Jim Rubart Trilogy

by James L. Rubart

  He turned to the launch path and started down it without looking back. Twenty seconds later the earth fell away and the only sound was the swish of the wind against his glider—and the echo of A. C.’s words in his mind.

  Sure, he could stand on his brother’s front porch and wait for eternity before Shasta would come out. Or he could break the front door down and stand in his brother’s den staring at the back of his head and his electric wheelchair wishing he could go back in time and change what he’d done.

  And Shasta would never settle his chin on his wheelchair control and turn to face him. Corin could speak of a fantastical chair that healed his friend and a little kid, and Shasta would laugh at him and reel off all the mystical and magical cures he’d tried—mostly at Corin’s urging—during the year after the accident.

  And it would shut his brother down even further—if that was possible.

  Once again Corin would be reminded of how utterly he’d destroyed their friendship for the rest of their lives.

  No thank you.

  If God really wanted to help him, He’d have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars show up on the seat of the chair. The surgery was something Corin would fight for. At least that had proven science behind it, and it had worked two-thirds of the time. Sit in the chair? Shasta would laugh at the idea no matter how many people were healed.

  But a small part of him knew A. C. was right. A part that was growing. A part that said he had to find a way for Shasta to be healed. And that meant thinking of the chair as one option.

  Corin shook his head. This was where he was supposed to be free. For the next hour he was. He pushed consideration of Shasta and the chair from his thoughts and let his mind soar along with his glider on the thermals.

  A. C. was to the left and slightly ahead of him. Corin radioed him on his walkie-talkie to confirm their landing spot was about three miles ahead. After another fifteen minutes he focused on Badger Flats where A. C. and he would land. It looked good. Wait. What was that?

  A figure stood in the meadow near Corin’s truck. Odd. It was the first time anyone had been waiting to greet them after one of their flights.

  Whoever it was, he hadn’t been invited to the party.

  Corin radioed A. C. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “If that’s a scarecrow he’s come to life.”

  “Any idea who our welcoming committee might be?”

  A. C. laughed. “You’re going to get followers, buddy. Probably some groupie from the chair fan club.”

  “Let’s hope not. Some of them are more stable than others.” Corin leaned to his left and started a long, sweeping turn that would bring him around to see the figure from the front.

  Thirty seconds later and three hundred feet lower, he got a good look at the person. A. C. was right. But it wasn’t just a member of the fan club. It was their president.

  Corin’s radio squawked and A. C.’s voice poured out of it. “Can you see who it is?”

  He saw. And it made him wish his hang glider was equipped with a cloaking device. Or lasers. At least one of the Green Goblin’s exploding pumpkins. Why was the guy so relentless? Corin was grateful he hadn’t taken this sky spin solo. “It’s my number one fan.”

  “Mark Jefferies?”

  “Bull’s-eye.”

  Mark stood with feet a bit more than shoulder width apart, arms folded, black sunglasses matching his black leather jacket. He stared into the sky, his gaze shifting back and forth between Corin and A. C.

  Corin finished his turn, straightened, then banked again. He considered landing as far away from Mark as possible—make the pastor trudge across the lumpy field in his European shoes—but what was the point? The pastor of Stalkerville wouldn’t leave without cornering Corin so he might as well get it over with.

  He landed fifty feet from Mark, his back to the pastor. The crunch of Mark’s shoes grew closer, then stopped—maybe fifteen feet behind him. “How was your flight?”

  “Good, how was yours?”

  “Fine.”

  “Too warm for you in La Jolla?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know we were going to land here?” Corin slid off his harness, his back still to Mark.

  A. C. glided in on his left and landed fifty yards away. Corin motioned him closer. If Mark ever got physical, Corin was confident he could handle himself, but having A. C. next to him would be a nice backup, both physically and verbally.

  “There are only a few places around here to land,” Mark said. “This is one. I have friends at the other in case you landed there instead.”

  “You’re still tracking me.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want, Jefferies?”

  “As I’ve said before, to help you.”

  “We’ve been over this. If I need your help, I’ll ask.”

  “This is a different kind of help. A kind I haven’t given yet and I don’t offer lightly.”

  A. C. trundled up and set his glider down next to Corin’s. “Are we having a party?”

  Mark ignored him. “You want this kind of help, Corin.”

  “A. C., meet Mark; Mark meet A. C.”

  Both men stared at each other, neither spoke. A. C. finally nodded in Mark’s direction and the pastor nodded back. “How’s your shoulder?”

  A. C. frowned. “What about it?”

  “The left one. Better than usual?”

  “They’re both fine.”

  “I’ll bet.” Mark laughed. “Look, I’m not one for games, so let me be blunt. I have a lot of friends in this town in high places. So when a miracle happens to someone’s shoulders or carbon-dating samples come back with bizarre results, I’m going to hear about it. Clear? So don’t play the coy card, all right?”

  “Unless you want to infuse my business with a large influx of cash, I’m not interested, ”Corin said.

  “It is cash.” Mark folded his arms and raised his chin. “As you say, a large influx.”

  “What, you’re going to give me five hundred thousand dollars for the chair?”

  “Eight.”

  “What?” Corin stared at Mark, then glanced at A. C., who looked back with raised eyebrows.

  “Eight hundred thousand dollars. I give you the money; you give me the chair.” Mark took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the front of his midnight blue T-shirt.

  Corin blinked and studied Mark’s face. The man was serious. “Why?”

  “Because as you know, the chair is an obsession for me and I’ve come to believe in its authenticity. Because I want the deal done now and that kind of cash shows you how serious I am. And because this will help your current circumstances considerably.” Mark motioned as if handing out dollar bills. “I know you need the money.”

  This guy wasn’t just the pastor of Stalkerville. He owned the place. Corin folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “You better explain how you know that.”

  “I need to know what’s going on in your life, Corin.”

  “In other words you’ve had your personal Mafia delving into everything about me.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But none of them are here now.” Corin held his palms up. “I’m guessing you don’t want anyone else to witness this suggestion of what you do with the church’s money.”

  Mark walked up to within a foot of Corin. “This kind of money could dig you out of the debt your store is in.” He leaned in, his face now only six inches from Corin’s. “But that’s only secondary to the primary thought bouncing around your brain right now.” Mark glanced at A. C. and lowered his voice. “You’re thinking this money could pay for an operation that insurance companies won’t touch because of its experimental nature. An operation that has worked for 60 percent of the patients who have gone unde
r the knife. An operation that might put someone’s life back together.”

  Corin’s body temperature notched up two degrees as two thoughts flashed through his mind. First, how did this guy know so much about him, and second, how absolutely correct he was. Eight hundred thousand would take care of the store and provide the funds for Shasta to have the surgery. If his brother would try it. It was a Mount-Everest-sized if. But getting him to sit in the chair would be a trip to Jupiter.

  “Talk to me, A. C. What do you think?”

  A. C. strode slowly behind Mark, who kept his eyes fixed on Corin. “I don’t trust the guy. More importantly, you don’t trust the guy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Let’s see, I’ve only known you for twenty years.”

  Corin studied his friend. “In other words, you’d want to see the money in the bank before you turned over the chair.”

  “I wouldn’t turn over that chair for eight hundred million dollars.”

  Jefferies spun toward A. C. “But you’re not the one whose brother sits in a prison every waking hour of the day knowing you were the cause of it, are you? And you’re not the one who is about to lose his business.”

  Jefferies was right. A. C. wasn’t drowning in debt and didn’t have a seven-course meal of guilt every morning. “How soon could you have the money?”

  “I could have it in your account before nightfall.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Corin carried his gliding gear to his truck.

  “I want an answer by nine tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll give you an answer in a week.”

  “Two days.”

  “Three.”

  “Fine.” Mark whirled and strode toward his car. “Three days. Not four. Not three and a half. At the stroke of midnight on the third day, the offer turns back into a pumpkin and your glass slipper will shatter on the ground.”

  Corin didn’t answer. He stared at the back of Mark’s silver Cadillac DTS till it faded from sight behind a cluster of golden aspen trees. Churches must be paying well for him to rent a car like that.

  As they drove back up to the butte to retrieve A. C.’s Jeep, their entire conversation consisted of three lines.

  “Will you sell it to him, Cor?”

  “It would solve a lot of problems.”

  “What’s the biggest problem it would solve?”

  Corin didn’t answer.

  Three days to decide.

  Tomorrow he would drive out to the lake—he hadn’t been there in over a month—and make himself face his demons.

  CHAPTER 31

  Early the next evening, after closing the store, Corin drove out Sky View Drive toward Woodmoor Lake—as he normally did every two or three weeks—to go another three rounds in the ring with his old buddy Terror.

  He would keep wrestling the fear till it crashed to the mat, he choked it to death, and he was free of the memory. “Face your fears,” that’s what his counselor had said.

  And now he had a new psychological opponent in the ring. To sell the chair or keep it.

  Woodmoor Lake was nearly the same size as Lake Vereor, maybe a few acres bigger. Woodmoor Lake served as an excellent substitute for what had happened at Vereor when he was ten. He closed his eyes and bit his upper lip. A trip there wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.

  He shuddered.

  Lake Vereor.

  The lake he’d drowned in.

  Died in.

  Where his heart had stopped and he hadn’t filled his lungs with anything but water for over five minutes.

  When he arrived at Woodmoor Lake, he parked his car in his usual spot, then sat in his car for ten minutes. Get out and face the fear. Wrestle with the dream demons and crush them under your heel.

  After throwing on a raincoat and scrunching an old Rockies baseball hat onto his head, he got out and meandered up the small grassy rise shielding the lake from the parking lot. When he reached the top, Corin jammed his hands in his pockets and squeezed his fingers into fists.

  The sun briefly poked through gray clouds as it slithered its way down into the night and Corin blinked against the intermittent moments of brightness.

  His breaths shortened as he stared at the lake and he forced himself to breathe slower.

  No fear.

  Nothing to fear.

  Nothing he couldn’t conquer.

  If only it were true.

  NICOLE WATCHED CORIN settle onto the bench overlooking the lake as she’d done for the past nine years. How many hours had she prayed for him as he sat there? Probably hundreds if they were added up. Finally time to see if those years of prayer would bring healing or hell.

  So much good surrounded the chair. So much evil drawn to it because of its power. Impossible to have one without the other.

  Had he discovered the chair’s healing power yet? Most likely yes. Corin had to realize the boy with asthma was healed because of the chair. She walked toward him, determined not to reveal too much of who she was, even though she desperately wanted to.

  Nicole asked once more for wisdom before she would enter Corin Roscoe’s life and stay in it no matter what happened.

  CORIN LET THE memory of the drowning flood his mind, let the fear wash through his heart, and tried to fight the terror that seemed to claw at his brain.

  No, it’s over; you lived. You have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fear.

  But it didn’t help. It never helped. The dream would still come.

  Why couldn’t he shake it? Why couldn’t he accept the fact he didn’t die in the lake that day; accept the fact he’d lived and get over the fear? He’d been to counselors who kept asking him, “How do you feeeel? How do you feeeel?” without ever giving him concrete steps to eradicate the incident from his mind.

  The sky shifted, a set of dark clouds cobbled across the sky, and a few minutes later a fine rain drizzled onto Corin’s Patagonia jacket, the bench he sat on, and the grass that surrounded him. A minute later the rain thickened. He was about to get up when the sound of drops dancing on an umbrella made him spin to the left.

  Nicole.

  She stood ten feet to his side, a smile shining under her intense eyes. Eyes that seemed to drill into his soul. Eyes that seemed to know him beyond what they should.

  She stepped toward him and stopped in front of him.

  “Do you mind?” She motioned toward the bench.

  “Please.”

  Nicole sat, her umbrella covering both their heads. She wore a black raincoat, which contrasted sharply with the sun-bleached bench. Black gloves covered her hands.

  “How is your life progressing these days, Corin?”

  He studied her face. Joyful. Serious. At the same time. One moment she looked thirty-five, the next she was ninety.

  “I e-mailed you back. I’ve been dying to talk to you.” Corin rammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. “Is this the point in the script where you tell me exactly why you showed up at my store two weeks ago and gave me the chair? And if the chair was really made by Christ? And if you’re one of the legendary Keepers of the Chair, some kind of spiritual being?”

  She laughed—a kaleidoscope laugh that made him think of a rainbow. “I am no angel. Of that you can be certain.”

  “Why did you give me the chair?”

  “That is something I am anxious to tell you, but not before the time is right.” She removed her gloves and reached over and patted his shoulder. “We don’t want to move too quickly, I don’t think.”

  “Maybe you don’t. I’m ready to slide behind the wheel of a Ferrari and mash the accelerator to the floor.”

  “The faster you go, the higher the chance of an accident.”

  “I’m willing to take the chance.”
>
  Nicole turned her gaze to the lake. “Why do you come to the water?”

  “Is the legend true? Has this chair been passed from mother to daughter for centuries?”

  Nicole nodded.

  The rain pinged the surface of the lake as it grew darker. “And does it truly contain the healing power of Christ?”

  “At this point it doesn’t matter what I tell you; it matters what you believe.” Nicole adjusted the umbrella so it covered Corin’s legs. “Has it healed anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Corin hesitated. “Yes.”

  “I see.”

  They sat in silence, as the clouds continued their trek north across the sky and the rain returned to a drizzle, then stopped.

  “Why do you come to the water?” Nicole repeated her question.

  “I think you already know.”

  She smiled. “I don’t know everything about you.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Enough.”

  Corin stared at the dark undulations in the water’s surface, mocking him, laughing at him, daring him to enter the lake.

  “Do you know what happened to me when I was younger?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Only that you almost drowned. I know none of the details.”

  Corin leaned back and pulled his baseball hat farther down his head. Tell her? Why not?

  “When I was ten my family took a camping trip to Lake Vereor. The third day of the trip we rented these pontoons with bikes welded on top of them side by side. They looked like they were made by someone in their garage who took a shot of whiskey with every weld. You pedaled the bikes and they moved underwater paddles that propelled us around the lake. I was with my dad; my brother was with my mom.”

  Corin rubbed his face. “We all had life jackets, being safe you know. After we tooled around for fifteen or twenty minutes, we decided to switch. I’d join my mom, my brother, Shasta, would push the pedals with my dad.”

  Corin closed his eyes as the memory pressed into his mind as if the Incredible Hulk was squeezing his brain into pulp.