October

by Al Sarrantonio

  Who wants to feel this boy inside her . . .

  Look at how he looks at me—like a mother, a goddess—not a woman.

  So, abruptly, petulantly, miserably, I try to end the interview.

  And Kevin breaks down.

  Suddenly, I am holding him, giving comfort. God, I wish I could give him what he wants! I wish—

  Fool! There is warmth growing between us, and suddenly I am ashamed. How can I think this way! He is twenty-four, and if only he would say a word, any word—

  No!

  So I send him away, with his tape recorder, and his pain, out of my bedroom, out of my life—

  Into Lydia's arms!

  Amazingly, I hear Lydia outside my door—poor daughter who has mooned over Kevin like a schoolgirl, who has melted into my shadow—and now, suddenly, she tries to break free!

  Like a voyeur, I creep to my door to see my daughter led Kevin to her bedroom. Transfixed—Lydia's door closes! She has done what I dared not—had not the courage to do!

  I walk back to my straight-backed chair and hug myself and cry.

  The curse of inner peace.

  If only I could give Kevin what he wants; if only . . .

  The Machine, the Time Machine . . .

  MY GOD, I BEGIN TO REMEMBER!

  The light goes on in the backyard, through the window, and it comes back to me. The cellar window. Jerry Martin reaches out through the flames, takes hold of my wrist. Icy numbness up my arm. He tries to pull me back into the flames, but then he uses my resistance, pulls himself out of the cellar window. Blackened bits, his face falling away. I fall back, and Jerry Martin, the smell of flesh, is on top of me, his charcoaled hands clawing at my face. I feel the bones of his fingertips in my mouth.

  His face comes close, hot breath, the odor of burned flesh. Nothing in his eye sockets, deep, empty wells. I scream, push against him, but he pries open my mouth, the skull-smile of his own scorched face widening, the heated air of ruined lungs.

  Something small scrabbles over his tongue, hanging to the edge, dropping toward my screams and then into my mouth—

  The Time Machine, the plateau, the real world, the present—

  LYDIA! LYDIA! PLEASE. DEAR GOD, LET ME STAY HERE ON THIS PLATEAU, IN THIS PLACE, JUST A LITTLE WHILE. I HEAR THE WORDS, DEAR GOD, I'M BEGINNING TO REMEMBER! LYDIA! SO COLD, OH, GOD, PLEASE, KEEP ME HERE, LYDIA! LYDIA! DAMN YOU, GIRL, YOU TRIED TO TAKE HIM FROM ME. LYDIA! COME HERE, GET KEVIN MICHAELS! PLEASE! IT'S GOING, I CAN'T . . .

  GET KEVIN MICHAELS!

  12

  October 24th

  As dawn broke, there was frost around the window. Davey could see his breath. He sat up, shivering. His throat was sore. His head hurt, and there was a dull, stabbing pain behind his eyes. He felt like throwing up. He fed the dog, but could not keep any food down himself. He tried to drink the juice from a can of fruit cocktail, but the sweetness in his throat made him gag.

  The morning remained cold. Davey huddled against the side of the freezer, the dog close by. He made himself a packed area of newspapers that he crawled into; the smell of yellowing newsprint made him sick to his stomach. His throat was so sore, he could barely swallow.

  In the early afternoon, Davey heard the tall man stir upstairs and leave the house.

  Shivering, Davey pushed himself out of his newspaper tent and ran to the window. He climbed a newspaper bundle and looked out.

  The tall man was mounting the hill away from the house. He wore no coat. Davey saw a fine film of frost on the tall grass at the foot of the hill.

  The tall man ascended the hill in long strides, crested the top, was gone.

  Davey waited, eye pressed close against the chilled, dirty glass, to make sure the tall man did not reappear. A surge of hope ran through him.

  "He's gone!"

  The dog huffed loudly.

  Davey jumped from the newspapers, mounted the cellar stairs. He pushed open the cellar door, ran to the front door and out onto the porch.

  He and the dog climbed the hill together.

  Davey caught sight of the tall man at the bottom of the hill, heading into town.

  Davey shivered with fever, but smiled at the dog and said, "Come on!"

  They ran back to the house. The dog stopped by the edge of the garden and pawed at the fresh-turned soil, whining.

  Davey hugged himself. "Come into the house."

  The dog moved farther into the garden. His agitation grew. He ran in tight circles, growling, stopping to sit on his haunches and bark, then leaning forward to dig at the soil.

  Davey watched and said, "Forget it. Come on."

  The dog pawed at the ground, huffed.

  Davey eyed the hill, looked at the dog.

  "All right, dammit, I'll have a look."

  The shovel was just inside the barn door. As he walked into the sun with it, a feverish shiver ran through him. He stopped at the spot where the dog was scratching.

  He pushed the shovel in, dug quickly. Big shovelfuls of loose loam moved easily aside.

  Almost immediately, he hit something solid.

  "What—"

  He uncovered a varicose-veined leg, the bottom fringe of a woman's skirt. Next to it was the cold, black head of a dog, the front of its face collapsed. Feeling worse than ill, Davey uncovered the body, revealing the ruined, cold face of Martha Meyer.

  "Shit," Davey said. The sight, coupled with his sickness, made him vomit into the hole.

  Not bearing to look, he covered the bodies with dirt.

  "He killed Ben Meyer and his wife," Davey said. He looked to the dog, who barked, backed away from the garden.

  "Let's get what we need and get out of here."

  Davey reentered the house. He went back to the cellar, opened the gun case, withdrew the .38 handgun. He brought his supply bag upstairs.

  He went through the hutch in the dining room until he found the ammunition for the .38. He loaded the gun, put the cardboard box of shells in his jacket pocket.

  He retrieved the grocery bag, put the .38 in it. "Let's go," Davey said.

  He opened the front door, let the dog out. He was sweat-ing, his mind racing, trying to think.

  As he reached the foot of the hill the dog made a sound and held back.

  "What is it?"

  The dog ran across the yard, toward the apple orchard. Davey followed.

  He turned at the first block of trees. The tall man was just topping the rise that led down to the farmhouse. With him was another man, older, huskier, almost as tall. They began their descent to the house.

  "Jesus," Davey said. He fumbled in the grocery bag, tearing it. Cans and packages spilled out. He found the .38, flipped the safety off, raised the gun in the air, fired it.

  "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey!"

  The two men stopped, turned, located him. He waved his arms, fired the gun into the air again. "Get away!" he shouted. He put the gun down, cupped his hands around his mouth. "Get away!"

  The two men stood still as statues. Then, the tall man with suspenders raised his arm and struck the other man. The other man fell to the ground. He tried to rise, but the man in suspenders struck him again and then straddled the body.

  The man in suspenders searched the ground around him, lifted a rock, brought it down on the man beneath him.

  Davey fired the gun again. The tall man in suspenders paused, turned to look at him. The dog barked, growled loudly, ran in circles, whined.

  The tall man turned back to the man on the ground, raised the rock, brought it down. The man on the ground did not move. The man in suspenders rose, looked steadily at Davey and the dog.

  "Come on." Davey thrust the gun into his jacket pocket. Abandoning the food, he ran through the orchard. He glanced back through the straight rows of trees. He saw no one. Then the tall man's form appeared, just entering the trees. When he reached the rock wall, Davey vaulted over as the dog jumped beside him.

  "Run, boy."

  The hill bottomed out. Davey half slid down, loosened
rocks on the edge of the path tumbling down beside him.

  He looked back. The tall man stood at the edge of the orchard, regarding him.

  "Come on," Davey said, and he and the dog ran on.

  He kept off the main streets, avoided places where people might know him. His fever heightened. After a while, he was shivering so badly he could hardly walk. His sight blurred, and he had to lean into the curve of a telephone or light pole, holding himself tightly, bending over, until his vision cleared and his trembling subsided.

  By late afternoon, he was so weak he nearly fainted. In the park, he sat on a bench and pulled his feet up, curling into a fetal position. He closed his eyes, but immediately the world began to swim and he grew nauseous. He sat up, clasping his knees, heaving.

  He said to the dog, "Only one place to go."

  A half hour later, they reached it. Davey cursed to see an old green sedan, badly in need of a paint job, in the driveway.

  Almost immediately, though, he was rewarded. He hid in the house's side bushes as a burly man hulked from the house, down the steps, into the car.

  At first the car wouldn't start. Davey heard the man curse. But then the old sedan roared its noisy muffler, pulled down the driveway past them into the street.

  The car died between reverse and drive. Once again, the man in the car cursed, tried to restart it. Davey thought he was going to get out when he finally gave up on the starter, but the man tried it once more.

  The car sputtered into life and held. The transmission ground into drive and the car moved off, spitting black, oily exhaust.

  Davey waited till it turned the corner, then stood up and moved to a space in the bushes. He pushed through it, onto a neglected, cracked walk, overgrown with clumps of grass, which led around to the side of the house. There was a three-step porch, a door set out of its frame, all in need of white paint.

  Shivering with cold and fever, Davey held his jacket at the throat with one hand and knocked on the door.

  "Come on, come on," he said.

  There was darkness in the house, no sound of television or radio.

  Davey knocked again, louder. "Shit, please."

  He heard faint movement within.

  "Come on, dammit!"

  Suddenly he had to vomit. He clutched his middle, felt his head go light as helium. A sickly sweet taste filled his mouth. He struggled to fall forward, to lean against the house, but collapsed down, like a folded fan. The porch met his body. He curled over it. His head lay on the top step, a sliver of peeled paint tickling his cheek.

  His stomach heaved again, throwing a trickle of bile up his throat, which he tasted and then involuntarily swallowed again.

  "Jeez," he heard someone say.

  He was lifted. To himself, he felt insubstantial. Racking shivers shot through his body. For a moment, he was able to bring his eyes back to the world to see the face looming over him.

  He saw the face.

  "Buddy . . ."

  "Yeah, Davey," he heard. The word was stretched out, as if a train was pulling the words away from him like taffy. "Jeeeeeeeez . . .”

  He tried to say "Yes." But a weak wash of bile rose into his throat from his constricting stomach, and his eyes were filled with heat, and the fever took him to its secret place.

  13

  October 24th

  This is not me.

  The movie in James Weston's head was out of control. In the back of his throat, he felt something constrict when he breathed, felt something like foam filling his cranium. The movies were running much too fast, edited in much too chaotic a fashion, like Fellini films. He reached his hand up and wondered if it was his own hand; he saw it from a great distance, through a telephoto lens, miles away at the end of his arm. He could barely see what the fingers were doing if he tried to wriggle them. His body below his neck felt cold, weighted, as if at the bottom of the ocean. But he knew he could run very fast if necessary, could move those hands, way out at the end of his arms, like scissor blades, if made to.

  This is not me. But yes, it was. Since a time he barely remembered, old footage of an apple orchard, a dog with a thick coat, the bite of an apple, acid but sweet—not like that acid in the back of his throat now—Ben Meyer putting his hand on his shoulder like a father, a blue, high, cold sky with blossoms of cloud, he had been in this other movie, and it was not his own. He was not the director.

  But it was him.

  He discovered this as he lay on the couch in the living room, staring at the ceiling. He felt a momentary rush of the sprocket, a letting go by the thing above the back of his throat. For a brief moment, he was really looking at the ceiling, and not just facing his eyes toward it.

  He felt himself flood through his body. He held his hand up before his face, seeing it close by. A rush of memories roared through him. He gasped with the brightness of the images. He felt himself on the verge of a great revelation

  No, the thing in the back of his throat, the new director, said, immediately regaining control, putting the packing back into his cranium, starting the other movie. But the images faded slowly: Ben Meyer trying to rise as James hit him with the hoe; Martha's face as he advanced on her, the pulpy sounds of the strike, his own wheezing grunts of effort. He saw, fel4 witnessed in CinemaScope, the joyful greed of the thing in his head, the pure electric lust, the orgasmic building toward the moment of dissolution, the climax as the curled hook of the ruined hoe shot into the eye of the dog Rags, bursting back into the brain—

  He saw himself straddling an old man in an Irish cap, his own arm rising and falling, smashing a weapon into the lifeless, bloody face—

  My God, what is inside me?

  No.

  The thing in the back of his throat pushed James Weston back deep into the recesses of himself. James realized the thing had let him think this last thought, had enjoyed his reaction and his full realization of his entrapment. The thing had let him free, for a tiny moment, only so that it could enjoy his despair.

  Yes, the thing said, pushing him down to near invisibility.

  James tried to scream, but he could no longer see through his own eyes, hear through his own ears, and knew his mouth had stayed mute.

  Later, the thing let, him rise into himself the tiniest bit. James felt the workings of his body far off, like a man in a tiny, windowless room in the head of a giant robot. He felt the machine heave under him, sensed the oil juice through the joints as the legs pumped and the arms swung. Before him was a movie screen before the show, a kaleidoscopic vista giving him hints of movement, sight, sound.

  The screen cleared, and he saw through his eyes.

  He saw, but had no control. He felt as if his head were in a clamp, his eyes taped open.

  He was walking into town, just abandoning the path from Ben Meyer's orchard, past the farm stand. He saw the white, flat ribbon of sidewalk, people moving in peripheral vision as if through a fish-eye lens. He stopped for a light, then crossed the street.

  He glimpsed his own long arms, at the bottom of the screen, swinging like pendulums on either side of his body. Sound came to him filtered, cottoned, fuzzy.

  He crossed another street. He walked over the black tarmac of a gas station, past the pumps, caught the sharp odor of gasoline, trampled over a clump of weeds forming a boundary and onto another tarmac covered by a long fiberglass awning. The awning, supported at the far edges by white poles, fronted a glass-walled building with benches inside. Above the door, in shaded letters: NEW POLK BUS STATION.

  His hearing sharpened. At the perimeter of his distorted vision, a bus yanked into view, pulled under the awning, wheezed to a stop. The long doors in the front folded open.

  Passengers disembarked: an elderly woman carrying two pink hatboxes, protesting that she needed no help; an old man in a wrinkled raincoat behind her, telling her she did; a student in sunglasses, books under his arm; two men with briefcases; James's father.

  His father.

  In James's tiny room in the top of his h
ead, he made a cry of astonishment. It did not reach his lips. He tried to push himself out to his extremities, to widen his eyes, throw his hands up, step back, turn. Run.

  Instead, he felt his body smile, felt the muscles in his face pull back into pleasure.

  "Hello, Dad," James heard his voice say. Through the faraway lenses of his eyes, he watched his father study him, aging face expressionless, holding his bag, standing at the bottom of the bus steps.

  "I came," his father said flatly.

  His father looked so old.

  Now James remembered the phone call. He remembered the thing making him punch the numbers, putting anguish in his voice, pleading for reconciliation, speaking sincere words, saying he was sorry, that they had to talk, that his father must come up to meet him.

  James tried to scream. But his head was held in that vise, his eyes taped open, watching through the projector lenses of his own eyes the movies directed by the thing in his throat.

  His mouth said, "Thanks. All I want to do is talk. I think we owe each other at least a chance to make it right."

  He saw a flicker of something in his father's eye, a crack in the stone face. He felt his smile widen. Abruptly, his father put out his hand and grabbed his arm. "Jesus, you got big. Could have played ball. You look a lot like me."

  "Dad," his mouth choked out. His faraway legs stepped forward, his hands reached out, his arms enwrapped his father, held him tight.

  "Never thought I was this soft," he heard his father say.

  "This is the way I hoped it would be," his mouth answered, and his father mumbled something against him and held him.

  James tried to scream, tried to thrash, but the movie rolled on.

  They began to walk. Their long, similar strides, their rush of conversation, carried them through the gas station, across one street, another.

  The sidewalk came to the grass path up the hills. James's hand took his father's arm gently. They climbed, stopped halfway up the hill for his father to rest.