So I say to him something like, ‘I know, damn traffic!’, something like that. And that’s when the driver leans around and says to me, ‘That’s the first time I can recall when someone actually said something to him.’ The guy himself chuckles and turns back to face front looking out of the window. And I say to the driver –” Edgar shrugs. “I say something like, ‘Oh, really?’ I mean, what the hell do you say in response to something like that? And that’s when I see the driver is an oldish guy, over sixty . . . and I recognize him. It’s the same driver as the one used to drive the bus back from Branton all those years ago. And up to that very second, I hadn’t even realized that we’d had the same driver on each of those trips back in the sixties.
“So I say to him, ‘He always on the bus at this time?’ And the driver nods as he settles back in his seat. ‘Rain or shine. He looks forward to it,’ he says to me, keeping facing forward. ‘Don’t know how he’s going to take it when I retire,’ he says. ‘Retire?’ is all I could think of to say. I mean, what’s strange about retiring, you know? But it was the implied significance of it that puzzled me. And the driver leans back out, arms resting on the steering wheel as we wait for the lights to change again, and he says, ‘He’s my son.’ And he looks across at the wmmgmmm! guy, who’s jiggling his head side to side excitedly, waving his arms at the windows, and he says, ‘Sure wish I knew what he sees out there that excites him so.’ And that’s when my mom decides to join the conversation,” says Edgar.
“‘He sees life,’ she says. ‘He sees the world and the people and all the wonder that it holds, all the promises – all the disappointments, sure, those too, but the air is thick with possibilities.’ And I turn to my mom and I see her eyes are watery. She looks away and watches the wmmgmmm! man some more. ‘And what you do when you retire,’ she tells him, ‘is you take the bus just the same, every afternoon, except you sit in that seat –’ She nods to where the wmmgmmm! man is sitting ‘– and not that one you’re sitting in right now. And maybe then, when you’re able to look around and drink it all in, maybe then you’ll see what he sees. And what I’m seeing right now,’ she adds.
“And then the lights change before the driver gets to say anything back to that, and we make it around the roadworks and from there on in it’s a clear road back to Forest Plains.
“I held my mom’s hand all the way, not able to say a word. And when we get to the Plains and we get off of the bus, the driver steps down too and shakes our hands, with the wmmgmmm! man watching us from his window. ‘I want to thank you, ma’am,’ he tells my mom. But she waves him nevermind. ‘You look after her,’ he says then, turning to me, and I guess he saw something in my face or my eyes just then . . . and he pats me on the shoulder and nods, his mouth sad . . . as though, in that brief exchange, he’d read our minds and knew exactly what the score was. Then he gets back on the bus and we walk home.
“A couple days later, mom goes on to morphine and, as the days pass by, she slips further and further away from me until, at last, she’s gone.
“After the funeral,” Edgar says, “I settled up my mom’s house and set off back for Manhattan. But I drove into Branton for one last time before I got on to the Interstate. It was late in the day, after 5.30, and, on a whim, I drove down to the train depot. I couldn’t park up but I could see them, the old driver and the wmmgmmm! man, standing in line at the bus stop, one of the wmmgmmm! man’s arms going like a windmill and the driver standing right alongside him, holding on to the hand of the other. And, you know, the driver? He was grinning like a Cheshire cat.”
Edgar lifts his glass and drains it. “End of story,” he says.
8 The second parchment
Jack Fedogan reaches out a hand and places it on Edgar’s shoulder, jiggling it once before letting the arm drop down by his side again.
After a few seconds of silence, Fortesque speaks. “We’re all on journeys,” he says, “of one kind or another. Some of them are long – or seem long – and some are short. But they are all journeys. And it‘s the journey that matters, never the destination.”
“Is that why you like Jules Verne?” Cliff Rhodes asks.
“I’m not sure that I follow.”
The black man shuffles around in his chair and moves his hands around in the air in front of him, as though he’s manoeuvring a large package that nobody can see. “Well, I overheard what you were saying earlier – about your being a big fan of Verne’s work – and it occurs to me that that’s what Verne concentrated on: journeys.”
“Ah, I see,” Fortesque says. “I hadn’t quite thought of it that way.”
“More drinks?” Cliff Rhodes asks. When the unanimous response is favourable, he and Jack move across to the bar.
“So, what brings you here?” Edgar says, making the question sound unimportant as he tries to regain his composure. Jim Leafman reaches across the table and pats his friend’s arm and Edgar smiles at him, taking hold of Jim’s hand for just a second or two. “You said you’d met up with . . .” He says to Fortesque, looking across at the Lorre-lookalike and, with a small sad smile, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, I just don’t seem to be able to remember your name.”
“Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat,” says Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat.
Edgar nods in a kind of oh yes, of course it is way and turns to Fortesque. “You said you’d met him in a chat room?”
“That is correct,” says Fortesque, tenting his fingers atop a brightly coloured vest which only partly covers the swell of his ample stomach.
“A chat room about . . . Jules Verne, was it?”
Fortesque jiggles his head from side to side and, giving a knowing smile to his companion, he says, “Indirectly, yes.”
Jack arrives back at the table with Cliff Rhodes, the pair of them carrying an array of bottles and glasses. And Jack sets down a trio of saucers containing nuts and pretzels. Without any indication of thanks, Edgar picks up a handful of peanuts, throws them deep into his mouth, and says, “So what was it about, this chat room?”
“It was about one of Jules Verne’s books . . . certainly, as far as I am concerned, his best work and perhaps one of the half-dozen best-ever novels. A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth,” says Fortesque. He waits for a few minutes and then says, “It’s really there.”
Leaning forward across the table, Greenblat says, in that quiet Peter Lorre voice, “The central records in Hamburg do have details of one Alec and Gretchen Lidenbrook living in Bernickstrasse from 1867 to 1877. Number nineteen.”
Edgar frowns. “I’m sorry but I don’t –”
“It was Axel Lidenbrock who went with his uncle, Otto, a noted professor, in 1863 to the centre of the Earth,” Greenblat points out. “And the professor’s God-daughter was named Grauben.”
“And did they live at Bernickstrasse?”
“No,” Fortesque answers,“Konigstrasse. But number nineteen.”
Edgar laughs, glancing at each of the others’ faces in turn. “Hey, come on, guys . . . Alex and Axel? Gretchen and Grauben? Brock and brook? Bernickstrasse and – what was it?”
“Konigstrasse,” says Greenblat.
Edgar settles back in his seat and raises his hands palms up. “Well, need we say goddam more. There’s not one damn thing that’s consistent.”
“N-n-n-nineteen,” Cliff Rhodes says, beaming a big smile. When Edgar turns to him in puzzlement, Rhodes shakes his head. “Sorry, an old ‘song’ by Paul Hardcastle. What I meant was, it was number nineteen in each case, the house number – that’s consistent.”
“Well, please the fuck excuse me the hell out of here,” Edgar says, looking for just a few seconds like he’s going to stand right up and either walk out of the bar or haul off and smack someone right where they sit. “It’s one thing for Jaunty Jim here thinking he’s seeing ghosts staring through bar windows wishing they could get a drink and quite a-fucking-nother to tell me, based on the fact that two couples – one real and one fictional, all with different names – living at the same house number in completely differently named streets, albeit in the same town, that there’s an underground sea and a bunch of monsters right below our feet. I mean, come on, guys!”