“So what are we going to do?” I asked once I’d caught my breath.
“Well . . . I’m going to sew you up, and you’re going to enjoy yourself.”
I winced at my throbbing foot. “I doubt that.”
She stood up and spoke. “Don’t worry, you’ve landed in the right place.” She left without closing the door. Her wooden sandals echoed loudly in the next room.
Antonio still had a hold on my big toe, probably because she hadn’t told him to let go. He was obviously a servant and looked to be the type that would carry out any order no matter how bizarre. I looked at him and felt awkward and embarrassed at having a stranger impersonally touching my foot. He looked at me, and I could tell he felt the same way. The tension between us eased as I motioned for him to let go.
“Do you speak English?” I asked slowly.
“A little.”
“I speak a little bit of Spanish. Your name is Antonio, right?”
He nodded.
“Tell me, Antonio, what is her name?”
He shook his head vigorously. “You must ask her that.”
“Okay,” I said, backing off. “Is she a nun?”
He shook his head again. “Please, señor, you must—”
The door creaked behind her as she walked silently up to us. She had changed clothes and now wore a blue work shirt, paint-splattered jeans, and dirty white sneakers. In her hand was a small, well-worn brown leather case.
“Muy bien, Antonio,” she said, unzipping the case.
Antonio looked at the case and rolled his eyes to the tin patterned ceiling. “Aye, dios mío,” he said before leaving the room.
I understood and sat upright in the tub. “Where is he going? What is that in your hand? Why did he say that?” I didn’t like his reaction or her prolonged silence.
She slowly opened the case as she approached. I grew more nervous with each step she took. Her hand slipped inside the case and brought out an old brass syringe. “He doesn’t like needles,” she said, taking her seat again.
“Are you a doctor?” I asked in a concerned voice.
She smiled as she admired the syringe. “I used to be, a long time ago.”
“Do you know what you’re doing? What if the tendon is damaged?”
“Then you’ll walk with a limp,” she replied as she screwed together the antique syringe.
I thought about her quick answer and watched her remove a glass vial half filled with a light-brown tinted liquid.
“I don’t like needles either.”
“Then would you rather I do this without anesthetic?”
I looked at her and quickly went over my ever-shortening list of options. “No.”
She smiled and continued to fiddle with her medical antiques.
She poured a small amount of rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball and cleaned the needle before screwing it onto the main body. The syringe was old. It was made of brass and was as big around as a roll of dimes. The shaft of the plunger had a large brass ring at the end for the thumb. After she had cleaned and assembled it, she placed the needle down into the clear vial and pulled back on the plunger, siphoning liquid up into the syringe. The level of fluid in the vial went down by half an inch.
“How much do you weigh?” She removed the needle from the vial and turned it up to remove any air bubbles.
“One hundred sixty-five pounds,” I answered.
“That’s about what I thought,” she said, looking at the fluid level through the narrow graduated glass window that ran the length of the syringe’s polished brass body. She recorked the vial and replaced it in the case. “Would you like a cigarette before we begin?”
I nodded solemnly. She acted with such confidence that I began to think she really could do this. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. Even if it were, it beat her calling the police and having to answer questions about running from a burning building.
She pulled out an orange-and-white pack of cigarettes and placed one between my lips. I recognized the brand from the distinctive color of the pack. They were Lendts, a Turkish brand that used to be very popular there. And I remembered, they were also distant Vasili’s favorite brand.
She struck a match and held it to the end of the short, unfiltered cigarette. “Centuries of flavor,” I said matter of factly, recalling the Lendts slogan from Vasili’s memory.
She gave me a surprised look as she lit hers. “You’ve smoked Lendts before?” she asked, exhaling a plume of smoke.
“In another life.” I laid back and rested my head on the edge of the tub. It was a stronger smoke than I was used to. We said nothing for a long time as we smoked. Her beautiful, catlike black eyes never wavered no matter how long she stared at me.
“Thanks,” I said, breaking the silence.
“For what?”
“For the smoke, for the help.”
“Well, wayward one, as I said, you landed in the right place. Speaking of help, I’m ready to begin. Close your eyes, please—this may sting a little.”
She placed her left hand around the top of my ankle and squeezed harder than I thought she could have. Syringe in hand, she pierced a bulging vein on my instep. It stung at first then was followed by a warm orange-cream colored wave that slowly crawled up my leg. It was hard to describe other than to say that it felt orange and peaceful, and that everything the wave washed over was going to be okay.
I opened my eyes and looked at my foot, expecting it to be orange. It looked normal but didn’t ache any longer. It really was going to be okay. The wave rolled up to my hip then turned down the other leg and up my torso at the same time. She removed the needle, and I noticed half its contents still showed in the glass window. She swabbed the needle with another soaked cotton ball and checked it again for air bubbles. The wave slowly reached my upper chest then raced up my neck and over my face and head in a few heartbeats. Everything was going to be okay now. She readjusted the seat and readied the syringe again.
“I really don’t think I need another one.” I heard the words slowly drawl out of my mouth in a long orange-cream-colored line, but that was okay. I had to fight to keep my eyes focused.
She laughed at me. “You’re really cute,” she said as she turned the syringe on herself. The needle entered a vein on the back of her hand, and she depressed the plunger, emptying the contents. That was okay too.
the minor surgery that followed was quick, fuzzy, and painless. She placed the stitches in my heel and wrapped my foot and ankle in a white bandage. The effects of the drink, the fire, the adrenaline, the shock, and the syringe were taking their toll by the time she had put on the last wraps. I felt myself drifting toward sleep and had to fight to keep my eyes open.
“How do you feel?”
I couldn’t tell whose voice it was. It seemed to come from everywhere in the room. “Better. Sleepy.” My words had almost returned to their original color.
“I’ll have Antonio prepare a guest room for you. Rest. I’ll be right back.”
I fell asleep in the tub and awoke to being lifted up by my arms. My head still swam with whatever she had shot me up with, and I had trouble keeping my balance on one leg. They carried me through a large room into a small bedroom on the other side of the church. They spoke to each other in Spanish as we went. A single bed waited inside the guest room with covers pulled back invitingly. I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow and dreamed rare and unwelcome dreams.
5
A mother and son sat across a kitchen table from each other. It was Bobby’s mother, Judith. She was young and looked the same as I remembered her before the fire. The thin blue-and-white cotton robe was gathered tight around her small waist.
I looked around the room, if you could call it that, for it had no walls that I could discern, only a vast expanse of white. Glowing ivory light illuminated the room from all angles, if there wer
e any angles. The faint, yet distinct sound of dripping water persisted in the distance. We looked at a blank game board before us, then at each other.
“I get to go first this time, Bobby,” she said, eyeing the lettered game pieces in her tray. She looked up and smiled sweetly.
“I have my word.” She began to place the tiles down one by one in a line across the center of the board. W-E-E-V-I-L.
“Weevil,” she said, “like the bugs we had last summer. You remember, don’t you, Bobby?”
“Yes, Mommy, I remember.” The voice that escaped my mouth was that of a child. I looked down to check my body and found my normal long legs stretched underneath the table before me.
“Let’s see, that’s four plus one is five, six, ten, eleven, twelve, then doubled because of the pink square is twenty-four. Pretty good start,” she said, writing on the table without pen or pad.
“But, Mom . . .” I stopped for a second after hearing my normal tenor voice. “But, Mom, there’s no we in evil.”
She raised her pale-blue eyes slowly until they met mine. The edges of her cotton robe and the ends of her brown hair blended into the ambient whiteness of the room. The water drip chirped like a metronome in the background.
“Hmm,” she said, cocking her head as she looked at the word on the board, “we’ll have to check on that.” She looked into my eyes again and pointed to the edge of the board. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
I looked down and saw a letter on the left side of the board and a wood-handled steel letter opener on the right.
“Go on, open it,” she prodded.
I placed my hands on the letter and the letter opener at the same time, and when I did, the room took shape around us. She didn’t notice the change, but we were now back in the living room of our small Georgia home. I looked around and everything was the same, the green carpeting, the cheap wood paneling, the pictures in the hallway.
“Well, what does it say?” she asked impatiently.
I moved the blade of the letter opener under the flap and started to tear at the seal, when it began to shake uncontrollably in my right hand. I dropped the letter to the carpeted floor and gripped the opener with both hands, trying to control its now wild and dangerous jerks.
“Bobby?” she asked, concerned.
I gripped it tight and struggled in exaggerated corrections, trying to counter the unseen force moving the knife.
“Bobby, stop it, this isn’t funny.”
I couldn’t muster the clarity to speak or the strength to subdue whatever was now wielding the blade.
“Bobby, you’re frightening me.”
I lost my balance and was knocked out of my chair and onto the floor by those unseen hands. My grip on the opener released when I hit the floor, and the blade flew unnaturally far across the room, landing ten feet away on the green carpet.
Mom began screaming loudly. Her long shrills came in steady, predictable bursts between short gasps of air. I didn’t take my eyes off the blade that lay motionless on the carpet, its sharp tip pointed at me. I was on all fours staring at it, looking for any sign of movement. I could hear my own breathing over Mom’s shrill screams. I turned my head slightly toward her while keeping both eyes focused on the letter opener. When I turned my head so far that it was in view of only one eye, the letter opener moved. I froze and watched it with that one eye. The point of the blade rose up three inches off the carpet and hung there abnormally, quivering ever so slightly each time I exhaled. Mom’s loud screaming was becoming as monotonous as the dripping water had been. The blade still trembled menacingly with each exhale.
I knew what I had to do. If I could only concentrate hard enough, I could make the knife stop moving. But I couldn’t focus with that damn woman screaming like that. I stared and concentrated on the knife until it stopped quivering. When it did, she stopped screaming.
“Bobby, honey, don’t play like that, it’s dangerous,” she said in that sweet, motherly voice I’d known as her child.
I involuntarily turned to look at her and saw the silver flash of the blade as it whizzed past my eyes on its way to the far wall where it plunged two inches deep into the wood paneling.
She smiled at me with a mildly scolding, coy look that was almost seductive. I could see the knife wriggling free from the wall out of the corner of my eye.
I spun around and ran for the front door hoping the opener wouldn’t catch me. My hand found the doorknob, and I turned to check but saw only the empty slit in the paneling where it had been. Standing still with my back against the door, I frantically searched the room with my eyes. Concentrate. I turned the handle and cracked the door open to hear the sounds of an engine racing and tires squealing coming from the driveway.
“Don’t go out there,” Mom said sternly.
“It’s okay, Mom, I’ll be right back,” I said as I threw the door open and walked down the three steps to the driveway. It was a beautiful, sunny Georgia day outside.
The source of the revving and tire screeching was a small, red four-door sedan racing counterclockwise around our circular driveway. It raced so fast that it almost tipped over at several points along each circuit. The driver and passenger in the front seat were too busy laughing to notice me, but there was someone in the back seat who did. I watched the car make several laps. Each time they passed, the young man in the back seat looked at me with excited, familiar, pale-brown eyes. Each lap they made was faster than the one before it, and each time by, the man in the back seat became more threatening, until he thrashed wildly, screaming and clawing at the glass in a violent attempt to get at me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up the last time they went by, and I turned away, unable to look at his grimacing face again.
I ran back into the house to check on my mom. She wasn’t in her seat, but I could hear her rumbling with something behind the first door on the right side of the hallway. I took cautious steps toward the sounds, but they stopped at the same time I heard the tire-screeching, glass-shattering crash of the car outside. She appeared from behind the door and closed it behind her. She looked startled at my presence back in the house and began talking nervously.
“I was just locking up the shotguns. You know, it’s not safe to have weapons lying around at a time like this.” She made her way over to the couch and sat down. There was a slight difference about the gait of her walk, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I turned around to look for the letter opener and noticed the half-opened letter at my feet. Picking it up, I ripped open the seal and removed the tri-folded sheet inside. The white page was completely blank on both sides. I looked up from the letter in time to see Mom walk into the hallway again from the first door on the right where the rumbling had been. She looked at me with a menacing confidence.
She appeared much different now, dressed in a pink tube top; short, shiny, black vinyl skirt; thigh-high fishnet stockings with a hidden garter belt; and pink, four-inch-high spike heels. Her hair was permed into tight, dark-brown curls around plastic dangly earrings and excessive makeup. She gripped a pump-action shotgun in her small hands.
I stood before her in disbelief, then turned toward the couch, only to see the feeble figure of the original mother slumped down, twitching her left arm and leg as she gazed mindlessly at the floor.
I looked at the page in my hand again; it was still blank. Then I looked at the mom in the hallway walking toward me.
“Weevil,” she said softly, as she quickly worked the action of the gun, jacking a shell into the chamber.
“Weevil!” she squealed, drawing out the e until it sounded like an injured animal. She walked toward me and leveled the barrel of the shotgun at my face. I blinked, disbelieving, and looked past the muzzle into what should have been her soft pale-blue eyes. They were instead solid black from corner to corner.
“weevil!” she screamed as the muzzle flashed and the gun bucked in her ha
nds.
i bolted upright in bed and scanned the room in a panicked and sleepy stupor. The Asian woman sat in an antique wooden chair beside me, smoking. I felt weak and hot. My face was covered with sweat. “My God, is there no pardon anywhere?” I mumbled.
She stoically watched me turn my head around the room several times until I remembered where I was.
“Better now?” she asked.
I nodded. I felt nauseated.
“Are you hungry? Would you like some breakfast?”
“I feel sick,” I said, using barely enough breath and energy to get the syllables out. I felt short of breath, and my mouth was filling with saliva, a bad sign.
“You smelled strongly of alcohol last night, so I had Antonio bring in a basin in case you need to vomit. It’s on the floor next to you.” She spoke with a matter-of-fact tone.
An antique wooden nightstand stood next to the bed, in front of it on the floor was an old, white-enameled metal washbasin like the kind used before the advent of indoor plumbing. I—or rather Vasili—had used these in Bulgaria. Leaning over the edge of the bed to look at where she had pointed was enough to start me gagging, on my way to throwing up three times in rapid succession.
“There’s a towel on the nightstand for when you’re finished. I’m going to check on Antonio and breakfast.” She left before I could clean myself up. I threw up once more before Antonio came in. He wiped up the mess and handed me a clean, warm washcloth before leaving with the dirty towel and full basin. After he left, I laid back down and tried to reconstruct everything that had happened the night before. I lifted the covers and brought my left foot up so I could see it. A line of red dots tinged the white gauze wrapping.
“How does it feel?” she asked, carrying in a tray of food.
“It feels fine.”
“Do you need another basin?”
I shook my head and pulled the covers back up to my chest as she approached. I was naked.
The Reincarnationist Papers Page 5
