A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

by Michael Hale

  That’s the name she had given the place—“Never-Ever-Land.” When she was about eight years old, right after her mother had said “Never ever do that again!” In response to what, she had no recollection anymore. She liked to just float out there and sniff around, lock on to anything that smelled interesting. It was like surfing the Net. Only this Net reached through time as well as space. But only in one direction; she could only go downstream into the past. Cruising the present? That was easy—like doing the dog paddle. But she’d never been able to fight her way upstream and explore the future. She did have flashes of things that could be considered premonitions, but only that: flashes, vague images and sensations that came into her head at the strangest times. Like the other day in that 7-Eleven; all that stuff about the guy behind the counter having a kid some day and the kid drowning in a swimming pool.

  Her latest journey into Never-Ever-Land had taken her back through layers of time and space to somewhere close to the turn of the century. Her astral body had been drawn like a moth to the flame of a phony séance of fumbling spiritualists reaching out into the ethereal void.

  She picked up the book carefully this time, by one page with two fingers, letting it fall onto her knapsack, which was in her lap now. The diary opened on an entry made on the tenth of June, 1919. The pages were dense with a neat longhand; minuscule notations filled the margins. After a time of reading she looked up at the door, at the light from the library coming through the frosted transom. A moment later footsteps passed the door and moved on.

  “God, I did this shit,” she said to herself, her index finger in her mouth now, the nail absently finding its favorite perch. I made this happen—sort of. Karaoke from the inside out.

  Pam looked down at the page again, at the precise italic script, and she found herself reading what had been playing on her CD player the night before—the lyrics right there, neatly recorded, with ink that had dried almost eighty years ago.

  “Perfect,” she said to herself. “Credentials.”

  A table: round, bare, its veneer rippled and stained with the faint ghost of an overflowing plant pot. And centered on a half ream of foolscap, a planchette—a small, heart-shaped board of light basswood on two small legs with tiny wooden wheels as feet. A short pencil was affixed to the tapered point of the heart—the crux of the tripod, the meeting place, the business end.

  “Conjuring up the spirits of the dear departed may be cause for celebration in your circles, Mr. Rathburn; but to me, as a scientist, it is no more than the vestigial squirmings of our primitive past.” The parlor was stiflingly small, dimly lit—the lamp on the roll-top desk in the next room shod a muddy umber light; but even so, the globe of Dr. Stuart’s balding head glinted in its glow. Wisps of gray hair, like striations of cirrus, veiled continents of lividity.

  “Why are you with us tonight, then, Dr. Stuart? A sitting with Sarah Pope is a rare event even for us believers.” Mr. James Rathburn put his fountain pen back in his waistcoat pocket and closed his notebook. He placed his two beefy forearms on the table and let his teeth work at the stem of his pipe.

  “My curiosity got the better of me,” Stuart replied. “Or should I say, I came along at the urgings of my dear wife, whose curiosity sometimes gets the better of both of us.” He chuckled to himself, sending a smile out amongst his fellow sitters and without turning to look at her, reached over and touched the hand of the woman next to him—this unconscious gesture an economical but insincere apology, it seemed to Rathburn, who proceeded to vent his disapproval of Dr. Stuart by drawing on his pipe till it faintly gurgled. As he inhaled he felt the fabric of his jacket tighten across his back. The jacket of a suit he had owned since his college days. Around a body that had expanded over the years with his interest in Spiritualism—as if his growing convictions about Cartesian dualism had prompted his subconscious to wrap his precious soul in a blanket of flesh.

  With a cryptically anthropomorphic swirl, the smoke from his pipe rose into the faint light from the doorway. Lavinia Stuart raised her hand to her face, delicately dabbing at her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. There was an earnest sadness to the line of her mouth, Rathburn thought, the fall of her shoulders, that he realized now must be the only ammunition she had left.

  They were all waiting for the entrance of Sarah Pope. Dr. Stuart, his wife, Lavinia, and a businessman from Boston Rathburn had only just met—“Edward Smith,” the mill owner had said from under his mustache, his handshake dry and firm. There was a carnation in his buttonhole, as if he’d arrived for a more festive occasion than a séance in the somewhat damp and threadbare parlor of a modest walk-up on the Upper East Side.

  “I would think,” Stuart continued, “with all the controversy over the notorious Fox sisters and other so-called mediums, you would welcome the likes of me—a skeptic, a scientist.”

  Rathburn chuckled and shook his head. “Materialists like yourself, by their very nature, cannot tolerate the inexplicable, and when they are presented with an explanation—the product of controlled experiments by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, no less—”

  Dr. Stuart interrupted him: “I think Mr. Doyle should stick to his penny dreadfuls.”

  “—a defensible theory of postmortem survival, that too is relegated to the dustheap of superstition.”

  Mrs. Stuart straightened up, the contentiousness of the discussion seeming to galvanize her spine; the hand clasping her handkerchief hovered shakily above the table, the lace trim brushing for an instant the neat stack of paper under the planchette as if she were conjuring up her own voice. “But what of Sir Oliver Lodge, dear? His son Raymond, died in the war like our Richard. The evidence was overwhelmingly—”

  “My wife’s dear brother was reported missing in action; that of course, is one of the reasons we are here.”

  The man from Boston spoke up then: “I just hope, Doctor, that Mrs. Pope’s spirit guide Llewelyn doesn’t—I mean, he may find your presence somewhat off-putting.” His hand came up to his mustache for an instant, then out to the planchette. His touching it was a way of confirming something in himself. Automatic writing: the machinery of the spirit world. “I’ve come all the way down here, and—I don’t want to go back, shall we say, empty-handed.” He smiled and glanced at each of them in turn, seeking something from them. He pulled his hand back and his wedding band scuffed the edge of the table with a gentle tap.

  A shadow passed in front of the lamp in the next room and they all turned to look. A woman entered with the abruptness of a servant coming to clear away dishes. The men got to their feet with barely enough time to detach themselves from their seats before she was in her place at the table. Rathburn introduced his fellow sitters, pointing with the stem of his pipe, then quickly sitting down as if he were about to play the piano. Instead he opened his notebook and made a few entries.

  The lady before them smiled and pressed her two small hands palms down on the table for an instant, then pulled the paper and the planchette toward her. She gave off the scent of roses; her eyes, when she gazed around at her guests, seemed big for her face, her nose too small. She wore nothing on her head and her dress was as plain as a man’s work shirt: long-sleeved, charcoal gray, unadorned except for a small gold brooch at her throat.

  “Are you there, Llewelyn?” she said after they had all joined hands—Mrs. Stuart, still holding tightly to her handkerchief, grasped Mr. Smith’s hand with two fingers only.

  “What is it today, Llewelyn? The planchette? Rap for us, Llewelyn.” Nothing, except the faint hollow hiss of Rathburn’s pipe, the distant gunning of an engine. “Are you there? I know you are. Come on. Just a little knock so we know you’re there.” She spoke in a singsong, as if to a child.

  Nothing.

  “Our guests are waiting, Llewelyn. Rap for us.”

  Sarah Pope shifted in her chair and whispered something under her breath. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, her lips moving as if in silent prayer. Mr. Rathburn’s pipe smoke drifted near Mrs
. Stuart’s delicate nose; her eyelids flickered in response.

  All of a sudden Dr. Stuart snorted and got to his feet—at first they all assumed it was out of impatience, the tantrum of someone who would rather make a fuss than doubt in silence; but then he fell back in his chair, his arms rigid at his sides. His head shot back, flinging spit from his open mouth. He began to pant and jerk as if he were being prodded with a stick. Rathburn rose to his feet but stood frozen as the planchette jumped from the ream of foolscap and landed bottom-side up on his notebook. Stuart’s hand spasmed out toward it as he slumped forward.

  He let out a heavy, croaking gasp of bubbling breath as a quaking rumble of something like words emerged from his mouth: “MEE-OOWWWR. MEEEOOW, MEOWRRRRush Limbaugh sound biting on White Watergate . . . Iran-Contra. Ken Starr Chambergate all that shit from CNN . . . Tupac’s closing night in Vegas . . . now, what did Beavis and Butthead have to do with it? That’s what I’d like to know!” He stood up again; his eyes were closed, the lids fluttering. “How about a track from Spin da’ Spool K’s latest on Spam Kan Records to heat things up—” His thighs bumping the table now, his body gyrating in a St. Vitus dance as he began to chant in the drawling, clipped twang of a carnival barker:

  I’m the puppet MASTer . . . I break all the RULES,

  I pull the strings, suffer no FOOLS,

  I skirt disASTer. IconoCLASTer

  I know the color of BLOOD. the taste of MUD. Like YOU . . .

  I walk in the fat man’s SHOES,

  No LACES. Just STRINGS, and dangly THINGS

  that can tie you up, tie you down,

  Put you through the PACES, another day at the RACES

  Make you nego-ti-ATE, with the HATE monga’

  just to live LONGa’ than your kids . . .

  The man can’t STOP, you COPulate.

  Can’t stop you POPulate this town, this world,

  this PLANet SURface. MAN it SERVES us right, NOW!

  We’re gonna spread the NEWS!

  Let the satellite SPREAD the news!

  On the web site spread the NEWS! . . .

  His wife pushed herself away from the table, scraping her chair across the floor, her hanky flicking and flapping like a white bat in the faint light; she whimpered and shrieked, and bounced in her chair. She stood up then, and fanned the air as if fending off an angry wasp. Dr. Stuart suddenly fell back into his chair and slumped sideways like a discarded marionette, his lolling head coming to rest in Sarah Pope’s lap.

  Silent now. His eyes were closed and his disheveled hair fell about his ears and face like the swirls of flattened grain in a field where a dust devil has touched down.

  Mr. Smith was on his feet, his hand on the shoulder of Mrs. Stuart. His carnation looked like a blasphemy. She was sobbing in earnest now, working the handkerchief into a damp knot. Rathburn was at his notebook, getting it all down while it was still fresh in his mind, his heart pumping, his pipe cold, smokeless, wobbling under his nose as his teeth worked with the scratch and chatter of his pen at transcribing Dr. Stuart’s strange utterances into legible words.

  Sarah Pope smiled and closed her eyes as if what had just transpired was no more dismaying than a change in the weather. Her small hand absently smoothed the fine wisps of hair that fell like a frond across her thigh. The top of Dr. Stuart’s head was surprisingly cool—the faintly livid shoreline near his temple dotted with pearl drops of perspiration. It was heavy, though, his head. Heavier than she had ever imagined a man’s head would be.

  “Llewelyn. You’re a very naughty boy.”

  “Llewelyn? Are you listening?”

  11

  The rock meets the hard place . . .

  The unmarked Calliope shuttle pulled up in front of the main entrance just as Peter was heading out for his morning walk into town. The sun was a palpable adversary even at nine in the morning here, and he noticed that the man stepping down from the van was wearing a heavy black overcoat. It was open, at least, and the young guy—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-four, twenty-five—had sunglasses on; as if his only concession to the climate came out of a need to adjust the brightness on his inner TV screen. Something to do with his age, Peter thought—born after the first moon landing.

  Later on he found the young guy alone at a table on the patio with a newspaper and a bowl of cereal, undressed now, in a swimsuit, a towel over his shoulders, a gold chain with a pendant of some sort around his neck; bare feet, the toes looking like they had spent too much time in closed quarters.

  “You must be Peter Abbott. You look the part, if you don’t mind me saying—no, seriously, I had this rap session with Eli or whatever his name is. Gave me a list of all you people. You look like an actor.” He took another spoonful of his Cheerios, slurping slightly at the milk the way some people think they can get away with eating cereal—kiddy food.

  He had hair that looked as dense as cat fur, only stiffer: short but sticking up, his hairline straight and low on his forehead. What used to be called a brush cut—before earrings and platinum highlights became acceptable accessories to this kind of haircut.

  “My name’s Simon, by the way, Simon Hayward.” He reached over and extended his hand; the thing around his neck—it looked like a St. Christopher medal—ticked against the edge of his cereal bowl.

  Peter took his hand and regretted it right away—an electric tingling reached his shoulder before he could let go: Simon Hayward was angry about something—really angry. Water; Peter saw water, deep blue water and felt a stab of pain between his eyes. Then gone—that quick. Defenses up immediately. Agile, like a boxer’s party, Peter thought; a toned muscle at work here.

  “So what have I seen you in?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Movies, TV, you know. Stuff I could have seen you in.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. A few commercials. Stage stuff, mostly. Les Miz a few years back. The New York production. ‘Mega-musicals,’ they call them now—big budgets, long runs. Like working for the government in some ways.” Simon Hayward was back at his cereal, not really listening.

  “What have I seen you in?” Peter said after a moment—while the guy’s furry head was still down. He could see a scar now, a gap in the thatch, an arcing line about two inches long right on top of his head.

  “Me?” He looked up and smiled; his tongue patrolling his lower lip for milk. “A bar in Vancouver maybe. I’m a waiter, sometimes a bartender. Were you in that one . . . Showboat? I met this girl who was in it, played a dancer or something. A flapper from the twenties, something like that. You weren’t in that at all?”

  Peter shook his head and tried to construct a life that this lad could have led till now. The water confused him, the color of it; the smell and taste of it—not salt, something else. Chlorine. He looked fit enough, tanned. Here on the patio in a swimsuit but sitting as far away from the pool as he could get.

  Peter went inside for some coffee and a muffin. When he got back, Thornquist was at Simon’s table with his hat in his lap, using his listing puppy dog smile—playing the host. He welcomed Peter with a crack about actors being late risers—“Your curtain doesn’t rise with the sun, I see—” and told Simon that Peter was an actor. Simon said he knew that, which left Peter with nothing to say or do but nod his head and take a bite out of his muffin.

  “Well, it’s good to have you here, Simon.” Thornquist gazed about him looking bored all of a sudden, setting his hat on his knee and shaping the crown. “I think we’re just about done—a full complement.” He stood up. “We’ve got one more coming in, in a day or so, as a backup. A young lady from New York.” He touched Peter’s shoulder and leaned in beside his ear. “An understudy, I guess you’d call her,” he said, his eyes on Simon, demanding a reaction.

  He started to walk away and did this schtick Peter couldn’t help thinking he must have used at least three times already today: the “Columbo” maneuver, his feigned forgetfulness. “Oh, Mr. Hayward. One more thing. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind hold
ing on to this for a day or so, tell me what you think might be inside it.” The small metal box again—or one just like it. This one was labeled “18.” He held it up, then placed it on top of Simon’s newspaper.

  Simon straightened up in his chair, and for an instant Peter saw jaw muscles flex. He’d backed into sunlight and it fell across his face with an oblique cut of shadow that made his chin disappear into his chest and his nose larger than it really was. Francis Bacon, Peter thought. Like one of Bacon’s portraits.

  He sniffed once and glanced at Peter with a half turn, blinking and squinting away the glare, his mouth absently working at his Cheerios. He picked up the metal box and sliced through the paper seal with his spoon; he flipped it open and fished out a ring, a plastic, lime-green ring. “Looks like a kid’s ring to me—with a face on it, a pig, Porky Pig maybe.”

  “Very good, Mr. Hayward. Top marks,” Thornquist said, reaching out to touch him on the shoulder—slap him on the back, maybe—then changing his mind.

  Simon turned his head to look at him with his eyebrows up in a dismayed frown. His jaw was flexing again. Peter figured he’d been hoping to get a rise out of Thornquist.

  “You’re the first one to do that and I commend you. It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, but why use a sledgehammer to break an egg, or swat a fly, or whatever that expression is . . . very good. Or should I say ‘spoon’ in this case? Very good.”

  Simon was looking the other way now, pretending not to be listening to any of it. He was fiddling with the ring, trying it on. He settled on the little finger of his left hand, then turned in his chair so the sun was behind him. He raised his hand so they could all see how nice it looked on his pinky. “Can I keep it?”

  12

  The Lion, the Witch, and the Little Tin Box

  Pam liked everything about a plane flight. Even the food: the plastic tray, the ice-cold cutlery, the ritual of taking all those seals off everything; the portions, like something served in a dollhouse restaurant—like the bars of soap in motels. The takeoffs were the best; the feel of the plane under her butt reminded her of being on a playground swing, her father, invisible behind her, giving her that majestic boost. She had no real memory of his face, just the force of his pumping arms.