Harbinger

by Jack Skillingstead

  I remembered that night in Long Beach, when I ran. And later a phone ringing endlessly in a lifeless house. The rest I shut out. Or tried to shut out. Flies.

  *

  That night I experienced something like a dream but not a dream. I was lying in bed. Claws scratched at the bedroom door. I got up in my boxers and T-shirt and opened the door. Jeepers stood there, his eyes like white marbles. My eyes were fine, the water works shut off, in crystalline focus. Now that he had my attention, Jeepers turned and padded away, and I followed him.

  He waited at the front door. I opened it for us and we went out. The air was perfectly still. My bare feet whispered on the lawn. Then the sidewalk was cold and hard, and Jeepers was trotting, claws clicking jauntily on the cement, and I started jogging after him. The dog’s nose was in the air. I looked up and saw a Glinda bubble drifting serenely above and ahead of us. Something moved inside that bubble but I don’t think it was a good witch; it wasn’t anything I could make out, just a shadow, like what you might see through the translucent skin of an insect egg.

  The bubble led Jeepers, and Jeepers led me. We arrived at an open expanse of blue grass with an orderly copse of trees in the middle. Orderly? They formed a perfect ring. Each tree was between seven and nine feet tall and they stood close together.

  As Jeepers and I approached, the two nearest trees opened up, or stepped aside. Stepped aside. In the middle of the circle a few people stood conversing quietly with one another. The night was so weirdly still that their whispery voices sounded like a sentient breeze.

  Jeepers trotted right up to the group and they welcomed him. One man bent over and scratched the dog behind the ears, and Jeepers’ tail started wagging.

  The man was my father.

  I stood apart from the group, just within the ring of trees, all of which had begun to sway gently side to side. The two that had parted for us now moved together again, closing the ring. I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at these trees. I was frightened of them. A trunk pushed against me, urging me forward.

  Only my father’s face was distinct. The other people were silent now, their features not quite discernable. Above them the Glinda bubble hovered and pulsed with a ghost light of its own. The light fell upon the people, and I suddenly realized that was why I couldn’t see them properly. The light did not illuminate but somehow obscured them. My father was recognizable because he had leaned out of the cone of light when he reached to scratch Jeepers.

  “Dad—?” I said.

  He smiled at me. It was a smile I’d never seen him wear in life. Easy and broad and loose, a happy and unselfconscious smile with parted teeth.

  “That man lied to you,” he said.

  “What man?”

  “Ulin.”

  Our voices were bell-clear within the circle of trees. My father’s voice seemed to be right inside my head.

  “What did he lie about?” I asked.

  “That whole business with the valve. I would have taken the operation. Heck, I was dying. Of course I would have. But they told me I had to hunt you up first.”

  “You should have told me.”

  He shook his head. “Here’s the deal, Ellis. Things happen the way they’re meant to happen, and that’s that. Everything has a reason and a purpose. That’s what I’m told. Anyway, it’s time for you to get out in the world. Past time. That’s what this whole deal is about. You aren’t supposed to hide out in Blue Heron anymore.”

  The others who remained under the cone of light nodded their heads. Dad sat down on the grass and roughhoused Jeepers a little. Jeepers licked his face and my dad laughed. He would never have let the dog do that in real life. He had loved Jeepers in his own taciturn way but wouldn’t tolerate getting licked at like that. I laughed at the sight, and when I laughed it was a real sound, and I was walking clumsily, like a drunk or a somnambulist, in through the open door of my cottage.

  An hour later I walked back out, leaving the contract on the kitchen table with the fancy Lacrosse pen lying on it, nib aimed at the empty signature line.

  I thought about calling Jillian, waking her up, but knew I wouldn’t have considered it if I hadn’t needed a ride out of town. That was a little too mercenary even for me. Besides, I was no damn good at good-byes.

  chapter five

  I tried but couldn’t find Nichole. Her father was dead. The wide lady in the purple housecoat who answered the door of Nichole’s former house failed to enlighten me as to her whereabouts. I had left Blue Heron with only the cash on hand, about two hundred dollars. These resources were rapidly being depleted by bus fair and motel rent. There were no Nichole Roberts in any of the state’s phone books available in the King County Public Library main branch. There was, however, one Adriel Roberts with a double listing, residence and business. I flipped to the yellow pages and found her ad. It had to be Nichole’s mother. Fortunes, Tarot Readings, Past Life Regression.

  She had set up shop on 15th Avenue in Seattle’s funkiest community at the time, Capitol Hill. Third Eye Café was tucked between an East Indian restaurant and a counter-cultural cum revolutionary bookstore. The sign above the door of Adriel’s place looked hand-painted but not amateurish. An eye burning over a pyramid. Yin/Yang symbols on either side. In black script a listing of services provided. Including “organic espresso.” Under that, one word: Evolve.

  I entered the shop. A young guy with cocoa skin wearing dreadlocks and a hemp coat turned toward me from a display of dreamcatchers. The coat was open. White letters on his black T-shirt read: EVOLVE. Was a theme emerging?

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  Adriel Roberts came through the beaded curtain behind a glass display case of Tarot decks and spirit stones. She wasn’t dressed like a hippie gypsy or Stevie Nicks or anything. She wore a white blouse open at the neck and pearl gray pants. A thin silver chain lay against her throat, kind of classy.

  “Hello, Ellis.”

  Like I’d been walking into her shop every Tuesday for the last ten years. In her mid-fifties now, she was still an attractive woman, and I could still see Nichole in her face. A stab of pure regret and loneliness pierced my heart.

  “Hello,” I said. “You remember me.”

  “I not only remember you, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Uh, sorry I’m late, then.”

  “You’re not late; you’re right on time.”

  The hemp guy was giving me a closer look, a speculative look. Still friendly but with a shadow of reservation.

  “This is Herrick,” Adriel Roberts said to him, gesturing to me. The guy’s face instantly transformed, lit up with wonder, and he put his hand out.

  “Holy God, are you kidding,” he said.

  “No, she’s not,” I said, taking his hand, which was big enough to engulf mine like a mitt. He didn’t start a squeezy contest, though. His grip was light as feathers. He held my hand almost reverently, not shaking it.

  “Is this the one?” he said.

  “The one what?”

  “The one that was severed.” He lowered his eyes, suddenly sheepish, and released his grip.

  “Actually it was my left hand,” I said.

  He peered at my left hand, which of course was as ordinary looking as anyone else’s. I waggled it at him.

  “Hey, it’s just a hand. They reattached it after an accident and it healed up. No big deal.”

  He nodded politely, but the wonder didn’t leave his eyes.

  Adriel said, “Marvin, don’t stare.”

  He looked flustered. “Sorry.”

  “I’m trying to find Nichole,” I said to Adriel.

  “She’s married.”

  Take that first stab of lonely regret and try it again, but use a bigger knife this time. Use a fucking rapier. Might as well dip it in venom first.

  “Who—”

  “Somebody boring but stable. I think his name is Dan. Doesn’t that sound about perfect for boring but stable?”

  “Yeah, pe
rfect.”

  “I think he’s an engineer or something. He doesn’t drink much. People like him. He buys her things. They go to baseball games. No kids. Are you all right?”

  She said all this while staring directly into my eyes.

  “I want to talk to her.”

  She nodded. “You should, of course.”

  “Do you think she wants to talk to me?”

  “Maybe. Shall I call her and see?”

  “Please.”

  “Marvin?” She turned to the Rasta man. “Be a doll and pick me up a gallon of soy milk.” She opened the register, took out a ten dollar bill, and handed it to him. He folded the bill and stuffed it in his pocket. He had hardly taken his eyes off me since Adriel Roberts introduced me as “Herrick.” By some inflective magic she had imbued my name with unwarranted significance. Now Marvin hesitated to leave. He looked from me to Adriel.

  “What—” he started.

  “Go ahead, Marvin,” she said.

  “What’s going to happen now?” he asked.

  Adriel smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder. She had to reach up pretty high to do it. “Everything is already happening,” she said. “It has been for a long time. Now that Ellis is back with us the process may accelerate, but that isn’t for us to decide.”

  “I know. I just— I’ll get the milk.”

  “Thank you.” She pulled him down and kissed him on the lips, tenderly.

  As soon as he was gone, I asked, “What was that all about?”

  Bestowing that sweet smile upon me, she replied: “Evolution.”

  *

  Nichole agreed to meet me at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle at noon the following day. I was there early, like by an hour. The park consisted of an acre or so of Italian stone surfacing bordered by the Westlake Retail Center, a Seattle’s Best Coffee franchise, and Nordstrom’s. Pine Street cut through the middle of the park and there was a steady flow of traffic. Also, plenty of hungry pigeons and one steel drum band, but they were presentable. I sat on a bench with a latte and listened. They were pretty good, but after a while it got sort of repetitive. The band, not the pigeons. Well, the pigeons, too.

  At about five past noon I saw Nichole cross Pine Street and walk toward me. I stood up, leaving my cup of espresso on the bench. Nichole looked better than great, and very stylish in a black trench coat and beret.

  “Nichole.”

  “I almost didn’t come,” she said. “And then I did come, but really early, and I waited around watching you. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t. Now I don’t know what I want for sure. A hug, I guess.”

  I put my arms around her and she crushed herself into me. In an instant my inner wall fell and my moat drained, and the poor little perinea fish were left gasping and flopping in the stinking mud. Also, as a bonus, Time was temporarily suspended.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You know about what.”

  “Don’t talk about it yet,” she said into my chest.

  “I won’t.”

  We held each other, held each other, and then we weren’t holding each other, and Nichole had pulled back out of my embrace.

  “Let’s have lunch,” she said. “If we do anything else we’ll get ourselves in trouble.”

  “There’s trouble and there’s trouble,” I said.

  “Don’t be charming. Just don’t.”

  Shades of Jillian. Damn it.

  She took me to The Palomino and we ordered a veggie thin crust pizza. She had a glass of Chablis and I ordered a Beck’s Dark, which was pointless, considering my enhanced physiology.

  After the timeless hug at Westlake, Nichole hadn’t touched me once. I felt drawn to her by the same powerful magnetism that I’d experienced ten years ago, but if she felt anything similar she was playing it off.

  “So you’re married,” I said.

  She held up her left hand. A yellow gold wedding band and a fairly impressive diamond engagement ring.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do you love him?”

  “You’re not going to start asking idiotic questions, are you?”

  “Define idiotic.”

  She gulped her Chablis.

  “Roadhouse pussy,” she said, a little too loudly. It was her third glass of wine. The Palomino was crowded for lunch. Roadhouse pussy drew some stares.

  “I was stupid.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know why I did it.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know why, either.”

  “She didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I know that.”

  Our table was by the windows. The Palomino was four stories up. Nichole turned her face to the view. Her eyes were shiny.

  “Then you just disappear,” she said, to the window.

  “My dad—”

  “I know about your father. I was at the service. You didn’t notice me. No, shut up. I didn’t want you to notice me. That’s not why I went. I just wanted to see if you were all right.”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said.

  “I never believed in magic,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I never believed in that soulmate shit, that transcendental love shit. That ‘meant to be’ shit. Then in one night I changed inside. I had a dream, and it was like a new memory of who I was and who we were together. Who we were supposed to be. Right away I fought it but I couldn’t, not really. It’s like I could fight but what’s the point? So I believed. And later I really liked running away with you. Those months when you didn’t write or call me and I didn’t even know where you were, it was like dying. Isn’t that stupid, considering at that point we had like less than one full day to call ours? Then you did call, and you needed rescuing. Do you know what that was like, getting that damn call? Oh my God. Even when we were holed up in that cheesy no-tell motel, I didn’t care. It’s like the future didn’t matter anymore, just the now, the now between you and me. Okay? So what if my parents were fuck-ups. So what if sometimes I felt like taking too many pills or cutting my stupid wrists. That didn’t matter anymore. I know I was a pain-in-the-ass chick back then. But eventually I would have gotten over that. I just needed time, you know? I needed time to flush Roy Hathaway and his ilk out of my soul. I needed time to grow out of that. You think a person can be happy and healthy all of a sudden? You didn’t give me enough time.”

  “Nichole.”

  “Shut up. Okay? Just shut up, I’m almost done.”

  I shut up.

  She was still looking out the window. Her red lips pressed together, suppressing a tremble. I saw the momentum go out of her. She turned to me and daubed at her eyes with her napkin.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I’m married now. He’s a real nice guy, too. He treats me nice. He hasn’t got an ounce of charm, but he’s steady and sane and he loves me. That’s more than enough. You want soulmates and dreams, see my mother. She probably believes in that shit. I can’t really afford to anymore, you know?”

  She stood up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t talk to you. I thought I could but I can’t. Life really sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  She touched my cheek with the back of her hand then walked away. Her eyeliner left black smudges on the white linen napkin. My moat flooded, but it was too late.

  *

  I was twenty-nine years old (now and forever?) and I possessed not one marketable skill with which to earn a living. I watched my meager funds dwindle, and I was too proud by half to contact Langley Ulin about the wages he’d supposedly been salting away for me those ten years I spent in the village. He had lied to me. The dream of my father and Jeepers had been more than a dream. I knew instinctively that what my dream-dad had told me was true. I was done with Ulin and he could keep his stinking blood money.

  That left me without many options.

  I decided to see what I could get on the open market for my miracle boy status.

  What I got was laughed out of newsrooms
of the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Okay, I wasn’t actually laughed at, not to my face. But I got the idea. Of course, I had no proof. I was better received at the editorial offices of the alternatives, The Weekly, The Stranger, but even they declined to present my story. Langly Ulin’s status as a rich industrialist made him an attractive target, but again: I lacked proof. I lacked credibility. I was just some guy with a weird story and an ax to grind. In the end, I resorted to the lizard trick. Reluctantly. I knew in theory it would work. My eyes grew back with reliable predictability. So had my kidneys and a few other organs. The process would be the same for any other body part. Ulin’s medical types had confirmed this. My whole body was a lizard tail. Chop a piece off and watch it grow back. Theories are nice. Chopping things off isn’t.

  I returned to the Times. There was a guy there who wrote a column called “Weird World.” He did local stories about the unexplained. Haunts and Big Foot and Mysterious Sink Holes. The column appeared in the entertainment section.

  I appeared at Joe Keegan’s desk. He’d agreed to talk with me but made no promises about devoting any ink to my cause. I’d bypassed him on my first visit to the Times. I didn’t want to appear in the entertainment section. I’d wanted a legitimate news story, national interest. Maybe a book deal? Why not.

  Well, at least Mr. Keegan worked for a legitimate newspaper.

  His desk was in the newsroom. I sat in a chair next to him and we talked over coffee. Keegan was a young guy, about twenty-five. He had a bushy orange mustache and wore a blue work shirt, sleeves rolled above his elbows, a burgundy tie pulled loose, and a red Kangol cap, Kangaroo forward. During the forty-five minutes or so that I spilled my guts he constantly tapped the eraser end of a yellow pencil on his thigh.

  When I finished I said, “What do you think?”

  “It’s got a nifty local angle, and it’s original, all right. But to tell you the truth it’s a little outside my line. What we like to do is stuff where no one is going to come at the paper with a lawsuit in their hot little fist. That’s why I don’t pick on Mrs. Bill Gates and her secret seances, for instance.”