“Smokey, my friend…” Mickey shifted his eyes to the picture Anthony held and focused. “You are entering a world of pain…”
Anthony leaned in closer, his face above the picture. “Where did you get this?”
“Harris…” Mickey uttered as a look of recognition swept across the exposed muscle and sinew of his face.
“Harris?” Riley asked aloud.
“Who’s Harris?”
“Oh, Harris, it is you…” Mickey quivered. “I never thought I’d see you again, but here you are—here we are.” He whispered to Anthony, “Where are we Harris?”
“He thinks he knows him,” Evan whispered to Riley.
“Who is the man in this picture?” Anthony asked again.
“Harris. It’s Harris. My god—you’re Harris.”
“My name isn’t Harris, mister. It’s Anthony.”
“Anthony. Silly-silly-bo-billy, banana-fanna-go-filly, me-my-mo-Anthony—” Mickey paused before expelling this last word of his apparent song: “Anthony! No. That doesn’t work.”
“Who is Harris, mister? Mister?”
“He thinks you’re Harris.” Gary reached up and rubbed the sides of his curly head briskly before returning to the imaginary hairs on his knuckles.
“Harris was the best of us,” said Mickey. “Harris was pure.”
“Sounds like Harris isn’t around anymore.” Evan said to Riley.
Doctor Rheem excused himself, promising to return momentarily.
“Listen!” hissed Mickey. “He made a mistake…it was a mistake!”
“Who made a mistake?” Anthony furrowed his brow, trying to understand. “Did Harris make a mistake?”
“Ask Bear, ask Bear!”
“Bear?” Anthony queried.
“Ask the bear?” Evan wondered.
“Ask Bear!”
“Write that down,” Riley told Evan.
“Already did.”
“Was Yogi Bear that much smarter than the average bear?” Gary rocked back and forth at the waist again. “I mean, how could you tell?”
“Do you know this Bear?” Riley asked Gary.
“Of course I know Bear. He was smarter than Yogi. Boo Boo too.”
Riley squatted down next to Gary. She reached out to touch his shoulder, and he jerked himself back. She pulled her hand away, only then remembering what she knew about autistic people—that many of them did not like being touched.
“I’m sorry. Gary? Who is this guy Bear?”
“Heavens to Murgatroyd!” Mickey blurted.
“Gotta watch out for Mergatroid…” Gary warned, never once looking Riley in the face. “You don’t want to meet Mergatroid. What is it about Mergatroid?” Gary seemed to turn his attention to Mickey. “Yeah, well Peter Potamus has been everywhere, flying through the air—”
Mickey interrupted his friend with, “Over hill and under hill the banana buggies go-go-go!”
“They’re talking to each other?” Riley stood up.
“They do this sometimes,” said Evan.
“What are they talking about?” Anthony wondered aloud.
“Who knows…” Riley had to admit the whole thing with the photo was a bit unsettling. She thought it’d be best if she got herself and Anthony out of this room pretty soon.
“They obviously do.” Evan wasn’t writing in his pad any longer.
“I hate you meeces to pieces.” Gary had a mischievous look on his face.
“Muttley, you snickering, floppy-eared hound—stop that pigeon!”
Gary looked upset. “Daws Butler didn’t voice Dick Dastardly!”
“These guys…” This was madness, thought Riley.
“I wonder what’s going on in there.” Anthony pointed to his head.
Mickey saw him do it. “The man is clear in his mind…” he quoted, “but his soul is mad…”
“Is he talking about himself?” Riley wondered.
“Where is Bear, mister?” Anthony thought he’d give it one more shot.
“Do you know where Bear is?” Riley turned to Gary.
“Do I know where Bear is? Of course I know where Bear is. Why wouldn’t I know where Bear is?”
“Where is he?”
“He’s where Bear is. That’s where Bear is.”
“Where’s Bear?” Anthony asked Mickey.
“Wait,” said Mickey. “Listen.”
Everyone stopped and listened.
There was the steady hum of the medical equipment, and whatever was being said on the telescreen.
“What are they going to say about him?” Mickey recited from memory. “That he was a kind man? Man, he wasn’t a kind man…”
“Bear?” Riley mouthed the word to her brother and Anthony shrugged.
“…that he was a wise man? That he had plans, man? That he had moxie? Brio? That’s bullshit, man…”
“I want to talk to this Bear,” said Anthony. “Where can I find him?”
“Look man, you don’t talk to him.” Mickey looked at Riley. “I love this line,” he confided to her before resuming his harangue. “You listen to him. He’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense, a titan. I mean, sometimes, he’ll…”
“He’s quoting a movie.” Evan said.
“What?” Riley shot him a look.
“He’s quoting a film. Apocalypse Now. We watched it in this class I took. I can’t believe this.”
“…I mean, I’m a little man,” Mickey continued, “ but him—he’s a great man! A great man, comprende?”
“Okay,” Anthony nodded his head dolefully. “I understand you.”
“Do you?” The way Mickey said it, it was as if he were suddenly coherent.
“I do.”
“Do you dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”
“Now he’s quoting Batman!” Evan looked excited.
“Gary, where’s Bear?” The autistic man did not answer Anthony. Nor did he show any indication that he had heard the question. Anthony felt desperate. He knelt down beside Mickey on the bed. He felt this man knew something he needed to know. He had to get it out of him. “Mickey? Where can I find Bear?”
“In the Outlands. You’ll find him out there.”
“The Outlands…” Riley sighed.
“Let him tell you.” Fluid seeped out of Mickey’s face. “Let him tell you about the heartache that accompanies the loss of god…”
“What’s he—” Anthony looked perplexed, but Riley’s look silenced him.
“Out here on the periphery…out here on the perimeter, there are no stars…”
“The periphery?” Anthony mouthed the word to his sister.
“The Outlands.”
“Out here we is stoned. Immaculate.”
“In the Outlands?” Riley asked Mickey.
“In the Outlands.” Mickey affirmed.
“Five-four-two-two...” Gary recited his number combinations again.
Mickey heard his friend and joined in. “One through infinity, no if-ands no maybes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you know, without—like without fractions. Or decimals. What are you going to land on? One-sixteenth? What will you do when you go from here to Pluto or something?”
“That movie again.” Evan grinned, satisfied that he recognized at least one thread of Mickey’s deluded chatter.
Mickey reached up quickly, belying his condition, and gripped Anthony’s arm with the nub of what had been a hand. Anthony stared down at the raw, wet, pink stump pulling at him, at the misshapen thumb still attached to the whole mess.
“Harris…Find Bear. Find him. In the Outlands.”
“You don’t understand, mister. I’m not Harris. I’m Anthony.”
“You don’t understand, Anthony. You can’t handle the truth!” Mickey nearly yelled this last sentence, then softened. “You have to handle the truth. Go find the truth…Try to remember…in deep dark September…Anthony—Harris: they were you.”
“Want to get out of here?” Riley asked h
er brother.
“No, you go. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Ant, you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.” Riley nodded and left the room with Evan. They waited in the hall outside, neither wishing to leave Anthony alone too long in that room. Evan stood next to Riley and considered what he might say.
Anthony sat back in the chair and looked around the room. Gary pinched the tiniest of hairs on the back of his knuckles between the nails of his thumb and index finger and yanked them out. Mickey murmured to himself, unaware.
The man in the picture, Anthony thought, was his exact double. It was uncanny. Was the guy in the picture his dad? Anthony thought the man might be. Could a resemblance like that be a coincidence? Maybe it was just the photo. Was his dad’s name Harris? Did some thing—some guy named Bear—know his dad?
Anthony only knew of one man called Bear. Everybody did.
“You know who he’s talking about, right?” Evan asked Riley out in the hallway.
“What do you mean?”
“Bear. Mickey was talking about Bear.”
“I heard him.”
“You know who he means, right?”
“No.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah, so? Never heard of him.”
“Yes, you have.”
Riley looked at him.
“The zombie slayer, Rye. Remember the stories about the zombie slayer? When we were kids? In training? Another name for the zombie slayer was Bear.”
“Oh, those are just stories…”
On the telescreen in Mickey’s room, Paul Newman sat next to a coffin, lamenting Tunstall’s death, saying he had to do something. John Dierkes’ McSween told him he hadn’t really known Tunstall. “Nobody did,” said Mr. McSween. “Not close. Not even me.”
“I knew him,” said Newman.
“He was a man to himself.”
Anthony thought about how he had never known his biological father. That wasn’t unusual. Most of his friends had been orphaned at an early age, taken in by others.
“…but when I became a man, I put away childish things…” McSween quoted biblical verse as the camera moved in on Newman’s face. “For now, he sees through a glass darkly…”
Out there…Anthony mulled the thought over in his head…in the Outlands, maybe there were still answers. Answers to the question of who he was and where he came from.
“…but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I shall know, ever as also I am known.”
Anthony looked from a preoccupied Gary in the chair to Mickey resting quietly in the bed. He thought he was making up his mind about something. Anthony knew Riley would think he was crazy to even entertain the idea. He needed to talk, to go get Riley and go home and talk with their dad. He needed answers.
“You’ll want to find Mad Jack,” Gary spoke up, unbidden.
“Mad Jack?” Anthony looked at Gary, and Gary looked away. “Who’s he?”
“Denver Pyle…” Mickey muttered.
“Where would I look for Mad Jack?”
“Find number seven” murmured Mickey, “you’ll find Mad Jack.”
“Number seven?”
“Hee-haw, hee-haw.” Gary looked amused with himself. “Who says that? Does Dominick the Italian donkey say that?”
“…don’t die Dan Haggerty…” Mickey whispered. “Don’t die…”
Anthony stood. He had to get out of this room.
* * *
Their father was home when they got there.
Anthony and Riley’s dad was seated at the kitchen table, a digital reader in front of him. Their dad was a lean guy who wasn’t so lean any more. His pot belly showed under the white t-shirt he wore over his boxer shorts. His thin, hairy legs jutted out of the shorts and ended in the slippers he liked to wear around the house. Hair receded at his temples, and his face was deeply lined.
“Hi dad.”
Riley kissed him on the forehead and he replied, “Hmmmm.” He saw Troi—“Hello there, Troi”—and if the fact he wore his underwear in front of his children’s friend bothered him, Anthony and Riley’s dad didn’t show it.
“Hi! I’ll wait in your bedroom, Rye.”
Anthony sat down across from the man, and Riley stood next to her brother. Their dad looked up from the newspaper on his electronic tablet, realizing they wanted to talk.
“What happened? Riley?”
“It has nothing to do with me dad.”
“Ant, did you get a girl pregnant?”
“What?” Anthony gave his sister a perplexed look. “No.”
“Okay, that’s okay. I mean, that would have been okay. I guess.”
“Yeah, dad, look—I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”
“So then what’s up?”
“We need to talk.”
“I kind of figured that one out already, Ant. So talk to me.”
Riley sat down at the table as Anthony started. “I have a few questions about when I was a kid. When you took me in and all.”
“Oh,” their father understood. “So you want to have that talk now.”
They’d had that talk before. Their father had been open with both Anthony and Riley about their not being his children by birth, about his taking them in and raising them.
“Now? Dad, I’m twenty-one.”
“No, I mean now.” Their father pointed down at the table to indicated the present moment. “When your uncle’s coming over and we’re going to have ourselves a few drinks.”
“Show him,” Riley told her brother. Their dad looked across the table to Anthony, mildly puzzled. Anthony pulled the picture he’d been carrying around out of his pocket and passed it over to his father.
The man looked down at the picture, then across at his son, then back at the picture. “Eh-heh. Well, he does look a lot like you, that’s for sure.”
“Who is he dad?”
“I didn’t know him.”
“Was his name Harris?”
“Yeah, it might have been. I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean you don’t remember?” Riley tried to help her brother out.
“That was a long time ago…”
“Dad,” said Anthony. “There’s stuff you never told me. Isn’t there?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Can you tell me now?”
He nodded. “I honestly can’t tell you much. But there’s someone who might be able to.”
Riley and Anthony looked at their father expectantly.
“Her name is Gwen. I can tell you where she lives. Where she lived, if she’s still there. I hadn’t heard she’d moved or nothing. If you ever go to see her, you might not want to mention me. Ah shit, you can mention me. Why else would she…”
“What do you know about Bear and Bear’s Army?”
“I can tell you I knew him.” Their father looked concerned. “And I can tell you to leave that one alone. Both of you.”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” Anthony said. As his father listened, Anthony described his day. About the appearance of Mickey and Gary and the photograph, how Mickey referred to Harris and Bear. “I’m thinking I might need to get out there…” Anthony raised his chin “…into the Outlands. Find Bear.”
“For what?” His father sounded close to being irritated.
“I don’t know. Answers.”
“Answers.” Anthony’s father considered it. He looked worried. “I can’t tell you what you want to know. I don’t know it. If he goes,” their dad looked at Riley, “you planning on going with him?”
“Yes.”
Anthony gave Riley a quick look. They had not discussed this.
“You’re old enough, the both of you…” Their father scratched his temple. “You’re going to do whatever it is you’re going to do. But I want to let you know—I’ve got to say this. I don’t want you going out there. It’s too dangerous.”
“We’re trained, dad,” Riley assured him.
“
I know. That’s not what I’m worried about. You ever see a whole swath of forest just…just dead from radiation poisoning? Eh?”
“It’s here too.” Riley looked about the room.
“It’s killing us,” Anthony said. “Killing the kids I work with.”
“Tell us where that lady lives?”
When their father told them, Anthony and Riley were both surprised that the address was relatively close by. A bus ride away.
“You guys…” Their father looked at them very seriously. “Either one of you have any idea how much I love you?”
“We know,” said Riley. She felt bad for their father.
“Yeah, dad,” added Anthony. “And we love you, too.”
“We do.”
“I just…” Anthony struggled to put into words things he was wrestling with. “It’s just—I feel I have to do this.”
Their father nodded and rubbed the tip of his nose between thumb and index finger a few times.
“Well, if I wake up one morning and the both of you are gone…be careful. Be really careful. And, please, come back here to me in one piece.”
Pausing briefly to knock on the door, a tall, middle-aged man with reddish-hair walked into their house. He carried a brown paper bag with a bottle in it.
“Uncle Brent!” Riley ran over and hugged him.
“’Rye. Anthony.” He greeted the kids. “Steve,” Uncle Brent addressed their dad, “how you doing?”
“Pour me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Anthony, wait a second.” Riley put her hand around Anthony’s arm and stopped him outside the entrance to the pub. “Mad Jack? We’re supposed to look for someone named Mad Jack? You really think we want to meet someone called Mad Jack?”
Evan looked from Riley to her brother. He couldn’t agree with her more.
“No,” Anthony said. “But maybe he’s the guy who can get us where we need to go.”
There was a sign on the front of the pub. It said No. 7.
“This has got to be the place.” It took Anthony several seconds to adjust to the dark and shadow inside the bar. A dozen or so grizzled men and women sat in pairs and by themselves around the bar and at tables. Judging by the looks of them, they lived most of their days beyond the safety and sociability of New Harmony.
A few looked up when Anthony, Riley, and Evan walked in, then went back to their drinks, but not from diffidence. They were simply minding their own business.
Resurrection (Eden Book 3) Page 7
