The Mystic Travelogues (Volume 1)

by J. C. Nusbaum

  The Mystic Travelogues

  Copyright © 2011 by J.C. Nusbaum

  Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No other part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Eltanin Publishing, 95 Spear St., Charlotte, Vermont 05445. First edition.

  For more resources, visit http://www.eltaninpublishing.com/

  For more information about The Mystic Travelogues series, visit http://www.mystictravelogues.com

  ISBN 978-06154-893-39 (paperback)

  Edited by Catherine Ryan

  Cover art and design by Jim Tierney

  To the young,

  the young-hearted,

  and especially those young enough to recognize forgotten friends— real and imagined— this book is dedicated with great affection.

  Table of Contents

  Front Matter

  1. The Stray Boy

  2. A Call from Uncle Oscar

  3. Into the Emerald Valley

  4. A Bear Named Leopold

  5. A Key to Unknown Places

  6. The Trap Door

  7. Becoming Real

  8. The Right Way to Light

  9. Stolen Names

  10. Nome Trickery

  11. Capital Vices

  12. The Bear in a Vase

  13. Plato’s Hat

  14. The Fabric of Time

  15. A Dream Within a Dream

  16. Trouble Underfoot

  17. A Promise Kept

  18. Parting in a Yellow Wood

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  HENRY WHITE was a boy who, like many boys, shared a name with his father. But to prevent anyone from confusing the boy who was Henry White with the already grown man who was Henry White, his mother began to call him Tug. She never explained to him why he was Tug, and she never will.

  Tug did not wonder much about his nickname. There were much bigger things he should understand. When classmates at his new school asked where he came from and why he moved, Tug put a stop to the questions with a statement that even ten-year-olds don’t want to know about.

  “I’m an orphan,” he said.

  But Tug knew this wasn’t true. The truth was much worse. So much worse there wasn’t a word for what he was.

  Tug’s parents did not want him.

  “Of course they wanted you,” Tug’s aunt assured him. It was the only time Tug said it out loud, and he said it to his aunt hoping she could convince him it wasn’t true.

  “They just couldn’t take care of you anymore and they thought you’d be happier with us,” she explained. “Now you have your cousins to play with. And you’ll make lots of new friends here. Your teacher said you didn’t have any friends at your old school, is that right?”

  Tug looked at floor and nodded.

  “We’ll soon change that.”

  Tug wanted to believe that his parents had no choice, that they were forced to give him up. But he heard what his mother had said before she put him on a bus to go live with his aunt and uncle and seven cousins he scarcely knew.

  Tug’s mother said, “I just don’t want to be a parent anymore.” And she said it to Tug’s father in the car, not concerned that Tug was sitting there in the backseat. So Tug knew it was true. She didn’t say, “I can’t be a parent.” Or even, “I’m no good at being a parent.” She said she didn’t want to be one. She didn’t want Tug.

  Tug’s father— who had always been Dad, not Henry White— didn’t talk much. He nodded whenever Tug’s mom talked. And Tug rarely got more than one word at a time from his dad.

  “Maybe.”

  “Careful.”

  “Don’t!”

  “Nothing...”

  These were the conversations that Tug’s father had with him. But there was no single word he could say when his wife told him she didn’t want to be a parent anymore. There probably weren’t enough words anyone could say.

  Most ten-year-olds might forget hearing the words Tug’s mother spoke. They might choose to believe that they really were wanted, even if everything else in their world was broken. But Tug never forgot anything. He couldn’t help remembering everything he heard, exactly as he heard it. And so he said he was an orphan, not because he wanted to lie, but because it was the closest word he knew to explain he no longer had parents.

  Tug had only met his relatives once before moving in with them. It took every bit of his exceptional memory to remember the names of all seven of his cousins in this family. It is not worth mentioning them all by name since very few people have a memory like Tug’s, and most of his cousins were not worth remembering.

  Except for Jodie.

  She was one of the children somewhere in the middle of the rest, closest to Tug in age. Where Tug had a mind for memory, he could tell right away that Jodie had imagination, and somehow Tug knew that was more valuable. Because of her imagination, Jodie was the only one who could make Tug think of anything besides the unhappiness he couldn’t leave behind.

  “We’re making a train out of furniture boxes today,” she would explain to Tug over breakfast. “When we’re done, we’ll ride it to a ruby cave in the Black Forest. It isn’t safe to go on foot, you know.”

  It was not an invitation or even a request for Tug to play along, because Jodie knew he would refuse if he were asked. Instead, she led him by the hand to the playroom and the children would pile into the boxes and begin that day’s adventure.

  Despite the heavy sadness that Tug felt most of the time, he began to see a glimpse of what another childhood could be like, one that he had never experienced. Although he would not say he was unhappy before, life had been mostly about practicing things like math, trumpet, and soccer. Tug had nothing much to practice in his new life, and he found he did not even miss the rewards for practicing, like television or video games. He had Jodie to play with and, for the first time in his life, he was only expected to play.

  At first, Tug felt uncomfortable around Jodie. Although she was nearly a year younger than Tug, she was several inches taller than him, which somehow made him feel unworthy of her attention. It took several days for Tug to understand the language that Jodie used to make-believe and create a world bigger than the basement playroom she shared with her siblings. But when Tug stopped questioning the likelihood of Jodie’s suggestions, he began to see the world through her eyes. Soon he traveled further into Jodie’s world than any of the other children. While Tug did not have Jodie’s imagination to create these worlds, he shared her ability to see what can be imagined, and Tug had more reason to see an imagined world than most children.

  But as anyone would expect, a ten-year-old boy does not escape such big sadness very easily. Every night as he lay on an air mattress between his cousins’ beds he wanted desperately to cry to let some of the pain inside of him escape. After the first few nights of crying softly on his new bed, his cousins would speak to him in the darkness, saying “don’t cry” in a hushed voices. Tug soon learned to stop himself even though it was too quiet to think of anything else. He was almost never alone, which was difficult having lived his whole life as an only child. But after school he and Jodie would often climb sticky pine boughs up onto the garage roof. It was there that Jodie would look deep into him and she would begin to cry first. Then Tug could feel whatever was inside.

  Most houses on most cul-de-sacs are meant for two parents and two or three children. When Tug arrived at his relatives, there was already twice that many in the house and he often felt like an extra egg forced
into an already full carton. If Tug needed some money for a school field trip or a new pair of sneakers, his aunt and uncle would always take care of the matter with a crooked smile. They liked to remind Tug how happy they were to be able to take care of him. They would remind him so often that he began to wonder if he was not showing enough appreciation. Tug made sure he did more chores and had fewer demands than the rest of the children. Jodie was the only one that told him how lucky they all were to have him come, and this made Tug feel a little better about being there.

  So much had changed in Tug’s world that he could no longer be sure of his place in it, even after many months of routine in this new home. It was such a large family and he could not feel sure it would ever be his. Although they were related, he did not belong to them in the way that he had belonged to his old family.

  Tug’s birthday fell on the same date as the last day of school. So he wouldn’t be a nuisance he decided not to tell anyone, not even Jodie. When he wrote the date on his final assignments, each time he was reminded of his last birthday and how different his life had been. On that birthday, his parents took him to a real baseball game, one that you needed to buy tickets for and sit in specific seats and, if you’re lucky, maybe even end up on television. It was all very exciting at the start. But it became long and boring, and Tug realized he wouldn’t really want to go to another real baseball game, even if he had the chance. But mostly he just wanted the chance.

  Several days after his birthday, Tug’s aunt made a comment at the dinner table about him and Jodie both being ten years old.

  “I’m eleven years old,” Tug quietly corrected her.

  “Really?” his aunt asked. “But we were told you were ten.” Her face had a panicked look.

  “Well, we must have gotten our facts wrong,” his uncle said dismissively.

  Everyone at the table looked at Tug, except for Jodie. She stared intently into her Salisbury steak.

  The next morning, Jodie and Tug climbed up onto the garage roof and she gave Tug a necklace with an old looking key on it.

  “It’s the most valuable thing I have that’s all mine. I want you to keep it.”

  “What’s it for?” Tug asked. And for once, Jodie didn’t have a fanciful explanation.

  “Some woman gave it to me when I was little. I’m not sure who she was. She was very beautiful,” she added after a pause, looking a long ways off as if she were recalling the memory.

  “Don’t your parents know who she was?”

  “I never told them about it. I was lost someplace, like the grocery store or something, and this woman gave it to me, and it made me feel better. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to my mom when she found me. I just didn’t feel like I should.”

  “For real?” Tug asked, never completely certain with Jodie.

  “For real.”

  AND THEN, one day without any of the children realizing it, the family stopped going to restaurants, or out to movies, or even having pizza delivered for dinner. Soon several of the children began to complain about it, but no one asked questions. Jodie didn’t even tell her parents when her shoe came apart one afternoon playing ghost in the graveyard. She used duct tape to fix it and her parents never commented on it, even though it was the first thing anyone noticed.

  Their father was home during the day now and everyone was told to be quiet when he was there. And he was there most of the time. It seemed everyone was in a bad mood, and Tug and Jodie spent more time escaping to the garage roof. On a sticky summer afternoon they were up there while the rest of the children were in watching television.

  “You have to be really good with technology to be a pirate in the world today, but it can be done,” Jodie explained to Tug.

  “But the government will always have more technology,” Tug said.

  “That’s why you have to be a technology genius. No real geniuses work for the government.”

  Tug was about to ask how airplanes might figure into modern piracy, but before he could form the question a crow landed in the cedar tree next to the garage. Tug shifted all his effort to not noticing the bird, though his thoughts were on nothing else.

  “What’s the matter?” Jodie asked.

  “Just thinking,” Tug said.

  Before Jodie could ask more, the automatic garage door started. Jodie lay flat on the roof, and Tug followed her lead until he heard his uncle’s car pull into the garage. As the engine cut off, Tug heard Jodie’s mother come into the garage with hurried steps.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “They went with the other guy.” Tug heard the car door slam shut harder than it needed to be. But when he looked at Jodie, she wasn’t reacting. Her gaze was faraway. Tug wondered how she could be lost in a daydream, almost as if she couldn’t hear the anxious voices in the garage below them. Maybe she was trying not to.

  “What about a temporary position?” Jodie’s mother asked.

  “That’s not how they work.”

  “How much longer can we wait? There’s nothing left to cut.”

  “Well, maybe we have to consider that we can’t afford all the mouths we’re feeding.”

  Tug looked at Jodie. He knew her father was only referring to one mouth.

  “We can’t send Tug away, not with what he’s just been through.”

  “We’re not sending him away. We’d be sending him to someone better able to take care of him. He has that uncle in Vermont. Oscar-something, on his mother’s side. He offered to help when she had her breakdown.”

  Now Tug shifted his gaze to some far-off place. He imagined Jodie was looking at him, but he didn’t want to check.

  “I don’t think he meant taking-in Tug. He has no family, no experience raising kids.”

  “He has a farm and he could probably use the help. I’m sure Tug would adapt. It’s probably better to move him now before he gets too comfortable with everything here.”

  Jodie was clutching Tug’s hand, but it was limp. He would not allow himself to feel any response until there was something that sounded hopeful. He was waiting to hear Jodie’s mother come through for him, waiting to hear her say how cruel and unnecessary that would be. But Tug knew he was not one of her own children.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last, sounding like she did know, but did not want to say. The statement stung Tug’s eyes when he heard it, for he knew what it meant. Jodie’s mother didn’t believe it was right, but was willing to accept it. “Maybe it could just be for the summer. And then maybe we’ll be in a better place and Tug can return and go back to school here.

  “What if this uncle says ‘no’?” she added, as if it had just occurred to her.

  “We’ll tell him we don’t have any choice.”

  As the garage door began to close, the crow that had been sitting in the cedar tree alighted and flew off over the neighbor’s house. Tug looked at it directly for the first time as it soared away, catching a glimpse of the white feathers at its breast. He wondered if there were black and white crows everywhere.

  When Tug looked back at Jodie, she began to cry.

  But Tug was not crying. Perhaps his uncle was right. What’s the difference between one uncle you know nothing about and another? And then Jodie squeezed Tug’s hand and he realized she was the difference.

  “It might only be for the summer,” he said to her, trying to comfort both of them with the thought.

  But Tug knew what it sounded like when parents made empty suggestions that would never be. At dinner that night, Tug’s aunt and uncle made the announcement and explained what a wonderful learning experience it would be for Tug. His uncle’s eyebrows slowly rose as his comment was met with silence around the table. Tug looked at his aunt, but she just gave a crooked smile and continued dishing out the mashed potatoes, plopping equal servings onto their plates with a forceful hand. The other children seemed to take the news passively as well, and one of them asked if this meant things would be getting back to normal.

  “I’
m not sure what that is supposed to mean,” their mother said in a disapproving voice. “I know I’ll be very sad to see Tug leave us for the summer.”

  “Is it all settled?” Jodie asked.

  “Yes, we spoke with Tug’s Uncle Oscar this afternoon and there’s a train that leaves tomorrow for Vermont. He is paying for a train ticket so you don’t have to ride the bus,” she said to Tug. “That means you’ll be there in just a couple of days.”

  For the rest of the meal, Jodie kept staring up at the ceiling. Tug recognized that she did this when she was imagining a new story or planning a fantastic adventure for the two of them. He was eager for the meal to be over so he could hear all about it, realizing it might be the last for quite some time. But when the meal ended, instead Jodie offered that she and Tug could help her mother with the dishes. Both of her parents’ eyes widened at the suggestion, but Tug’s narrowed. He had only a few hours with Jodie before he had to leave the next day and he wanted her to himself.

  When the rest of the family was crowded around the television in the living room, Tug stood next to his aunt with a dishtowel. He took wet dishes from her and then handed them, dry, to Jodie for her to put them away. It was the job he was asked to do, but he felt like he was in the way and not particularly useful. While Jodie moved about the kitchen, she began a conversation with her mother that had sing-songy tones and was not at all how Jodie spoke with Tug. It started with a question.

  “Is it much more money to ride the train than the bus?”

  “Not so much more, but enough to make a difference. The train is faster and more comfortable and Tug won’t have to get off until he gets to Vermont.”

  “But you would have bought him a bus ticket, right?”

  “Of course. We would have bought him a train ticket, too, if we had the money.” The way she said it didn’t sound convincing to Tug.

  “But you have the money for a bus ticket?”

  “Jodie, we don’t really have the money for either right now. Why do you ask?”