The other things.
He reached into his coat then and pulled out a manila folder creased in half and filled with papers
“It’s not a will.” he said, his smile one-sided. “These are for you. From my office. I don’t think anybody else would bother to check them.”
“Abe, don’t you think — ”
He waved me silent and stood, one hand back to the boulder to balance himself. “Back in a minute. Have a look, in the meantime, and let me know what you think.”
Then he did the oddest thing — he reached out and shook my hand.
The sun was shining.
It was early November
There was no reason in the world why I should have felt the way I did, but when I looked at the first page, read the names, saw the places, it was winter already, deep in a January whose air was ancient parchment and whose moon gave no light.
It was always winter when Abe showed me these things, and I glanced up at him, wondering how he had managed to carry it all without going mad, without climbing to the attic and locking himself in and waiting . . . waiting for the dark landscape to come and take him home.
So he walked, and I read, and when I looked up again I could see the first stars and the first arc of the new moon.
I could see the orchard the way It was, and the way it was now.
And I buttoned my jacket, folded the papers and held them, and thought about the good dreams I never had as a child.
Part One: My Mary’s Asleep
I don’t care for the dark when there isn’t any light, when there’s not even a hint of something else out there, when I feel that a single step will drop me over the edge, when my ears hear nothing but the blood (god, the blood) and my hands feel nothing but the cold (oh god, the cold) and my eyes see nothing but the fire and the sparks and the whorls of a scream that crouches deep in my throat;
I don’t care for the dark when there isn’t any glow, not in the sky, not in the village, not under the trees where I’m waiting, a glow that’s a sign there are people out there who aren’t much different than I, who would understand what I know, who would hold me while I tell them, who would protect me from the others and tell them they’re wrong;
And I don’t care for the dark when my Mary’s not here.
Twilight, that last night we were all together, was a flawless study in lovers’ pastels — a deep and soothing rose around the edges of snow like dark clouds, bright pink flaring from the rim of the sun resting below the horizon, robin’s-egg blue and gentle turquoise splashing over and blending with a faint and fading gold floating ahead of a faint and fading black. It softened the serrations on the oak leaves overhead, smoothed out the bark until the shadows were gone, and nestled in cotton a mockingbird’s song.
A twilight so perfect it seemed sacrilege to take even a single breath, or even let my heart beat on the last night, that night, when I started to die.
Yet it was, to my mind, incredibly like a number of paintings good and bad I had seen, and as I stared at the sky I wondered why artists bothered to put any of it to music, or to canvas, or on a printed page. Didn’t they know, couldn’t they see, that their work would suffer when compared with the real thing?
Unless this was what they felt just before they cast their slim and ruined bodies over the cliff, into the sea.
“Oh, Jesus, Herb, come on,” I muttered in disgust, and my nose wrinkled with embarrassment at the lurid image of the grieving poet, giving all for love — that was the fool’s way out. Only a fool pines, only a fool sighs. Only a fool gives his life for someone who doesn’t care.
So fool, I thought, what do you do now?
My cheeks were cupped in my hands, my elbows braced on the soft ground, the toes of my sneakers idly digging trenches behind me. The air was spring sweet, and I closed my eyes to smell it, taste it, moisten my lips as if I had just finished a succulent meal; the late afternoon was lightly chilled, but I didn’t reach for my jacket lying on the grass at my side. Instead, I rolled onto my back and stared at the branches, wishing on their curves that Mary was here.
Alone. With me.
“Fat chance, jerk,” I muttered, and winced at the choice of words.
I had resolved only moments before that nothing resembling the word or the fact of fat would pass my lips again until I had lost fifty pounds from the over two hundred I already weighed. And once fifty was gone, maybe twenty more in the bargain. In the meantime, I would work to reconstruct my self-image, build up my confidence, and see myself differently when I looked in the mirror. Fat was out, then, and overweight was in. Hell, lots of people were overweight without looking like a washtub with spokes for arms and legs; lots of people went on diets just to maintain their health, for crying out loud. So it would have to be with me. Not fat. Certainly not obese. Just looking after myself so I would live past forty.
“Fat chance,” I said again, this time with a grin. I knew myself too well, though I was hoping this time I would wake up to a surprise.
I sat up with a grunt, then, fished for my jacket, and slipped it on before standing. I supposed I should be doing something constructive before the others arrived, like spreading the blankets I’d brought, or checking the woods and open fields to be sure we wouldn’t be attacked by tigers or lost lions. Or maybe, I thought, I should just forget the whole thing and go home — not later, but right now, before I could think of some new way to stall. There was still work to be done on my final project, and I wasn’t exactly sure how I would present it.
Then someone called my name, and I surrendered to fate.
* * *
I don’t remember whose idea it first was, but after enduring nearly a full month of final-exam threats from cackling professors and sadistic young instructors who knew all the right words to set terror on our heels, it didn’t matter. We had to get away. It was Friday, and we had to try to pretend we really didn’t give a damn, that it was all going to be a snap and graduation with honors was only a matter of killing the next year without getting arrested.
We decided to have our picnic on the deserted Armstrong farm, in the shade of the orchard that didn’t grow anything anymore.
What the hell-we were in college and didn’t know any better.
So Stick Reese brought the wine, Mike Buller the sandwiches, and the others-there were about a dozen-brought the odds and ends, including a case of cold beer. The plans as we had so cleverly figured it would be to enjoy ourselves while studying for the legalized torture that would begin bright and early Monday morning. The collected condemneds’ last meal, and who gave a shit.
But the not unexpected result was the packing away of the books as soon as they were brought out, and a prolonged bitch session about our classes, the college, and the world that conspired to prevent us from getting rich. There was also a baseball game with acorns, and a scientific experiment to see how far one could shove an arm down a burrow before the gopher got pissed and chewed the thing off.
Mary had come with Rich Verner, and she spent most of her time sitting under a tree and whispering in his ear.
I, the stoic and unheralded lover, sat against my own apple tree on the orchard’s rim and dispensed facile wisdom while keeping an eye on the round of her shoulder, the curve of her breast, the way her legs in their jeans seemed never to stop.
Only Reese knew I was lovesick and thankfully kept his cracks to a minimum; we had known each other since high school, and he had seen me moping and glooming around like this before, and for. some damn reason had decided some time ago it was his duty to keep me from slashing my wrists or hanging myself or doing something really stupid, like proposing to the girl.
“Y’know.” he said, after we had eaten and the others had drifted off, “what you ought to do, pal, is walk right over there, punch Rich out, and drag Mary into the bushes.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and clamped my teeth hard on a ham sandwich.
“Hey, I’m not shitting you, man,” he insisted, and squirmed aroun
d so he was sitting in front of me, his backwards baseball cap crammed down harder, his right hand — the one without the beer can — flicking at his chin. He was trying to grow a beard; he wasn’t doing very well. “Really. The caveman stuff, y’know?”
I swallowed and gave him the eye. “Just leave it, all right?”
He looked at me, testing, then showed me a set of teeth that better belonged on a dumb horse. “Take it from me,” he said. “They like that macho crap. All this stuff about sensitivity and caring and garbage like that — hell, if it was true, she’d be all over you in a minute.”
There was a compliment in there somewhere, and when I found it, I thanked him, though it didn’t do me a bit of good.
“Don’t mention it, Herb. No sweat.” He rocked back and spread his hands behind him. “You see, your problem is — ”
“Who’s got a problem?” another voice asked. Wonderful, I thought; bring on the United Nations while you’re at it.
Stick looked up at Mike Buller and nodded toward me. Mike, in turn, looked to the sky and shook his head wearily, as if to tell whoever was watching to look out, the fat boy was at it again with all his whining about unrequited love. A loud and heavy sigh, a drooping of his head, and he looked up at me and winked. He was carrying an overloaded tray of food he’d gotten from his father’s market over on Steuben Avenue, the one that used to be Garland’s until old man Garland ran off with a produce clerk and his wife sold the place and moved down to Georgia. Without dropping a single sandwich, he handed it to Amy Niles and sat down. Amy stuck out her tongue, blew a kiss to me, and walked off to serve the animals their second course.
Mary was still under the tree with Verner. “Don’t tell me,” Mike said, put his fingertips dramatically to his temples, and closed his eyes. He claimed to want to be a stage magician when he grew up, which meant, to me, he would probably end up working behind his father’s counter for the rest of his life. “I see . . . yes, I see a redhead.”
“Knock it off, Mike,” I said.
As usual, he ignored me.
“I see a redhead with hair down to her ass, legs up to her neck, and a smile that keeps Professor Danvers sitting behind his desk whenever she asks a question.” His eyes opened. “Am I right, or am I right?”
“A real pal,” I told him.
Stick laughed with a palm over his mouth.
“Look,” I said, “it isn’t funny anymore, okay? I’m asking you nice just to knock it off.”
Stick laughed again.
Mike slapped his shoulder, hard, and began plucking the grass. “It’s a bitch. Christ, it’s a pain.” He was serious. He knew what I was going through because he was going through it with Amy. And frankly, I was getting a little tired of holding his sweaty hand.
For a while, shortly after Mary Oster really and truly came into my life at the start of this semester, I had hopes she would see through the weight I was carrying and maybe, just maybe, like what was in there. My uncle, when I thought it was the right time to confide in him, told me straight out I was a jerk, that as long as I kept stuffing my face with everything in the kitchen there wasn’t a woman on the planet who would give me a second glance; my aunt May told me the same thing, but in a way that didn’t make me feel like so much shit.
“You have to make up your mind, Herb,” she said. “You have to know what you want, and what you think is important. Life isn’t like the movies. Miracles don’t happen on their own.”
I didn’t like her very much for a while after that, even though I knew she was right. And for the first time in I don’t know when, I found myself wishing my mother hadn’t died and my father hadn’t taken off to god knows where. The Alstars may be family, and the only family I had, but it was obvious to me then that they just didn’t understand.
So I consoled my miseries with the memory of a film I had seen on campus the month before —Beauty and the Beast, a lyrical French adaptation that haunted me for days . . . until I decided that fairy tales, for me, were only another form of self-pity. I was fat, not a beast, and flame-haired Mary wasn’t about to be my Beauty, my Esmeralda, or even the princess who could change frogs to princes.
A breeze began to blow, and Stick wondered if there’d be rain.
No Beast, but something worse.
Toni Keane, who was popping grapes under a nearby tree, demanded to know who’d brought the umbrellas.
No enemy, but something worse.
I was Mary’s friend, a good friend, and never destined to be more.
Christ, now that is a bitch. Liberated philosophies aside, being a close friend of a woman you’re in love with is a torture I wouldn’t even wish on my stupid uncle, even if he is a judge.
I must have made some kind of noise, because Stick looked at me kind of funny, but before he could ask me what I was thinking — I could see the damned question just waiting there on his lips —
Amy returned with the empty tray and sat down, close to Mike but not close enough. He and I exchanged glances of the damned, and he started to whistle.
I felt a chill. I looked to the sky. When I couldn’t find a decent cloud, I looked behind me, into that part of the orchard that had been burned black and stayed that way.
Then Toni roused herself long enough to crawl over, give us all a disgusted look, and demand, “So when does the orgy start, huh?”
Amy blushed a little, but she was still a freshman and we managed to forgive her.
“Well?” Toni said, rising up on her knees, her hands on her hips and her t-shirt pulling snug across her small breasts. “God, are you guys dead or something?”
Suddenly, I started to laugh. It was, on the face and every other part of it, ludicrous. So goddamned ludicrous. Most of us were juniors in college, practically grown up and ready to assault the world, and we were behaving like we were dumbass horny freshmen in search of the perfect lay.
It was infectious. Stick laughed. Amy laughed.
Mike did his best to keep a straight face, but one look at Toni, who was sticking her tongue out at him, and he blew up so loudly a flock of crows took to the air.
We rolled, we giggled, we did everything but fall into each other’s arms. It was a while before we calmed down, and by then the others had wandered up, looking for something to do now that the food was gone. Before I knew it, they were gathered around me like disciples in front of a blond and blue-eyed Buddha. For a moment, a frightening moment, I thought Stick would say something, or that they’d start in on me, teasing me, offering me advice about the latest fad diets. But Amy, for which I vowed to love her forever, said something about my uncle Gil and the way he had come down hard on some friends of hers in court because of a party the week before, and the bust that followed. No one was jailed, but the people who had complained about the noise and the drinking had insisted the offenders do public service as penance. My uncle agreed.
“The park,” Amy said, “won’t have a shred of Jitter in it from now until the Second Coming, for god’s sake.”
She wanted to know then if I had influence with him, but I couldn’t answer because Toni demanded that I appeal to his better nature and well-known love for students and ask him to close down the campus because conditions there were horrifyingly inhumane.
“What do you mean, inhumane?” Stick asked, as always about ten minutes behind the rest of the world.
Amy gave him an example. Mike gave him another. Even Richard yelled something over, and within minutes there was practically a committee set to start the revolution. It didn’t take long to draw up a list of grievances each more outrageous than the last; and when the laughter was over, Amy leapt to her feet, snatched off Stick’s cap and started running.
He yelled and chased her. Rich dove for her and missed.
Someone else yelled at Stick, and the next thing knew we were involved in a game that had no rules, had no goals — we got up and we ran, eventually working ourselves into a wild session of tag with no home base and no object other than to let off the stea
m the bitching didn’t vent.
Even I did it.
By definition and point of bulk, I’m not the fastest guy in the known universe. For as long as I could remember, my size has always provoked comments, and I finally decided I wasn’t ever going to play the role of jolly fat man, fat clown, stumbling, bumbling, uncoordinated jackass. I fought back, and did so all my life, and won enough times to let all but the dumbest of strangers know that fat jokes and snide remarks need not apply when it came to needling Herbert Johns.
I think . . . I think that’s why I had true friends instead of those who kept me around just for laughs.
So I was fairly able to hold my own once the chase got out of the field and into the trees. Diabolical shrubs held no terror for me, ambushing branches quailed at my passing, and I managed, once, to get a good hard hand on Rich’s shoulder, hard enough to send him pin wheeling into a thorn-bush whose greeting had him bellowing for revenge.
I laughed and charged on.
The light faded as we played, and eventually I followed Mary when we all returned to the orchard, Stick and Amy right behind me, Mike and Rich bringing up the rear. Toni hadn’t even gotten to her feet. She just sat there, grinning like an idiot and finishing my lunch.
It was chilly in there, almost nightcold under the fire-blackened trees, and the footing was less stable than out in the field. Several times I thought I was going to fall; a couple of times more I thought I could see someone else with us, someone not a kid. But my heart was pounding and my focus not exactly clear, and we finally made it into the open without anyone breaking a leg. The only casualty was me — a scrape along my forehead when I didn’t duck fast enough.
The Complete Short Fiction of Charles L. Grant Volume 2: The Orchard (Necon Classic Horror) Page 2
