by L. L. Muir
With little sense of direction in the tall corn, he made his best guess and headed uphill. If he ended up spending the day finding his way out, who cared?
When he emerged at the end of the row, a tractor rolled past him. The driver, dressed in white, tipped his straw hat to him. Jamison flipped the guy off.
He made it to his car and opened the back door to find his change of clothes. Then he changed them, right there, in front of God and everybody. He folded the white clothes and put them in a neat little pile, in the dirt, and...peed on them.
The ladies were standing on the back porch. He didn’t care. Nor did he care how many Somerleds watched him drive over the now-yellow pile, then back over them, then drive over them one last time on his way to the road.
Granddad might have liked that. Or maybe not. But the old man wasn’t around to complain.
By the time he got to the gas station, it was no use. He pulled over and searched his car for his phone. He’d left it in the white pants, then he’d peed on it.
There wasn’t even a bit of change in the car for the phone booth. Hell, there wasn’t even a phone booth to use.
Just as he was trying to remember what his mom had packed in the picnic—so he might trade the attendant something tasty for the chance to use his phone—a pickup pulled in next to him.
Somerleds. Too bad his bladder was empty.
Buchanan jumped out of the back of the truck and walked to Jamison’s window. He considered ignoring him, but rolled his window down an inch instead.
“Yeah?”
“Scoot over.” Buchanan opened his door before he ever thought to lock it and started to sit on him. He escaped to the passenger side just in time. Buchanan’s big white butt missed him by a hair. “You just sleep. We’ll get you home.”
But Jamison couldn’t sleep. He had too much crying yet to do.
***
Seven months later...
“You’re such an idiot.”
Ray grinned as he watched his paper airplane glide out the glassless window to join two-dozen others wedged in the baby cornstalks below, and Jamison was swamped by a wave of déjà vu.
He imagined a flash of brilliant red and yellow leaves covering the ground between tall drying stalks, a smattering of magazine-page airplanes adding to the chaos. Though considering all the times they’d sat up there in the tree house as kids, doing just what they were doing, it was no wonder he’d witnessed this scene before.
His memory blinked and he saw a crop circle superimposed on the field ablaze with afternoon light, but he knew there was only one time of day when most crop circles appeared...and disappeared. Three a.m., the exact hour he’d awakened every night for the past seven months. It was the hour when spirits moved between Heaven and Earth, or so he’d been told. Nurses at his granddad’s Recovery Center had confirmed that more often than not, a patient died between the hours of three and four in the morning.
Jamison believed some spirit brushed past him at that hour every night. He’d sit up, heart racing, eyes and ears straining to catch any little disturbance in the air. It had been getting worse lately. He could swear someone was thumping on him, trying to wake him up. Every night. Like clockwork.
Nothing ever happened. He’d get a drink of water and go back to bed, never feeling the presence again. Was it Granddad? Or was it a young girl in white, forever in white, dancing in his dreams, waking him with a kiss, then gone?
More like a bum internal clock, reset last fall, never to be reset again.
He’d known it was going to be hard to live without her. Bad days were expected, but when those bad times hit—bending him in half with a thought, his lungs collapsing from the weight of his heavy heart—he couldn’t imagine them ever re-inflating, or ever again being able to stand straight.
He was so tired all the time. What he wouldn’t give for a full night’s rest. A quiet house, a wood-burning stove, and a soft plaid blanket. But those things would only invite ghosts, memories draped in white. Better a dark motel room, a knocking radiator, and a broken clock, stuck on eight p.m.
What he wouldn’t take was another thing. His mom had tried to get him to try anti-depressants, but he wouldn’t do it. What he felt was a deeper problem than a couple of imbalanced chemicals. Could those drugs drain a hundred pounds from his heart or fill in the gaps of his bones where Skye should be?
Yeah, he remembered her name, though every time he said or thought it, a pain, fast as electricity and mean as a dull blade, would shoot through him. No. Better to remember her as the young girl in white, always in white, dancing around in his dreams.
“You lied to her,” Lucas had accused, the day after Buchanan had poured him out of his car and into his mother’s arms. “I was told you’d be coming to see me, to have alterations made to your memory.”
“I promised I’d come talk to you, and I have. We won’t discuss...her...again.”
And they hadn’t. They’d met with lawyers, drawn up contracts for the Somerleds to lease Granddad’s fields, and left the option for Jamison to end that lease with one planting-year’s notice.
He was going to be a lawyer, and if that didn’t work out, he’d have the farm. What he really meant, when he’d told his mother his plans, was that if the law profession kept alive his painful memories, he’d drop it like a freaking hot potato.
“I still think they’re aliens.” Ray said, bringing Jamison’s mind back to the tree house.
Jamison was confused. “When did you say they were aliens?”
Ray’s brow wrinkled and he shook his head. “I’ve always said it. Maybe not Skye.”
Pain! Breathe. Breathe.
“Of course, you got to know her a lot better than I did.” Ray looked at him and set down his airplane. “Hey man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. My bad.”
“I’m fine,” Jamison chuckled. “It was a long time ago. I can hardly remember what she looks like anymore.”
“You don’t have a picture of her?”
“No. We were only, like, together for about a week or so.”
Lies. He knew every curve of her face, every flaw in her iris, and he knew to the minute how much time they’d had together. When you’re in mourning, calculators are very distracting.
“Here.” Ray was sliding something from his wallet. “You can have this. We went to breakfast the day of your grandpa’s funeral. I got a couple of pics with my phone.”
The pain arced through him again, catching on his heart, giving it a good zap until he noticed what Ray was holding out to him. A photo. A flash of someone in white. Jamison couldn’t make his arm move, afraid of the monster sizzle he might get if he focused.
“Go on, take it. I can print off another one.” Ray picked up Jamison’s hand and slid the photo between his fingers, then picked up his airplane and sent it on its spy mission into the corn.
“They’re not—” Jamison cleared his throat. “They’re not aliens, man. They’re just a bunch of farmers without the guts to face the real world, that’s all.”
Ray grinned. “I like that. Makes me feel like I’m braver than some at least.”
“Hey, kicking an addiction makes you braver than almost everyone, dude.”
Ray’s brows went up. “You sound like Skye.”
Pain. And this time it went on and on while Ray made more airplanes. Jamison figured, since it couldn’t get much worse, he may as well look at the picture and get it over with all at once. His heart couldn’t break into smaller pieces than it already had. It was just a glob of bloody ice chips as it was.
He looked down at his hand. Couldn’t tell. Turned the thick paper and held it closer.
He’d been wrong. His heart could shatter further, and did.
When Ray finally got hungry and left, Jamison was relieved. He had a face to stare at...
...and a stake-out to plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jamison raided the kitchen for the first time in a long time. He hadn’t needed new c
lothes the whole school year, since he’d lost weight at about the same rate his bones were expanding. And he didn’t like being stalked at the mall by school girls. Surely not that much had changed about him since spring. Maybe that theory was right, that you became attractive to people you ignore. If so, he was the hottest thing on campus, because to him, his classmates were now the ghosts.
Mom crashed through the back door, juggling grocery bags and a heavy sack of potatoes.
“Food. Perfect timing.” He grabbed the potatoes and caught a bag of chips as it squeezed from a slippery sack and shot into the air.
His mom bent forward and set her bags on the ground, never taking her eyes off him.
“Who are you, and what have the aliens done with my sulky son?”
“Ray’s been talking about aliens today, too. But not about me—”
“I know. He thinks the Somerleds are aliens.”
“He told you that?”
She rolled her eyes and started picking through the groceries on the floor. Clutching lunch meats and cheese, she headed for the fridge.
“Jamison, honey, I hate to break it to you, but Ray’s been saying that ever since we moved back here. I don’t think you’ve heard a word anyone’s said since Daddy died.” She returned to the sacks and started digging again. “What brought your hearing back? And your appetite?”
She was a great mom. She knew the name of the girl in white was too painful for him to bear, and so she referred to that day, after the girl in white had disappeared from their lives, as “since Daddy died.” It was a way they dealt with their pain and acknowledged the sealed bottle of memories neither wanted to open.
He slipped a pack of Redvines into his waistband and pulled his t-shirt over it.
“I saw that. A little too smooth, if you ask me. You don’t shoplift, do you?”
“No, Mom. I’ve always been smooth.” Smooth kids attract less attention.
There was a flash of relief in his mom’s smile, then it was gone.
“I know it’s been hard, Jamie. And it’s still going to be hard for a while yet, but maybe something positive has come from your heartache.” Her eyes were tearing up. She was reaching for that damned sealed bottle.
“And that would be?”
“Maybe you can understand how hurt I was, why I took you and ran away.”
Okay, so she wasn’t really opening the bottle, just peeking through the glass.
“Yeah, Mom. I understand all of that now. If I’d thought you had anything to do with...her...leaving, I’d have taken off and never come back. I probably would have returned your letters, too.”
She hugged him briefly, then wiped her eyes to search the floor for more groceries. She needed cheering up, so he automatically reached into his pocket and pulled out the photo.
“Look. Ray had this.”
His mom took the small square, then gave him a worried look. “So this is why you’re raiding the kitchen?”
Jamison frowned and reached to take it back, but she held it out of reach.
“I’m asking, Jamie. Did this picture cheer you up? Is that why you’re hungry and suddenly listening to Ray?”
“Yes, okay? Yes.”
She handed it back. “I think maybe you should have it enlarged and tape it up all over the house, but that’s just my opinion.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I think an unexpected picture of your father would have done the same for me, whether it was healthy or not.”
“Really? No lectures about moving on with my life?”
“I think a body knows what it needs, and who are we to analyze it to death. If you want to spend the rest of your life remembering the best week of it, who am I to judge? It’s not like I haven’t done the same.”
She grabbed a pint of ice cream and headed for the couch, and for the first time in probably a year, he really saw her, saw how lonely she was, how empty she seemed.
Jamison vowed to do something about that, after he settled his own problems. After the stake-out.
***
At two-thirty, the alarm buzzed on his phone, but he was already awake. Hadn’t even slept. And for as tired as he’d been for the last month or two, or seven, he was surprised he hadn’t dozed off.
His mom had finally dragged herself up the stairs at one o’clock and left the couch to him. He lay, as if asleep, watching out from under his lashes for twenty minutes before he no longer felt like he was alone in the room. It was all he could do not to jump up and grab her, or at least try.
A very faint image, like a watermark in the air, wobbled at the foot of the couch, glowing just a bit around the edges, then fading again.
It was Granddad. Jamison suppressed a moan of disappointment. Of course he was thrilled to get a glimpse of the old man, but he wished he’d brought company.
And why hadn’t he gone on, to be with Grandma?
“Jamie, me boy, I’m fair disappointed in ye, I am. I leave my angel in yer care and ye’ve yet to lift a finger for her. She’s out there, lad. She’s waitin’ on ye, and ye sit and let precious time pour away. Baagh!” The image struck out and thumped his foot and Jamison sat up, but as he did so, the image disappeared.
“I know it’s you Granddad. I heard what you said.” He waited for some response. “Granddad?”
He checked his phone. Three o’clock. Right on time.
“Granddad?” Nothing. “What? Are you, afraid to be seen, Scotsman?”
Something hit his foot again, and Jamison choked on his spit.
“Granddad, you have to tell me where she is.”
Nothing.
“You can’t tell me?”
A soft thump on his foot this time. Lanny’d been wrong. He did have someone who could help him from the other side! He did have a chance!
“Granddad? Is she mortal?”
Nothing.
“Come on, old man. Once for yes, twice for no.”
***
“Lucas, I want to talk to you.” Jamison forced himself to walk, not run, toward his neighbor, who was thankfully up early.
“About the wheat?”
“About Skye.”
Lucas stopped and frowned. “So, you’re back to speaking her name?”
“Yes.” Jamison grinned.
“I’m not to interfere.” Lucas turned and walked away.
Jamison rolled his eyes and followed along. “You want to interfere, you know you do.”
Lucas stopped. “You don’t know me very well, do you Shaw?”
“I thought you were going to call me Jamison?”
“What do you want, boy?”
“Tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know where she is.”
Lucas couldn’t lie about it, but Lucas wasn’t the only one he planned to ask.
“Okay, then tell me something else.”
“If I do, will you leave me to my work?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll answer if I can.”
“Do you know the way to Lanny’s ranch? It seems someone has misplaced that information in my mind, and on the computer.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Lucas grinned.
“Yes, I know the way to her ranch. Now you have to honor the bargain and go away.”
“I lied.”
“You thought this might surprise me?”
“I guess not.” Jamison leaned back against the fence.
“Go away, Jamison.”
At least he was calling him by a friendly name again.
Jonathan joined them from the direction of the house.
“Is that our Jamison? You’re looking well.” Jonathan ruffled his hair and looked into his face. “Better than well. You look like you’ve found hope again, son.”
“Don’t encourage him.” Lucas stomped away. Jonathan and Jamison fell in step behind the broad white shoulders.
“Why not?” Jonathan grinned. “Hope is a good thing.”
“He hopes
to find Skye.” Lucas stopped and pulled on a pair of work gloves from his back pocket, all the while frowning his fiercest at Jamison.
“No.” Jonathan turned Jamison toward him and looked him over.
“Yes. And you’re going to help me.” Jamison winked. He liked Jonathan. He had hopes for him.
“We’re going to interfere?” Jonathan looked at Lucas.
“We’re not—”
“Yes, you’re going to interfere.”
***
It was afternoon before the trio started up the canyon to the ranch. Lucas drove and muttered in a language Jamison had never heard. Jonathan rested his head against the window as if he were asleep.
“I thought you guys don’t need sleep,” Jamison whispered to Lucas.
“We meditate.”
An angry female-sounding voice in Jamison’s head suggested he not push his luck, and to head back down the road, with or without the vehicle.
“Lanny’s not pleased,” Jonathan announced to the window without opening his eyes.
Lucas was smiling, probably in anticipation of a Lanny-style set-down aimed at Jamison.
They pulled around to the back of the house and got out. It reminded him of the last time he’d been there. Stripping next to his car, driving over a pile of nice white clothes...
“And don’t forget you pissed on them first.” Lanny came at him like a bull, like she might have been the one to have washed those clothes. “And flipped people off.” She stopped a couple feet away, but she could still reach him. She glanced at Lucas and nodded, then turned back to Jamison. “And don’t let’s forget lying in the field and cursing God.”
Jonathan’s brows flew high. “And what did he piss on?”
“The white clothes we gave him the first time he was here.”
Lucas closed his eyes and sighed.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. All I can say is I was out of my head.”
Lanny looked sideways at him for a minute, then pulled him into her arms for a hearty hug. He hid his shock and grinned over her shoulder at a scowling Lucas, then tossed in a wink.
By the look on the big man’s face, the wink might have bought him a long walk home.
