The Wooden Sea

by Jonathan Carroll

  As fast as my limping head could think, I tried sorting through my options. If we stayed in the library, Bill Pegg would eventually assume some kind of hostage situation was going on and take the appropriate steps. That did not bode well. I liked Bill very much but knew he had dreams of glory, most of them unfulfilled. Here was a chance for him to take charge big-time but that was not necessarily a good thing.

  A simpler way would be for us to just walk out of the library. But both choices led to the same thing—hours wasted explaining and sorting this bizarre situation out afterward. I could not afford to waste that time.

  “What about the basement?” Junior asked but his question didn’t register in me until some beats had passed.

  “Huh?”

  “The basement. What if we snuck out of here through the door in the basement?”

  “Why sneak?”

  “Because the cops are outside, dumbbell! Jeez, you want them to catch you or something?”

  “Who is this child, McCabe?”

  “He’s my son.”

  “I am not!”

  “Well, close enough. How do you know about the basement?”

  “Because I know a lot about this place. I have pretty well explored everything around here. Me and this guy, we found a way to sneak out downstairs through a fire door—”

  Scorched brain notwithstanding, I remembered what the boy was talking about, remembered jimmying the lock on a door downstairs when I was his age. Al Salvato and me. I spoke that name before I had a chance to think, “Al Salvato.”

  Little Fran nodded because it was obvious that’s who he was talking about.

  And he was right—we could easily sneak out that door and after a few strategic lefts and rights, be gone from this neighborhood in five minutes.

  “You’re a smart kid. And since you came up with the idea, why don’t you lead the way?”

  “Okay.”

  I took Floon’s arm and pushed him in front of me. He didn’t resist, which was clever, because if he had I would have hit him on the head again. We left the computer room and, turning right down the hall, walked till we got to a wide staircase. The kid took it two quick steps at a time. Us old men were slower but we made it to the bottom too.

  The kid waved for us to follow him. “That door’s over here.”

  “How ‘bout this quick-witted boy, Floon? He’s actually going to get us out of here. No wonder I’m so smart—I started young.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, McCabe?”

  “Never mind. Just follow that little genius.”

  As I was reaching out to push the door open, at the last moment I noticed a sign on the wall saying it was an emergency fire exit. When it was opened an audible signal would be heard.

  I assumed that meant some kind of horrendous screeching racket to scare off any rascals trying to weasel out of the library with stolen books. Any horrendous screeching racket would not help my plan to tiptoe out of here and make a stealthy escape.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Floon didn’t wait for permission. “When you open that door it will set off an electronic alarm. Just in case you didn’t read the schild there.”

  “It’s called a plaque, Floon, or a sign. Not a schild. I already know there’s an alarm.”

  “Yes, well, I would guess that if you looked a bit you’d find a wire to it that you could disconnect.”

  That made me suspicious—especially because he spoke in such an even tone. “Why do you care if we get out of here now?”

  “Because I don’t want to be arrested. There are other things I would rather be doing than sitting in a jail cell.”

  “You won’t be doing anything until I’m finished with you. And then I’ll put you in jail myself.”

  The boy scowled at us, hands on hips. “Are you two guys going to talk all day or are we getting out of here? Come on, let’s go!”

  It took five minutes to locate the wire and with a snick of the boy’s fat brown Buck pocketknife, seconds to cut it. Then we were outta there and the door was banging shut behind us. We walked up a small hill, down past a thin creek, looked back, and the library was gone. And so was my uncertainty about where to go.

  “Take a right here.”

  “May I ask where we’re going?” Every time Floon spoke it came out sounding both pedantic and amused. It was a voice you wanted to hit with a baseball bat.

  “To George’s house.”

  “Why? We were just there!” For the first time his voice cracked into something annoyed and vaguely human.

  The boy poked me in the side. “Who’s George?”

  “Junior, I really am grateful to you for helping in the library. But if you’re going to come along now, I don’t want any questions—nothing, not one. There’s too much happening and my head’s jam-packed. Questions from you won’t help. Capice?”

  “Yeah. I capice.”

  “Good. But I’ll answer you this one time: We’re going to a friend of mine’s house. His name is George and he’s very smart. I want him to help me figure something out. Okay? That’s the whole plan.”

  We walked across the familiar backyards and back streets of Crane’s View. A little boy leading two middle-aged men. Sometimes he skipped along smiling to himself, alone in his own world. Watching him, I tried to remember pieces of that world where I’d once lived: Good & Plenty licorice candies, bunkbeds in my bedroom, Early Wynn pitching for the Cleveland Indians, Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the Beatles singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” the Three Stooges on TV. I walked on, remembering the delicious trivia that had filled those days. Some of it came back but so much was gone. That part made me very sad. I wished there would have been time to sit down with the boy and ask him to tell me about his life, my life. Then I could have known it again in detail and carried that knowledge with me for as much time as I had left.

  Sometimes the boy looked confused because the town he’d known forty years ago was not the same as today’s. Houses he knew were not where they were supposed to be. Houses were not supposed to be where they were. The layout looked different. Who were all these strangers? No one knows a small town like the kids living there. They live on the streets, memorize the residents, the cars, and what’s in the store windows. In the summer when school is out they have little else to do. Stay home bored or be out and around in the town. So they stand by their bikes and watch as cars get put up on the rack for a lube job at the gas station, or people moving in and out of the houses. Kids can tell you about a new member of the community before anyone else can. How many children do they have, what kind of dog, the color of their furniture, and if the husband yells at the wife.

  Crane’s View was Little Fran’s town while at the same time this town wasn’t. But the changes he must have seen everywhere didn’t appear to bother him much. When puzzled he would only stop, look back at me, and wait for instructions. Keeping Floon a few steps in front, I mainly watched the boy and found myself continually smiling. I liked his willingness to accept changes of scenery; anything different from his own world seemed okay. The expression on his face said he was open to it all. “McCabe?” Floon turned to look at me. I gave him a shove. “Keep moving, asshole.” “I am moving. Why do you think we’ve been sent back here?” “I know why I’ve been sent back, Caz. You’re here by mistake. You’re a fucking blemish.”

  “How do you know?” “The aliens told me.” “That’s very helpful.” “Glad to be of service.”

  We walked on, the boy still a ways in front of us. “Hey, Caz, how do you row a boat across a wooden sea?” “I couldn’t care less. Cute little arcane questions don’t interest me.”

  “With a spoon.”

  Both of us looked at the boy. “A spoon?”

  “Yes, because there’s no such thing as a wooden sea. So if there was then it’d be a crazy thing, which means you’d have to use something crazy to row across it, like a spoon. Or maybe it’s not a wooden sea, but a wooden C, like in the letter? See?” He grew a wi
cked grin. “Which one of ‘em do you mean?”

  “Christ, I didn’t even think of that.”

  Floon looked from one version of me to the other and back again. “Didn’t consider what?”

  “That it might be a C and not a sea.”

  Floon frowned. “I take it back, McCabe—maybe he is your son. There’s a real family resemblance in the recondite way you two think.”

  “Recondite. You sure know your vocabulary, Caz. Wasn’t that word on our last spelling bee?”

  The boy fell into step next to me. He skipped a few steps and then to my real surprise, took my hand in his. I didn’t know what to say. It felt strange but sweet too. Holding hands with yourself, forty years apart.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I knew the answer but wanted to hear him say it anyway. Wanted to hear him living inside that dream again as I had for many of my boyhood years.

  He actually puffed out his chest a bit before answering. “I wanna be an actor. I wanna act in monster movies. Maybe be the guy inside the monster suit.”

  “Oh yeah? Do you know The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad? That’s my favorite movie.”

  He dropped my hand and jumped aside. “Mine too, mine too! That’s the greatest movie in the world. The Cyclops in it is my favorite. I made one just like it out of clay in my art class.” He put both hands up and curling them into three-clawed paws, roared Cyclops-style. “That part where Sinbad sticks the torch in his eye and burns it out so he’s blind and he stumbles back and falls off the cliff? Do you remember that?”

  I nodded in complete understanding. “How could I forget? It’s the best.” How many times had I watched that scene both when I was his age and sitting with my buddies in the fourth row of the Embassy Theater, and then after my thoughtful wife gave me a copy of the video for Christmas a few years ago? Whenever she was angry with me, Magda would call me “Sekourah,” who was the villain in the film.

  The short rest of the way to George’s house we talked about the movies we loved and our favorite scenes in them. It was nice to be able to agree on absolutely everything. Floon got fed up and disgustedly asked if we would please change the subject? In happy unison we said “No!” and kept talking.

  “What kind of car is that?”

  Parked in front of George’s house was a very futuristic looking four-wheel-drive vehicle. I’d seen it advertised on TV—an Isuzu, some kind of Isuzu. Everything about it was more round and aerodynamic than those weekend-warrior standbys. It looked like the kind of too-cool car you see in music videos on MTV.

  Floon spoke before I had a chance to answer the boy’s question. “It’s an Isuzu Vehicross. A marvelous car. Two hundred fifteen horsepower, torque-on-demand four-wheel-drive. I owned one exactly like it when I was a young man. The first new car I ever bought.” He sounded so smitten with the car that I half expected to see little hearts come rising off his head like lovebirds in a Disney film.

  “It’s really ugly if you ask me. Looks like a big silver frog. Can you drive it in the water? It looks like one of those cars in a James Bond movie that you can drive off the road into the water.”

  Floon looked positively miffed at what I thought was the kid’s fair assessment. “No you can’t drive it into the water, for God’s sake. But you can go off road with it, although sometimes that’s dangerous because there is an awful blind spot in the back. That’s what caused my accident.”

  “What’s a blind spot?”

  Floon ignored the kid, all the while grinning at the Isuzu as if it were his child.

  “My goodness, Caz, you’re actually smiling now. I didn’t think you knew how.”

  Sliding a stubby hand across the roof of the car, he patted it affectionately. The sound was louder than usual because everything else around us was very quiet. “Seeing this brings back nice memories. I was twenty-nine and working for Pfizer. They gave me a raise and at the time all I wanted in the world was one of these. I thought if you owned a car like this you could rule the world: You would be so cool you could eat lions for breakfast. Remember when a car could fill your life, McCabe? I distinctly remember the day I realized I could afford to buy one—in exactly this color. But I purposely waited two weeks before going to the showroom. It was like standing outside a candy store with a pocket full of money. You put off going in as long as you can bear it just to prolong the pleasure of anticipation. I had been mooning over the catalog for months. I’d memorize all the details and the specifications I wanted on my car. I still remember most of them to this day.” He stopped talking. Staring at the car, he let the good memories wash over him.

  Unimpressed, Junior crossed his arms and frowned. “I still think it looks like a frog.”

  Floon started to walk around the car. I tensed, not knowing what he was about to do.

  “I’d only had the car two months when I backed into someone at a parking lot because of that ridiculous blind spot. It was a really stupid flaw in the car’s design. I put a big dent right—” Bending down, his head disappeared behind the other side of the car. Things got even quieter and stayed that way. Finally the boy and I looked at each other and simultaneously walked around the car to see what was going on.

  Floon had squatted down and was busily running his hand back and forth across a large dent on the lower left side panel. Although he said nothing, his busy hand would go slow then speed up, then slow… so that it looked like he was trying to sand the section with the flat of his palm.

  “Whacha doin’ there, Caz?” I said it as gently as I could, not at all sure where the hell his mind was at that moment.

  When he looked up his eyes didn’t tell a happy tale. “This is exactly the same dent.” He tried to stand, winced, stopped. Putting a hand on his lower back, he rose much more slowly. Without a word he shuffled toward the front of the car and opened the driver’s door. Surprised by his calm chutzpah, I was about to play cop and say hey, you can’t do that but this looked too interesting. I decided to wait and see what he’d do next.

  Floon climbed into the car. Instead of sitting down, he stayed on his knees on the driver’s seat and appeared to be searching for something on the floor. Then he started talking to himself. Not just a word or two but whole long sentences. When I got close enough to hear what he was saying I couldn’t understand anything because he spoke in a guttural foreign language. It sounded like German but later turned out to be Dutch. Every word sounded like he was trying to clear his throat. Everything he said came out sounding like a loud distressed mumble; the kind of annoyed/worried conversation you have with yourself when you can’t find your keys and you’re in a big hurry.

  “Telemann! Hah!” His back to me, he held up a CD jewel case and shook it as if it were a crucial piece of evidence he had discovered. Caz dropped it and kept reaching around on the floor and under the car seats.

  “Floon!”

  “Wait!”

  Because I was such a nice fellow I’d give him a few more seconds to find whatever he was looking for. Besides it was interesting seeing him melt down into a molten nutcase.

  In English he said, “Hah, there it is! I was right.”

  “What’s he doing?” Junior came over and went up on his toes for a better view.

  Deepening my voice, I tried to sound like Orson Welles, “I’m afraid the man’s coming unhinged.”

  “Huh? Waddya mean?”

  “Just hold on. We’re waiting to see what he’ll do next.” I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder. He quickly shook it off and stepped away from me.

  “Frannie? Is that you?”

  Looking up, I saw George standing on his porch next to a stranger. At first I didn’t know the other guy. A young man, he looked vaguely familiar. Then recognition came like a cannon going off in front of me. And I knew who he was—big-time. I almost laughed out loud. “Oh boy! Uh, Caz?”

  He kept rummaging and mumbling but would not turn around.

  “Floon!”

  That got his attention. He glared at me over h
is shoulder. There was something in his hand but his body blocked my view of it. Anyway I was in a hurry to tell him and watch his reaction.

  “What do you want, McCabe?” The words came out too loudly; his voice was full of hatred and hurry.

  Pointing a finger at him like a gun, I spat back just as meanly, “Don’t talk to me like that, you piece of shit. Look at the porch. Just look over there.” I threw my arm wildly in that direction. Anything to get his goddamned eyes to look that way.

  “What did you say?”

  “Look on the porch, Floon!”

  “I cannot. I have to—”

  “Okay, that’s it. Get out of that car. Come here—” I reached for him but he was faster. The next thing I knew, Caz de Floon had a new pistol in his hand and was pointing it at me. Where did he get that? It almost didn’t matter because what he was about to see was a lot more powerful than a gun.

  “Get away from me, McCabe.”

  I stepped back, hands up. “Please look at the porch?”

  Twisting back and forth, he awkwardly worked himself out of the car. The gun remained pointed at my heart the whole time. Only when he was standing again did he look where I’d said. The stranger next to George watched all of this with a kind of vaguely curious passivity. What was happening was sort of interesting but not enough to make him excited.

  These two men looked at each other. Watching I got a chill up my back because to my great surprise, the expressions on their faces didn’t change a bit. The younger man seemed engaged but aloof. The old man was just plain pissed off.

  “Don’t you know who that is? For Christ’s sake even I know who it is! How can you not recognize him, Floon? It’s you! It’s you when you were young!”

  “I know. I knew he was here as soon as I saw the dent in the car. That’s why I was looking around inside it. I knew this was my car. I always kept this gun under the passenger’s seat. I taped it there the day I brought it home from the dealer.”