Union

by John Darryl Winston

  Now as Naz watched the nine tables scattered in disarray, he remembered his loss to the Chess Master as if it had happened yesterday. He could see the homeless genius’ theatrical outfit, his fingerless gloves, his sunglasses, his dreadlocks, and most importantly his face.

  “What’s got you so spooked now? Ohhh, your famous chess match. Maybe you can try again this year.”

  “You can see those tables from every one of these tents, right?”

  “Yeah … what about it?”

  “My mother wrote in her diary that she was gonna finally leave that maniac.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We were coming here that day.”

  “You said that before, to the festival, right?”

  “No … here … the chess tables.” He pointed.

  “I still don’t get it.” She put her arm around his waist and appeared to focus with him.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before.” He pulled the worn and tattered paper from his back pocket. It was the first copy Meri had printed for him almost two years ago. He had told himself to get it laminated before it turned to dust. Maybe that time had come. He looked at the picture and then the tables.

  D looked at the picture. “Your dad, right?”

  “Right … also known as … The Chess Master.”

  You mean your father used to be a Chess Master?”

  “No, my father is the Chess Master.”

  “You told me your father was dead.”

  “He was, I mean, I thought he was. That’s what I was told.” For all these years.

  “Naz, things like this just don’t happen.” She put her hands on her hips.

  “Remember me,” He raised his hand as if he were in a classroom. “the guy that can move things with his mind?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. He may have grown a beard and dreads and threw on some sunglasses, but that was him. I knew there was more to ’im. She told me to trust my instincts.”

  “Who?”

  “The palm reader.”

  “You called her a scam artist, before.”

  Naz shrugged.

  “Well, how do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.” He stood looking at the ground with his hands in his pockets.

  “Are you upset … that you’ve been lied to?” D put her hand on his arm.

  “No, not at all. I’m sure they had their reasons. The point is, I’m not by myself anymore. I have family.” He smiled.

  “You weren’t by yourself.” She took his hand. “So now what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow and challenge the Chess Master, challenge my dad, beat ’im and he can pass the crown.”

  “Pass the torch, and what makes you think you can beat ’im. You said he’s the best in the world.”

  “I can’t beat ’im, but it’d be fun to try again.” When he finally looked up, she was staring at his hair. “Go ahead; touch it.”

  “What?”

  “My hair … you’ve wanted to touch it ever since I came back.”

  “What, you can read minds, too?” She laughed as she reached up.

  Naz shivered as a chill ran through him.

  “Wow. It’s a lot longer than it looks.” She pulled at the twists and curls. “Can I braid it?”

  “What?”

  “Braid it?”

  “Are you serious?”

  She didn’t answer but continued playing in his hair.

  He wasn’t crazy about wearing braids, but the desire to have D playing in his hair for the time it would require braiding it far outweighed his feelings about the final objective.

  “I don’t know.” Feigning disinterest, he turned his attention to the busy festival workers.

  “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “When?” At the same time, he didn’t want to discourage her completely, so he tried to keep a neutral attitude as if he could take it or leave it.

  “Now. Come on.”

  They walked until D found what she was looking for. Several women were setting up booths where they would be braiding hair and selling African hair products. D looked up at Naz’s hair again and picked out two combs, one smaller than the other and something in a small green jar. Naz insisted on paying for the supplies.

  She led him to the magnificent river that bordered one side of the festival, where people docked their boats and held their own private parties. Today, there were no boats, and you could see clear across the blue water at the cityscape of the neighboring country.

  D sat on a ledge with the smaller comb and the jar next to her, biting her lip, hard at work on his hair with the larger comb. Naz sat on the grass below and in front of her, between her legs with his back to her.

  “Ouch!” He complained.

  “Well, it’s all tangled and twisted. I have to do this first.”

  “At least go slow.”

  “Then it’ll hurt more. When do you comb this stuff?”

  “I don’t! Ow! I just wash it … and it does what it does.”

  “That’s ridiculous. That’s why you’re so tender-headed.”

  They wrestled this way for the next five minutes until she had combed the tangles and twists out of his hair.

  “Look at it now,” she said.

  He pulled out his phone and set the camera so he could see himself. His hair appeared to be almost three times longer than it was before, round and perfect like a Russian fur cap. “Wow. I didn’t know it was that long.”

  D took some of the contents of the jar and rubbed it on her hands.

  “Smells funny.” Naz crinkled his nose and put his phone back in his pocket.

  “I like it,” she countered “Smells natural … like nature.”

  “What is it?”

  “What else … olive oil.”

  “Ohhh … I guess I should’ve known that.” He laughed.

  She rubbed it all over his hair. When she used her fingers to massage the oil into his scalp, Naz melted. He had never felt the sensation before, and his shoulders drooped in response. He let out an involuntary moan, and D giggled.

  “Sorry.” He tensed up.

  “For what? It’s supposed to feel good. I used to love when Darla would braid my hair.”

  D’s voice and hands loosened Naz up immediately. The next to go were his eyelids as they became heavier. Water caressing the banks, the sound of the river in front of them blocked out the noise they left behind them. She parted his hair and braided one section at a time with firm but gentle hands.

  “So this is pretty big, huh?” She stopped to take a break.

  “What, my head?”

  “Besides that.” She laughed. “That your dad might be alive.”

  “No might about it. He’s alive. I’m sure of it. I think I always knew … deep down.”

  “This is crazy. First the telekinesis power stuff and now your father being alive after supposedly being dead all these years. It’s like something out of a movie.” She started braiding again. “Do you know what you’re going to say to him?”

  “No idea.” He fazed in and out.

  “So much for running away.”

  Was she serious? “Maybe next time.” He could get used to the idea of running away with D.

  “Yeah, one act of juvenile delinquency at a time for you.”

  “Was it that obvious I never skipped before?”

  “Please … although, the droid line was original. Yeah … I guess I’ll just have to go home and face the music,” she said.

  He was so content, he had forgotten what had occurred that morning, and he felt powerless to help her. “What will you do?”

  “Nothing. I texted my mom when you were having your palm read. She’s home.”

  “So now what?”

  “So now he can leave me alone.”

  “Does he hit her?”

  “Of course he does.”

  “You say it like it’s normal.”

  “What’s no
rmal got to do with it? What’s normal?”

  He shrugged. He was afraid to ask if her father had hit her before, afraid of her answer and the rage it would ignite in him.

  “It’s just not right. Why doesn’t she just leave … your mother?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she tried … and all those times she goes away, that’s what she has in mind. For that moment in time, she’s courageous, and she goes to a festival, her festival, but then reality sets in, and she thinks about what she has to lose. Maybe she thinks about me. Maybe that’s how it was for your mom.”

  “Maybe.” He lost himself in her words. He had to help her. Maybe that was his destiny, to help people before things got too bad—before Camille, before Meri. “Maybe we should run away.”

  “Are you serious?” She sounded hopeful. “People would say we’re too young.”

  “Since when did we start listening to people?”

  They both laughed.

  “Hand me the other comb again.” She struggled with a tangled tuft of hair she had missed earlier.

  He made the comb rise on its own and float to her.

  She squealed and then laughed. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

  “It takes a minute.”

  “You know, we’re the same age as Romeo and Juliet.” She grabbed the comb out of the air.

  “Are we?”

  “You see, Romeo was sixteen, and Juliet was thirteen. I’m fifteen, and you’re fourteen and—”

  “And together that makes us twenty-nine just like Romeo and Juliet only, I don’t know if they’re a good example.”

  “Why?”

  “How’d they end up?”

  “Oh.”

  They both laughed.

  “I like Othello better.” Naz reached up to feel his itching scar. “Do you know it?

  “I know them all … except Richard III, and I bet I’d recognize that one if I heard it.”

  “Well, I only know Othello.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t believe you. Show me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me hear it.” One of her legs bounced up and down beside him.

  “Ok … gimme a sec …” He closed his eyes and tried to remember the screen adaptation he saw of Othello at International Academy, but it wasn’t enough, so he dug deeper, and with the help of D’s expert hands, he let go of everything.

  And there it was, a memory, the front row of a small theater with a small troupe of actors lead by Cory himself. For the first time, he could see Cory in his imagination as clear as if he was standing in front of him—I’m eight years old watching my dad play Othello. He watched, mesmerized by Cory’s voice, the familiar voice he had heard but not recognized in four years—Sweet soul, take heed,

  “Take heed of perjury; thou art on thy deathbed.” Naz spoke Cory’s words.

  “Ay, but not yet to die.” D joined Naz, her hands sliding to his shoulders.

  “Yes, presently:” Naz reached up and put his hands on top of hers. “Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin; for to deny each article with oath cannot remove nor choke the strong conception that I do groan withal. Thou art to die.” He imagined D’s eyes closed, too and them occupying the same spiritual space.

  “Then Lord have mercy on me!” D took her turn.

  “I say, amen.” Naz opened his eyes.

  There was still and silence for a few minutes, until D said, “That was beautiful,” and resumed work on his hair.

  “Thank you.” Naz was still in his own world. It was the first memory he could ever remember having of his father, and he didn’t want to share it with anybody. He wanted to find more, but he didn’t know where to look, how to even go about looking for them. Whatever power he had, he would unleash it now to summon what he had forgotten, a small crack to the past, what he longed for with all his heart. He focused—if we ran away now, today, could you love me forever the way I love you right now?

  “I would love you more and die a thousand times to protect you from harm.”

  “What did you say?” D stopped braiding his hair.

  “Huh?” Naz woke from his trance, startled.

  “What did you just say?” D repeated.

  “Nothing.”

  “Naz,” D stood up and started pacing, something clearly wrong. “Are you … are you reading my mind?”

  Naz stood up. “Yes … I think I was, but I didn’t mean to. I … I had a memory of my father for the first time, and … I was so excited I wanted more, so I opened up, and your thoughts sort of rushed in.”

  “Sort of? Was that the first time you read my mind?” She stood with her arms crossed, squinting out across the river in confusion and disbelief.

  Naz put his head down.

  “Naz.”

  “No, that wasn’t the first time.”

  “Well, how many times?” She started pacing again.

  “I don’t know. Not a lot. Just … sometimes.”

  He tried to grab her, and she pulled away.

  She stood for a few moments in silence and then said, “Read my mind now.”

  “What?”

  “Read my mind.”

  “N-No. Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “All right.”

  I think It’s the worst thing you could ever do to someone, to me, invade my private thoughts without my permission.

  “I know. Let me expl—”

  “Let me finish.” She put up her hand, silencing him and then quickly wiped the tears from under her eyes. “Just listen … or whatever it is you do to get inside my head.”

  He nodded with a slight grimace as if he was in pain.

  How can I trust you with my pain, with my heart, with my life, if I cannot trust you to be honest with me, to respect the only thing I can truly call my own … my private thoughts? I’m going home now and please don’t try to follow me or contact me. I’ll text you when I get home to let you know I made it safe. I need time to think.

  He looked at her and nodded. She turned and walked away with her hands in her pockets.

  Naz sat down. “What just happened? Is my gift a curse?”

  “Only if you allow it to be,” said the man as he approached.

  Naz looked up, surprised. “Mr. Pauling.”

  In The Past …

  Cory enters his and Camille’s bedroom. “Are you OK, Cam?”

  “It’s Bearn,” she manages to say quietly as she lies on the bed facing away from him, the phone next to her.

  Cory looks at the phone. “Bearn Slaughter, from high school? I told you, I didn’t want to talk to him.”

  “Shhh … he can hear you.” She grabs the phone and mutes it.

  “Good! It’s just another scam, the same kind of scams he was involved in back then, only it’s getting old … really old.”

  “Not everybody’s trying to change the world, Cory.”

  “What is that supposed to mean … not everybody’s trying to change the world?” He scoffs.

  “Some of us just want to live our lives—”

  “And not make waves, not cause any trouble, be good little boys or girls and do what we’re told … follow somebody else’s rules? We’ve been through all this before.”

  “Yes, and nothing ever changes.”

  “You said you’d let me see this through, and it’s over.” He smiles. “I did it. We … did it.

  “We?” She turns over and looks at him, shaking her head. “Don’t involve me in your … your Frankenstein creation.”

  “Frankenstein?” Cory laughs. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t even say that. Yes, we, Cam. Behind every successful man …” He trails off. “You know this is just as much your discovery as it is mine. He’s our son. Do you understand the implications … the magnitude of this event?”

  “Event? Do you understand, Cory?”

  He stops to contemplate.

  “You always ask yourself, can you do something an
d of course you can because you’re the smartest person in the room, on the whole planet for that matter, but do you ever ask yourself, should you do it?”

  “Cam—”

  “Do you!?” She wipes her eyes and sits up. “Will our son be able to play with other kids and not some, some image that you’ve created out of thin air that’s not even flesh and blood?”

  “Of course he will.”

  “Will he be able to go to school one day—”

  “He won’t have to, thank goodness.”

  “He’s not normal, Cory.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Who wants to be normal? You’re not normal. Normal isn’t that brand new Mercedes Benz you drive every day to your precious country club. Normal isn’t this secluded, gated mansion, a weekly pedicure, manicure, massage, and all the best things money can buy.”

  “That’s not fair; I didn’t ask for all this, none of it—”

  “Ah, but you didn’t turn it down, did you? Never complained. You never talked about being ‘normal’”—he makes air-quotation marks—“when you were signing on the dotted line for this place and all these things.” He gestures around the room, stopping to gaze at the Jacuzzi in the middle of the huge bedroom. “You should be proud of our son.”

  “This is not about him. It’s not about us, and you know it. It’s about you … the great Cornelius Andersen, master illusionist. Haha! Youngest man to ever win the Nobel Prize. Lot of good that did you. You’ve been kicked out of every university on the East Coast. How’s not being normal working out for you? Our son—”

  “Stop it!”

  “Daddy.” Naz stands in the doorway in a white t-shirt, his diaper starting to slip down, a red LEGO floating next to his head.

  “Hey, Son.” Cory watches the red block hover in place.

  “Mommy, sad? I do something wrong?”

  “Oh, no, honey.” Camille shakes her head and wipes her eyes.

  The box of Kleenex on the nightstand floats up and hovers next to her. She grabs the box—in a vain effort to make it ‘all’ go away—and looks back at Naz.