On arrival, I find David sitting at the kitchenette table with the beer bottle tipped up to his lips. His eyes are closed and crinkled at the corners as he relishes the beverage with a smile. Messenger stands at the kitchenette counter, leaning back against it. With arms crossed, head cocked to his left, and legs crossed, his body language says it all.
Forbes, seated across from David, leans forward with his arms on the table. Intent and focused, he radiates excitement. The stray he brought home is about to reveal himself.
I take a seat between David and Forbes, sit back comfortably in the chair and wait for him to open up to us.
David finally opens his eyes and smiles. “Excellent,” he says softly, stretching the moment out, savoring his treat. Forbes, tense with anticipation, nervously bounces his left leg up and down. When I lay my hand on it and smile at him, he relaxes and his leg stops. I take the initiative and turn to David. “So David, is that what we should call you or do you prefer something else?”
He sets the bottle down and replies, “David is fine.” His voice is rough and meek from not having used his vocal cords for a while.
“Do you know where you are?” I ask him.
He slowly shakes his head then says, “Heaven?” A grin spreads across his face. He has made a joke.
I play along with him. “You died and are now in heaven?”
He shakes his head while the smile remains. “As much as it would appear I have been completely incoherent these last few days, I have not. It was more of a paralysis, like being trapped inside a body that ceased to function. At first, it was frightening, and then as time wore on I rolled with it, just watching and waiting for the moment when my mind would finally connect with my body. So when you ask if I know where I am, I can say with certainty that I am in the home of some very special people whom I owe a great deal to.”
He looks up at Messenger and says, “Messenger, if I may call you that, I’m deeply indebted to you for putting up with my inabilities. I’m sure it was a distasteful task at times. I’ve not had the experience of cleaning a grown stranger myself, but I’m guessing it’s nothing like handling a child. Thank you very much. You fed me and bathed me and took care of my bathroom indiscretions. You are a good man who has gone beyond the limits for me.”
He turns his focus to Forbes and says, “And you, young man, you saved my life. I’m sorry I was such trouble at first. It was just a blind reaction. I’m referring to the pain you felt when we first encountered. It was an act of self-defense. I owe you my life.”
He turns to me and studies me for a moment before speaking. “And of course, Soliloquy, if I may call you that, you and I have been intimate, have we not? I don’t mean in the Biblical sense. You have a unique ability to go inside of a person and explore their mind. I was never able to tell what you found, but I was always aware of your presence inside here.” He points to his head. “Yet, you have not exiled me from your home so I must conclude that you’ve not found me wanting or, better yet, you’ve not found me to be an undesirable. Would that be true?”
My eyes move across his eyes and then drop to the bottle in his hand. “Beer for breakfast?” I say with a smirk.
He barks out a laugh. “I have no rationale for my request other than I had a serious craving for a cool glass of beer. It is not a habit. I consider it a moment in time.”
“A moment in time,” I repeat. “Interesting way to put it from a man who appears to be out of place in our time. The world I witnessed, in your past, is a world that is in our future by many decades, maybe even centuries. Now your moment in time is here in our time. How does that come to be? How is it possible to achieve the impossible?”
He tenses, his eyes lose their levity and his lips tighten. He leans forward and somberly relates, “The Whiteman. He moved me. He reached out to me when I was deep in shit, literally. I was hiding naked in a one-story-tall pile of horse manure. I had to escape my captors, so burrowing into that pile gave me not only sanctuary but warmth from the freezing temperatures. I was there for more than twenty-four hours waiting to make my big break and wondering if my chance would ever come when, at nightfall, this gleaming man in pearl white skin with white lips and stark white hair parted the shit I was buried in and told me to take his hand...that he was my rescuer. I decided I had no choice. I was discovered and he was the only option.
“The instant I took his hand, I found myself floating and released from everything earthly. I was falling down an endless chasm with him at the lead, falling with me. It was like we fled earth and were flying through space—and it was painful. I was being torn apart. As if my body could not keep up with the speed. Parts of me tore away. We passed through things I can’t begin to describe. It was worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. Then when I thought for sure I was dying, I saw earth below.
“The next thing I knew I was naked and freezing in a snow-covered countryside. I had no control of my body. My mind was there, but my body was on its own. I watched myself walk in circles in the snow and could do nothing about it. In desperation, I retreated to chants for comfort, chants from our services. It gave me solace while my body slowly wore down. While my body was dying, at least I had my religion and for that I was thankful. The life force was my warmth and my sanctuary.” He stares at nothing for a moment then turns to Forbes. “Then you found me and saved me. I say again that I owe you my life. You picked me out of a snowstorm and plucked me from death.” He looks to me and then Forbes and then Messenger. “All of you, you brought me back from the brink of death.”
“Sounds hallucinatory,” Messenger says in his Doubting Thomas voice. “You were in a one-story-high pile of horse manure. That’s a lot of horses. You were on a breeding ranch?”
“Possibly. It had horses, lots of them, and a track that I saw off in the distance. My guess is it was a rich man’s hobby ranch for his racehorses.”
I’m more interested in the Whiteman. “Tell us about your Whiteman. Had you ever seen him before? Was he part of your religion? What else did he say to you?”
“Nothing. Never saw him before and have not seen him since. Nothing like him ever came up in any context. He’s an anomaly who pulled me from one bad situation to abandon me into another. Without you, I’m sure I would have died. It was luck you found me. I don’t feel any gratification towards him. His appearance is a complete mystery to me. If I had to guess and find some connection, I would hazard that he is connected to the three of you. But why I was delivered into such an unlikely place makes no sense to me. I’m at a loss for an explanation. Can any of you hazard one?”
Forbes, Messenger, and I sit in silence digesting his narrative. Messenger is the first to speak. “No explanation from me, David, but I wonder, where do we go from here? Is your presence here a danger to the rest of us? Soliloquy says you’re contagious. Those people from where you come from wore hazard suits to protect themselves from you. Should we be concerned or has that train left the station and we’re already infected?”
David closes his eyes and puts his fingers to his temples as if in concentration. After a moment he looks up at us and says, “You need not worry about me. You are unselected.” He sniffs the air and says, “Yes, I am sure of it. You have not been infected with what I have.” Then he frowns. “But you are different, all of you. You feel familiar to me but on a new level. Maybe it’s the era you live in. Maybe all people of this era will feel different to me. We are of different times. Things change.” When he tells us what era he is from, Messenger makes a low whistle. “So do they have Burger Kings and McDonalds in your time?”
Forbes is instantly on him. “PUHLEASE! Are you kidding me? That’s your burning question of the moment?” He looks at David and says, “Ignore him. Nothing is ever serious for him.” He turns to Messenger and gives him a look of disgust. Messenger quietly laughs to himself for having tweaked Forbes once again. Forbes turns back to David and says, “You’re here for a reason, I felt it when I first touched you. Do you have any idea? There m
ust be something here for you, some purpose to your being put in our hands.”
David gives Forbes a pleading look. “I’m sorry, Forbes. I was hoping maybe one of you might have an idea. If everyone has a specific purpose on this earth, then I’d conclude that my purpose is over. I protected my Messiah for as long as I was able and now I’m here, but it makes no sense.”
“Your Messiah,” I repeat. “Do you feel comfortable telling us about that? You and he are part of what you call the Chosen, those who are selected by the ‘Calling’ to worship the life force? Do I have the catchphrase right?”
David beams. “You know my life well. You’re not threatened by what you’ve found?”
“Should we be? It’s a distant future so it seems improbable that we could be affected.”
“I’m not a bad person—I hope you’ve concluded that—nor is my faith evil. We of the Chosen simply wish to survive a planet in collapse. In your time, there’s not that problem yet. I know nothing I could ever say to anyone in your time would ever change this future. Should I ever relate my story to anyone else, people would view me as mentally disturbed. The only reason all of you might believe me is because of how you found me and...” he gestures to me, “because of your unique ability to look into my past. You know who I’ve been. No one else will, so my story ends in this kitchenette. Once I’m in better health, I’ll make my way on my own, I’m not sure how, but I’ll find something. You rescued me and now I must repay that by giving you back your privacy which I’ve invaded. I request only that you allow me to stay a week or so longer to get back into my body, so to speak. Once I’m up and able, just point me in the right direction and I’ll not bother you again.”
“But you are an infectious agent,” Messenger notes.
“I don’t know if that’s true anymore. I feel nothing like I did when I was in my time. There, with some concentration, I could feel others of my kind. Here, I sense only emptiness. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m no longer Chosen or if there simply are no others like me. The fact that I feel nothing from the three of you, even though we’ve all been in contact, makes me wonder if I’m a carrier. It seems most likely that at least one of you would be susceptible to the Calling.”
Messenger replies, “No matter. I’d feel better if you remained in the guest house for the duration of your stay. We have two little ones who I’m concerned about. It’s bad enough that we’ve made skin contact with you, but at least let’s protect them, although it may be too late for that since I’ve handled you and then them. I don’t know, but I just don’t want to increase the risk.”
“I’ll honor your feelings on this. You’ve been so kind to me, I could do nothing less. I’ll not enter the main house.” He lifts the beer bottle to his lips and takes a long draw. “Delicious,” he says when he lowers the bottle. “It’s been so long.”
Messenger’s cell phone chimes. He pulls it from his pocket, reads the display and says, “It’s Don Juan.” He lifts it to his ear, turns away from us and launches into conversation. Moments later he finishes, pockets the phone and turns to us. “He’s here. They’re driving up the driveway to the mine entrance.” He looks at me and says, “Think you and David will be okay without Forbes and me for a while?”
“Go,” I tell him. “David and I will be fine.”
Soliloquy’s Sacrifice Chapter 18
One Year Earlier
The brotherly combat between Forbes and Messenger never ends. Yesterday, Forbes, who is down from the Northern California wine country with his mom and dad, felt compelled to send Messenger a picture of himself clad in a wetsuit, wearing sunglasses, drinking a soda, holding a surfboard, with the ocean as backdrop—just to rub it in that while we freeze in sub-zero temperatures up here in the mountains in Julian, he is little more than an hour away at the beach in San Diego, enjoying his Christmas break, surfing in 59-degree water and 64-degree air.
“Hope he gets an earache,” Messenger said dryly as he padded out the kitchen door to shovel snow from the driveway so he could get to work at the diner.
The snows this year have been particularly heavy, especially this month, burying everything under thick layers of downy-soft crystal flakes. The surrounding naked oak trees are coated high with snow. Pine and cedar boughs bend under a deep snowy load. Leafless shrubs disappeared beneath several feet of snow give the ground a bumpy, virginal, wedding-cake look.
That was yesterday; today is Messenger’s day off. He stays home with two-month-old Sonnet (Zed has yet to be born) while I open the diner and run things in his absence. After I leave the heated warmth of my SUV in the lot behind the diner, I endure the chilly walk down B Street to Main where I see a crew of two young men in thick red parkas shoveling snow from the freshly covered sidewalk. Puffs of vapor trail their heads as they labor and talk with each other. A lumpy waist-high mound of plowed snow runs down the center of Main separating both lanes. Traffic is almost nonexistent this early in the morning. A few lonely parked cars on the opposite side of the street are almost completely buried under separate mounds of snow. White ghostly fog hugs the ground, obscuring everything beyond the distance of a city block. A red pickup truck with a plow attached to its front crawls past the men at work.
I round the corner of Main and B and see two more young men in thickly padded ski coats. Using snow shovels, they clean the concrete sidewalks that front the nearly empty street. Passing them, I notice a large, worn, old-fashioned thermometer hanging from a porch column. The red line indicates minus five degrees. Not a record low, but close to it. Add wind chill and you have painfully cold weather, the kind that keeps customers away from the diner—meaning it’s going to be a slow Wednesday.
Looking down the sidewalk, I see Molly, wearing a grey knit cap, scarf, blue down jacket, and brown gloves. She’s huddled and waiting for me at the entry stairs in front of the restaurant. She waves and smiles and then wraps her arms in front of her for warmth. Behind her is our chef, Kara, sporting a long dark coat with a knit cap pulled low over her ears. She’s in animated conversation with her assistant, Linny, who is laughing. Linny wears multiple layers of jackets, with jeans and shin-high boots. It will be an all-woman crew this morning with me as overseer and cashier.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” Molly jokes as I approach. She grins, apparently in good morning spirits.
“You’ve become a mailman?” I ask her.
She laughs and responds, “Mailperson, Soliloquy. The mail carrier quote just seemed appropriate for us frozen people this early in the morning.”
Our breath hangs in the air while the fog surrounding us gives everything a sort of close and covert intimacy. I give morning salutations to Kara and Linny who break from their conversation to give back a “Good morning.” Weaving past them up to the wood and glass entry door, I unlock it, step into the foyer and then unlock the second door. Warm food-scented air greets us as we all hurry inside to escape the outdoor freeze. We have a half hour to prep before I switch the sign on the front door from “Closed” to “Open.”
Just as I’m about to relock the front doors, Messenger’s Uncle Ted is there on the other side, waving and calling my name. A small group of people rush up to join him. “Uncle Ted!” I say in surprise as I open the door.
“Soliloquy!” he greets back and gives me a big hug. “Mind if we come in and seat ourselves?” He’s dressed in a light jacket that’s much too thin for this weather. When I glance toward his friends, I see that they are dressed no better.
“Of course. Come in. Warm yourselves. We aren’t open yet so you’ll have to wait for food and coffee.”
He points to the coffee cup in his hand and then points to the ones his friends are carrying. “Starbucks to the rescue. Don’t mind us. Whenever you people are ready is fine. We’re in no hurry.” He gestures for his companions to follow him and leads them to a table in the corner where they all make themselves comfortable a
nd launch into conversation. I busy myself prepping for the workday.
I’ve not paid much attention to any of them until one of the group approaches me to ask directions to the restroom. When I turn to answer him I’m arrested by his unique appearance. He seems to be my age, but with deep lines under his eyes that make him look much older. His skin is pale and translucent which makes him appear fragile and delicate. White hair, cropped short, tops his head. His blue-grey eyes sit under pure white eyebrows. A large black mole just under his right eye offsets the whiteness of his skin. Even his lips give way to a subtle whiteness. I point past the kitchen and say, “To the right.”
He smiles, thanks me and brushes past Molly who is next to me in the corridor.
“Dress him in white and he’d disappear in the snow,” she observes. “Not many albinos grace this diner. He’s a first for me.”
Before I respond, Ted comes up behind me and asks, “Soliloquy, sorry to be a pain. Do you mind letting me out? I forgot something from the car. If you give me the keys, I’ll let myself out and lock up behind me and then let myself back in. Would that be okay?”
“Of course,” I tell him, pulling the keys from my pocket. “The red one is for both doors.” He takes them, tips an imaginary hat on his head in thanks and says in bad brogue, “Pennies from heaven to ya lassie,” in what has become our inside joke from the day of the invasion at the farm. I smile, pull his face down to my level, and kiss him on the cheek and say, “You’re a good man, Theodore,” in my best imitation of my dead mom’s voice. That gets him. I’ve not done that in years and it takes him completely by surprise. He hesitates, with his mouth slightly ajar, and then laughs out loud when I wink at him.
Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 19
