Book of Days

by James Rubart

  Taylor twirled the window crank around his fingers to catch the reflection of the sun, but he closed his eyes as the sunlight flashed off it, flared against his face. He let it settle into his palm. He sighed, and without opening his eyes brought the handle to his lips and kissed it.

  Then in one quick motion he flung the crank out over the water like a discus thrower, tiny swooshes of air echoing back at them as it floated through the sky. Time seemed to slow as the handle spun clockwise, perfectly horizontal with the water's surface.

  Then it was gone, the ripples fading fast, as if time had sped up, and silence filled the air. A silence of peace. Of forgiveness, of hope.

  "Good-bye, Annie."

  Taylor stood and nodded. "Take a moment, my friend, more than one, and let this place talk to you. Soak it in."

  "Who is doing the talking?"

  "Often I find that depends on who is listening."

  "It was never real, was it?"

  "The book? We will see. I want to give you the time you need. The time to possibly do some business with the pool of your own."

  Cameron sat back on the turf that ringed the edge of the lake, listening to Taylor's fading footsteps as his friend thumped along the shoreline to his left, leaving him with his thoughts.

  When Taylor reached a spot directly across the lake from him, Cameron decided his friend was right. He'd known it since the night before, maybe longer. It was time.

  He took Jessie's stone out of his pocket, held it in his palm. It felt lighter than it usually did. Then heavier. A few seconds later he couldn't tell how it felt.

  He held it out over the lake, his palm up and open, stretching his hand out till his arm ached and still he pressed harder.

  Letting go wasn't letting go of her. It was releasing himself to live whatever life he had left, with whatever memories he could hold on to. Even if there wasn't a Book of Days, it didn't matter. Even if there was no direct portal into the mind and heart of God, telling of the past and what the future would bring, it was still the perfect place to choose freedom.

  The lake was glass. No ripple, not a hint of wind. The mirror image of the surrounding peaks and wispy clouds was so brilliant, the images seemed more real than what it reflected.

  Cameron glanced across at Taylor, then back into the lake. He saw why Taylor had convinced himself that the pool gave visions of what was recorded in the heavens. The presence he'd felt in this valley was real, and it was a place he could imagine God speaking.

  Cameron drew back his arm—held it still for a moment—then flung the stone toward the center of the lake as hard as he could. It arced across the sky, a black dot against the sun, then fell in slow motion toward the water, almost seeming to stop before it melted into the deep and disappeared.

  Once again the ripples faded almost instantly, and the lake returned to its reflection of a perfect mirror image of the craggy peaks and cobalt sky above him.

  "Always love, Jessie. Always and forever."

  Suddenly an image appeared on the surface of the water. Cameron's heart surged.

  What?

  The clouds and mountains vanished, replaced by a 1965 Mustang driving along a wet street, its lights ramming into a pounding rain. It was daylight, but the rain buried the scene in a blanket of gray.

  Cameron staggered forward and braced himself against a tiny pine tree.

  It seemed so real. The clarity was better than HDTV could ever hope for.

  Jessie?

  But it wasn't her Mustang, was it? No, Jessie's was different.

  "Taylor, get over here!"

  The view zoomed in from a wide shot where Cameron saw the street and the car to a close-up of the driver who seemed to be singing.

  It wasn't Jessie.

  It was . . .

  Ann?

  It couldn't be. The driver wore a tie-dyed T-shirt with every color of the rainbow and a scarf straight out of the seventies. Not Ann, the hair was too dark. But the eyes, the nose, the shape of her mouth, so similar . . .

  He glanced at Taylor jogging toward him, now only ten yards away. Cameron kept his eyes on the image as he heard Taylor's footsteps thud up to him. "Look."

  Taylor struggled for air, would have sprawled onto his backside if Cameron hadn't steadied him.

  "Annie," he whispered. "It's my Annie."

  Annie's diamond ring flashed as she took a corner, her hands smoothly turning the wheel, then reaching to adjust the radio. She flipped her hair back and joined in with whatever song she'd switched to. The light ahead of her was green and the car sped up.

  As she reached the intersection, the scene slowed and the view pulled back. A station wagon plowed into the intersection to Annie's left.

  She looked to her left—her face full of fear—and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

  The scene slowed further as the look on Annie's face turned to one of wonder.

  Her smile seemed to fill the lake, then her head fell back and laughter poured out of her.

  She nodded once to whatever she was seeing and turned to look up, seemingly out of the lake as if searching for someone, light radiating from her face.

  "It's time. Don't hold on. Let me go."

  Cameron could read her lips. He didn't hear the words, maybe Taylor did. It didn't matter. They were as clear as if they'd been shouted.

  Annie smiled, closed her eyes, then slowly opened them. "I love you, Taylor Stone." She closed her eyes for a second time and didn't open them again.

  Just before the station wagon smashed into the Mustang, the image faded back into the surface of the water.

  "Taylor?"

  Taylor looked through him, as if he was still seeing Annie talking to him, and staggered backward, his eyes watering, his hands groping out behind him as though he might fall at any second.

  He turned and found a pine tree to lean against as he gasped for air, and words sputtered out of him, too soft for Cameron to make out. But the peace in his eyes as he looked back said enough.

  Movement out of the corner of his eye made Cameron whirl back to the lake.

  He gasped as a new image formed on the surface.

  Jessie and he sat on top of Mount Erie in northern Washington, gazing at the lush green farmland five hundred feet below them.

  "What if I told you something you'd never believe?"

  "I'd believe it."

  She tickled him. "God is real."

  "You have proof?"

  "I've seen something He made. Something amazing."

  The scene faded into the time they sat on the shores of Lake Chelan, the remains of barbecued salmon on plates to their right.

  "You know how you always said you couldn't live without me?"

  "True."

  "You can."

  "Uh-oh. This is where you tell me you've fallen in love with your old high school tennis coach and you're about to leave."

  "You'd make it without me." Jessie gazed up at him, eyes sad.

  "I'm not going anywhere and neither are you."

  "Okay." Jessie buried her head in his chest. "I want to believe that."

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  "It's still years away. I'm not going to think about it."

  She nuzzled in tight to his chest and he stroked her hair. "I love you, Jess."

  "Always, Cam-Ram. Always and forever."

  He glanced at Taylor who sat at the base of the tree, legs crossed, smiling. Cameron turned back to the lake.

  The scene shifted and Jessie and he were sailing in the San Juan Islands.

  "How old were you when the fantastic happened?"

  "Ten. I saw something about us. About me."

  "So that's how you knew to accept my invitation for that first date."

  "This is serious, Cam."

  "I'm being serious. I'm just . . . You have to admit it sounds a little woo-woo that you saw us when you were ten."

  "I saw someone die." She drew a quick breath. "Someone we both know."

  "It was a dream
from a ten-year-old. Let it go."

  The surface of the water shifted again.

  "What's going on? Are you bummed because Pirates is shut down for the night?"

  "Maybe God writes our memories down, hmm?"

  "Sitting in a park where make-believe comes true, you could almost convince me God does exactly that. I wish He did."

  "What if it's true? Not a wish? That our lives are written down, recorded, everyone's life?"

  "Like some cosmic yearbook put together by the supreme being of the Universe?"

  "Something like that."

  "I love your insanity. One of the countless reasons I'll love you for eternity."

  The scene ended and melted into Cameron taking a call on his cell phone as he recorded a voice-over with Brandon.

  "I want us to go to Oregon. We need to go soon. We need to look for something, find something there."

  "What?"

  "Something I saw when I was a kid."

  "What? The thing you saw when you were ten? That thing?"

  "Yes. To see if it's real."

  The scene shifted once again and Cameron watched the scene from the day Jessie gave him the stone. The day she died.

  "I want to show you something."

  "It's beautiful. Where'd you get this?"

  "When I was a young kid. It's Native American."

  "And these markings?"

  "They told me it's a kind of language."

  "What's it say?"

  "I have no idea."

  "It's cool; I like it."

  "You need to have it."

  "This stone means something to you."

  "I need to give it to you just in case."

  "Just in case what?"

  "I'll tell you when I get home, I promise."

  "Just in case what, Jess?"

  "I will always be here, you know."

  "Are you sure you don't want to stay here today? Hang out, you and me?"

  "Good-bye, Cameron."

  "You sure you're all right, babe?"

  "I love you. Remember."

  "What is it?"

  "Fine, I'm fine. So are you. Always."

  The scene on the surface of the pond shifted once more and the final moments of Jessie's accident played out in front of him.

  "Promise you'll find it." Her eyes closed. "No tears, Aragorn."

  "No. You can't leave me, Jessie."

  "I have to. It's going to be all right, I promise. I love you, Cameron. Always and forever."

  A moment later he vanished from the scene but Jessie remained. There was no blood and her face was more radiant than he ever remembered it. He couldn't tell if she was still in the airplane or somewhere else, but a moment later the scene changed again.

  A man in a white T-shirt, his back to Cameron, sat on the stern of a sailboat, sun streaming down on him, wind whipping through his thick dark hair.

  A shiver shot down Cameron's back as the man spun to face him. It was his father. Young. The way he looked when Cameron was a little boy. A massive grin broke out on his dad's face, and he threw his arms wide and spoke to the sky.

  "All my memories, You've stored them for me, Lord." His dad was so full of joy it seemed to shake the rigging. "Draw Cameron to Yourself. I long to see him in eternity. And let him know I'm so proud of him, okay?"

  Cameron shuddered as tears threatened to spill onto his cheeks.

  The scene shifted and when the images came back into focus, he again looked at the top of Mount Erie in midsummer. But the colors were brilliant, too full to be from earth.

  A woman sat with her back to him, looking out over the farmland and lakes and Puget Sound to the south. The wind tousled her hair, as if fingers were lifting it off her shoulders and setting it back down.

  Jessie.

  She turned and her gaze seemed to be searching for him, her eyes like diamonds, throwing off light. Was she older or younger than when he'd last seen her? Both maybe. Cameron couldn't tell. She laughed and somehow he heard it in his head.

  "When I come to You and he remains, tell him it's okay. In a way he won't doubt. Let him know I'm where I'm supposed to be. And that I want him to join me. Not now. Not for a long time. But in time. Help him to seek, to choose life in the years that have been recorded for him on earth, and might he always love. Always and forever."

  Jessie's face melted into the water and only the mirror image of the mountains surrounding the lake remained.

  Cameron slumped back off his knees to the ground.

  "I'd forgotten. Every one of them. She'd been trying to tell me all along."

  "Are you okay?" Taylor stood next to him.

  "I don't know. Maybe. Yes, somehow . . . How can I not be?" He looked up at Taylor.

  "What happens if the memories of Jessie fade again?"

  "It doesn't matter. She's right. It's okay." Cameron smiled as he cradled the back of his head with his hands.

  "I think there's more for you to see." Taylor motioned toward the water.

  The reflection of the mountains melted into another mountain, a different one, bathed in early morning sun. A climber clung to the side of it, too far away to tell if it was a man or a woman.

  The view moved in.

  Could it be?

  Yes, it was Ann, laughing as she scaled the sheer face of a cliff, which ended in a domelike rock.

  He knew the spot. It was Liberty Bell, right off the North Cascades Highway in northern Washington. Just a few days earlier Ann and he had talked about how she'd never been there and that they should climb it together. The view widened. Twenty feet below her was another climber. Male. The scene moved and he was now looking at a profile of Ann and the other climber. Himself.

  Adrenaline filled his body; it felt like he was floating as he watched himself pull up toward Ann, a smile plastered on his face.

  The image of Ann and he climbing Liberty Bell—was it the future, already recorded in God's book? Her future with him in it? Two weeks from now? Two months? A year?

  But why would he do that to her? It wouldn't be right to burden her with his disease. No, maybe God had written it down, but Cameron would rewrite future history just as Taylor had.

  The water swirled and he stared at a New York skyline as if from a plane. The view zoomed in to Ann sitting at a dark wood table at a restaurant with a man who toasted her and laughed. As she raised her glass, Ann's mouth smiled but her eyes didn't.

  The scene shifted again and Ann sat in her car staring at a picture of Cameron taped to the dashboard. She sighed and yanked the picture free and stuffed it in her glove compartment. She dabbed her eyes with the backs of her hands and shook her head.

  Another shift and Ann lifted an Emmy above her head.

  The water changed again and Cameron watched himself editing a video in what looked like a home office, the clock on the wall reading 1:07 a.m. Three awards lay stacked on their sides on the desk next to him.

  Another shift. Ann sitting at a dinner table with two beautiful girls who looked like her and the fourth spot at the table empty. Then the phone rang and Ann answered saying she understood, pain in her eyes as she hung up the phone, her back to the girls, then turning and forcing out a smile.

  Cameron again, hair gray and thinning, sitting in a dim room alone watching television, a slight shaft of daylight piercing into the shuttered living room. Piles of books. A dusty coffee table. Bloodshot eyes.

  So the future would be as bleak as the past. He wouldn't end up with Ann. With anyone. Sad. Her future looked better than his, but he couldn't shake the image of the empty chair at dinner. Was it him missing? Or the man he'd seen with Ann in the New York restaurant?

  It was okay. It was his destiny to be alone.

  Cameron squatted down, his head slumped forward, and a soft moan seeped from his lips. He sank deeper into himself to the quiet place where he couldn't lie to himself.

  He loved Ann. And he couldn't stop loving her.

  If she would have him, diseased mind and all, he would go
to her and pour his heart out to her for the rest of his life.

  He looked up. Taylor's eyes were riveted on the water. "Look."

  Cameron turned.

  The lake boiled for a moment, then cleared. Scenes of Ann and Cameron flashed across the surface.

  She and Cameron stood on a ledge overlooking a tropical valley, an azure sea beyond that. "I think I like Costa Rica," she whispered. Her head was wrapped in small golden and crimson flowers, her turquoise dress was whipped by a strong wind, and Cameron held a diamond ring between his fingers.

  A Christmas scene with Ann and him skiing the Swiss Alps with two other couples. The following summer they would rent a houseboat on Ross Lake, and Cameron would get so sore water-skiing he would slather BenGay over his entire body.

  A child was born: a boy. Then another boy and a year later a daughter.

  Now Cameron was speaking to a packed house at UCLA film school. Ann sat in the front row, her hair up, face radiant.

  "What did you do?" Taylor grabbed Cameron's arm.

  His lips slowly separated as he turned and stared at Taylor. What had he done? He'd changed his mind, surrendered to the longing inside and dreamed of building a life with her.

  "I didn't do . . . I decided if she'll have me, I'm going to love Ann the rest of my life."

  Speaking it out loud made him shiver. He shouldn't have said it. That made it real and real was too frightening.

  Cameron closed his eyes and shut down the feeling, then shut down the choice to move forward. No. He couldn't do that to her. Even if she chose to be with him . . . So much better for her to find someone whole.

  "It's changing back again," Taylor said.

  Cameron opened his eyes and stared at the lake.

  The scene had changed back to the one with Ann in New York with a smile and sad eyes. The man at the table opened a Tiffany's box and she nodded.

  Cameron standing on the top of El Capitán alone.

  Ann dropping off the girls for a weekend with their father.

  Cameron old and flipping through channels on a television screen that covered his entire wall.

  The water shifted and there was nothing to see except the placid still waters. Cameron watched and waited for five minutes but no other scenes came.