“It’s a discount rainbow,” I said, laughing.
After we got ourselves checked in, I surprised Jenny by bringing out a bottle of champagne. “Just like that first night,” I said.
“Did you bring any wine glasses?” she asked with a smile.
I froze, knowing she was always the one who remembered things like that. “No,” I admitted. “There might be water glasses in the bathroom.”
She shook her head. “I have a better idea.” We sat on two pillows, propped up against the wall, and drank from the bottle.
“Been a long time since we’ve done this,” she said, wiping champagne from her upper lip. She kissed my cheek. “Tell me the rest.”
“I know how this sounds,” I said. “But I swear to you, on our marriage and our friendship, that this is true.”
She took another swig of the champagne and waited patiently. She leaned against me.
I started where I had left off, my parents in the bar. I was really excited when I told her about finding the Remembrance Diary, and that was the only time she interrupted me.
“What a beautiful idea,” she said. “What was written in it?”
“I only read one entry. It was when Julie brought flowers home to Claire. Daisies, I think. Or maybe buttercups. Something yellow.”
“You didn’t just sit down and devour the book? I’d kill to find something like that. Especially from people you knew who had disappeared. Spooky.”
“Well, I didn’t know them exactly. Just lived in their home.”
“Whatever. Why didn’t you read the rest?”
“I guess I thought I was peeping where I wasn’t supposed to be. I’ll probably read the rest when I go back.”
“Back?” She sounded alarmed.
I nodded. “I don’t think I’ve done whatever I’m supposed to do.”
“What’s that?”
I paused, wondering what the answer was. Finally, I admitted, “I don’t have a clue in hell. So, anyhow, there was this amazing time in the bar, watching the Draft Lottery.”
“The what?”
I explained about the lottery and how my parents had reacted when Marty’s birthday had come up. I told her about seeing Uncle Bob, and then how I was bounced back home to her.
The champagne bottle had only an inch left, and we silently finished it off. I felt exhausted, not to mention drunk.
“How can I believe all this, Sam?”
“Because I’m going to prove it to you. I told you I had wandered around Nelson, right? Well, what I didn’t mention was that I buried a silver dollar at City Hall. A 2004 silver dollar. We’re on our way to go dig it up.”
Chapter 21
We arrived in Nelson about noon the following day. It was chilly for mid summer, with a cool breeze winding down Main Street. It felt very odd, seeing the city, now so different. Most of the buildings I knew (and had so recently seen) were gone.
None of the shops were the same. Gone were the beauty shops, the barber, and all the rest. Instead, gaudy colored signs welcomed us to Fitness Time and the Cyber Café. Although I didn’t see a Starbucks, there was a Second Cup. All the accoutrements of our modern world. I drove down to the end of Main Street, turned around, and came back, looking for the Riviera. Surprisingly, it still stood, but it was boarded up, looking like it had finally hit the end of the road.
Jenny hadn’t been to Nelson for almost 30 years and she looked around with interest at everything I pointed out to her. To her credit, she didn’t try to say, “What a nice place to have grown up.” She could see as clearly as I could that the city was a rundown dinosaur, waiting to sink into the tar pits. The attempt in the eighties and nineties to revitalize Nelson with extensive industrialization just made the city look all the more pathetic. A short-term triage in a town bleeding at every corner.
“My old home is down this way,” I said, as I pulled the car around the corner. “Oh, well, it was.”
A five-story apartment block covered the land where my home had been, and the house beside it. On the other side, where Mrs. Williamson lived, was the building’s parking lot.
“I’m sorry, Sam. That must be hard for you.”
I shrugged it off. “Let’s go find City Hall.” I kicked myself for not checking to see if the old City Hall was still standing. It would be trivial to have checked on the Internet. With everything else changed, what were the chances it was still there?
Relief cascaded over me when we drove down another few blocks and the old City Hall came into view. “Still standing and still demanding their taxes,” I said.
Jenny jumped out of the car almost as fast as I did and started to walk quickly towards the old building.
Moss was growing on the brick sides, and the paint on the upper windows was chipped and faded. The same chiseled granite sign sat in the front of the building announcing their business hours.
None of that mattered to us. We started to run down the lane leading to the back of the Hall. It felt like I was flying, due to the adrenaline rush. Jenny managed to stay just a step ahead of me as we rounded the back.
The concrete steps were still there, still guarded by the same black railing, which was the only sight that was freshly painted.
I stopped and stared beside the steps. I had planted the dollar under the grass patch immediately to the left.
“Oh, no,” I said.
There was no grass patch. Apparently, sometime in the last thirty years, some ambitious grounds keeper had decided to rip out the grass and plant a nice, dark hedge. It was trimmed to a uniform height, and had small pink flowers.
I dropped to my knees, and clawed at the ground. “Six inches from the steps,” I said. I stopped almost immediately, as I could easily see the hedge was indeed that close to the steps. The silver dollar was gone. Only the roots of the hedge were there.
And then . . .
I was gone, too, being struck with my third attack, my body crackling as it dissolved. My last thought as I gasped up at Jenny through the pain was that I should never have put her through this.
Part 6
The hills of one’s youth are all mountains.
Mari Sandoz
Chapter 22
I woke a few days after the Draft Lottery, in my little bed in Mrs. Williamson’s basement. A cool breeze drifted past me from an open window, and I sighed and stretched, the sigh turning into an extended yawn. I collected my thoughts for a minute and then decided it was a Saturday morning. I yawned again and tried to shake myself awake.
A shower and a coffee later, I left the basement and went out into the cool morning. Dew covered the grassy yard and the flowers that still poked up from the plants near the driveway. It wouldn’t be long before the plants gave up, going back into hibernation for another year.
“Sam!”
I looked over to see my father out on his back porch. Seeing him no longer shocked me, but this was the first time I had seen him in the morning light. He was
so -- different.
He was sober.
“Hey,” I called over. I walked slowly through the gate that connected the yards. “Nice day out.”
He looked at me with reddened eyes and sunken cheeks. His thick black hair was shiny from his continued overindulgence in Brylcreem. I almost wanted to chant, a little dab’ll do ya. His nose and cheeks were covered with a field of rough red dots. It looked like he was covered with acne, but it was just alcohol trying to burst through his skin to escape. Now that I was closer to him, he lowered his voice. “Quite the night a few days ago.”
I nodded. “Did you stay for the whole lottery?”
He scowled at me and talked in a level voice, as if I had accused him of something. “Sure. Woulda been there anyway. It only lasted a couple hours. Most of the others left after that, and the place turned quiet again.”
“Does Marty know yet?”
Dad lit a cigarette. An unfiltered Camel. I shook my head when he offered me one. “He knows. Watched it somewhere too, with his bud
dies. I think he’s proud to go.”
“Is he worried?”
“Haven’t much talked about it.” He nodded. “It’s his duty. I was in the big one. He can get off his ass and go to Vietnam.”
“It’s a different thing, don’t you think?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Just . . . ” I didn’t know how to end the thought. Didn’t know how to talk about the tens of thousands of body bags that would return to the States in a losing cause. How to talk about the atrocities broadcast on television for the first time, and the national sense of confusion and even shame that would follow this war. How to talk about the terrible images of innocent women and children being killed for no reason. William Calley and the mess at My Lai. Bombing Cambodia. And how to talk about how America lost a war that their citizens stopped supporting long before it was over.
No, that wouldn’t go over. I needed not to put a barrier up between my father and me. I needed answers.
“What did you do in World War Two?”
My father’s eyes looked so sad. I was in fact totally captivated by this bit of information. I never even knew he was in the services. He never told me. There was so much he never told me.
“Same as everybody else. Went to war, killed the enemy.”
“Army?”
He nodded and then quickly changed the subject. I recognized the feat from the many times he wouldn’t talk to me as a child. “How long did you say you’re going to be here?”
“I really don’t know,” I said honestly. “I can’t use my stock market training here, but maybe something else will come up.”
“Stock market training. You still make it sound pretty high falutin’.”
“I don’t mean it that way. It is what it is.”
Just then, Scout came bouncing out of the house. I felt a thrill at seeing him again, another of the many zombies who had risen from the dead.
The dog came over, sniffed me, and barked loudly. Then, he pulled back on his haunches and started to pant.
Dad moved to him and crouched at his side, “Hey, boy, what is it?” He patted Scout and rubbed his neck and behind his ears. “He’s okay, boy.”
Scout barked one more time. I remembered hearing that bark so much when I was young. It was halfway between a woof and a yelp, and no other dog ever sounded exactly the same to me.
He was confused by me. I think he knew I was really Little Sam, but different. He could tell by my smell.
“He usually this jumpy?” I asked.
“Nah. He’s a good dog. Just doesn’t recognize you.”
He stood back up, put out his cigarette, and looked over his shoulder towards the house. I was pretty sure the refrigerator was calling him. The beer. It was almost 10:00 in the morning.
“See you later.”
My last image of him as he slowly turned to head into the house was that there really was a streak of gentleness in him. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in the softness of his voice. And he loved the dog. I never knew that.
How I wish I had seen more of that side of him.
Chapter 23
I went back to Claire’s Remembrance Diary, gently lifting it from the center of the sagging bookshelf. I continued to hold the book in a kind of awe, the history of Claire and her daughter, Julie, documented secretly in a fragile, hidden journal. A gem made of love. It reminded me of The Diary of Anne Frank, at least conceptually. I haven’t read that book, but I knew the gist of the story, how a lonely girl was trapped in a house during World War II, writing her soul for future generations.
Claire’s diary hit me with the same force.
I sat and put my feet up on the scarred coffee table, wondering if Claire had ever intended to have this book opened by anyone other than herself. Hard to imagine that being in her plans.
I looked at the front photograph of Julie again. A pretty girl, dark hair like her mother, but the frown on her face came blazing back at me. Why wasn’t she smiling? Something didn’t fit. I was missing an important puzzle piece, and the pieces I did have wouldn’t fit together.
I started to carefully flip through the yellowed pages, and it didn’t take me long to find my first clue. It was the entry for January 10.
It was 1967 (wrote Claire) when our lives changed forever, my child. You were 12 years old, and you should never have gone through that terrible day.
Snow fell gently to the ground all morning, and you loved it. You always loved the snow, especially when the flakes seemed to hang in the air forever, looking earthward to find their special landing place.
It was a Sunday morning, and we didn’t go to church. You had already decided that church just wasn’t your cup of tea, which was probably something you learned from me. Was that wrong?
I watched you as you looked out the kitchen window. I felt your love in my heart, as your head tilted just a shade, in that odd way you had.
After an hour or so, you pulled yourself away from the window. “Mama, I’d like to go build a snowman.”
I had known this was coming, of course. You always wanted to play in the snow after watching it fall.
“Come, Mama?”
I shook my head and smiled at you. My feet were tired from long days at the factory, and even though I loved being with you, Sundays were my day to catch up on my rest and cook you a nice dinner, instead of the sandwiches and soup we had every other day of the week.
I should have gone with you.
If I had, maybe you’d still be here with me. Maybe those awful events of the future wouldn’t have happened. Maybe we’d still be together.
I stopped reading. The book had shocked me with the tale of something awful happening to this little girl I had never met.
But, I knew the words on the page weren’t true. They couldn’t be. I checked back to the top, and, yes, Julie was 12 in 1967, just a year earlier.
Maybe I wasn’t the most observant person in the world, but I sure would have noticed a girl just about my age staying next door to me. Living in the same room I was now living in myself. That couldn’t have happened.
Just then, the telephone rang, and I just about jumped out of my skin. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I carefully closed the Remembrance Diary and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Mister Johnson?” It was a woman’s voice, familiar in some way, but I couldn’t place it. Although my last name was Ellis, I had been using Johnson while in 1968, to avoid any connection to my father and with Little Sam.
“Yes.”
“This is . . . ”
She didn’t speak for several seconds, only a bit of crackling static filling the line. “Yes?” I repeated. “Who is this?”
Finally, “This is Marie Ellis.”
I only hesitated a second. Even now as I write these words, knowing I was talking to my mother was a very, very strange sensation. She died not long after my father. Cancer. Unlike when my father died, I did go back to Nelson to visit my mother when she was in the hospital. I hadn’t seen her in years, since I had abandoned her along with my father. The cancer had already beaten her, taken away anything close to humanity she had had, leaving a shriveled shell of a human being, papery-thin skin, no hair, no spirit.
“Hello, Marie. How are you?”
“I think I should talk to you. It’s about my son, Marty. You know.” Her words spilled out of her mouth like a sudden bursting of a long-fractured dam. “You know, the lottery, the thing in Vietnam, you seem to know how to do things. I don’t know why I think that, I just do. Maybe the way you look at me. You just know things. You need to help me. I need help, and there’s something about you that tells me I can trust you.”
She finally stopped her outburst and added in a more quiet voice. “Don’t tell Jimmy. He’s, he’s not . . . ”
“I’m not sure what I can do to help, Marie. Are you asking how -- ”
She interrupted. “I’ve got to go. He’s coming.” She hung up.
I replaced
the receiver and walked out to the back deck. Next door, the beer was starting to kick in, and I could hear Dad starting to yell at Mom. “Don’t tell me you weren’t talking to nobody! You stupid bitch!”
Just another day in paradise, Phil Collins would sing a quarter of a century later.
I looked at my watch. It was 10:25. Only thirty minutes since I had talked to Dad and he was fine, sober, even nice. In less time than an episode of Gilligan’s Island, he had completely effected his change into a mean, loud, sonofabitching asshole.
The sun glared down at me, bright and warm. It was going to be another beautiful day.
I thought of going back to Claire’s diary, but somehow, it wasn’t right. Not after that telephone call asking for my help. Claire and Julie deserved my full attention, and I would only read the diary when I could offer that.
But right then, I needed to think about Marty. Could I stop him from being sent to Vietnam? I certainly had heard lots of tricks to avoid the draft. Going to college, bad eyes, gimpy knees, being married, irrationally violent thoughts, conscientious objector. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how many of these loopholes were still open in 1968.
I did know one option for sure that would work. Taking Marty to Canada.
But, would Marty want to avoid the draft? I tried to think back to the little I remembered about him. He was loud, almost boisterous. Was he patriotic? I would guess yes, since I remembered he was actually happy to go to serve his country.
Or was that a memory I’d made up afterwards, so I could accept his death more easily?
Memories.
I sometimes wonder what memories are. If I want to think back to a picture of my mother, it comes up easily enough. A pretty image forms in my mind, and I can see the shoulder-length rusty hair, curly like she always had it. I can see the deep red lipstick she wore whenever she left the house and the bejeweled set of gold earrings swinging to and fro above her neck. They were shaped like small ovals and were quite different from the normal studs other women wore.
The Memory Tree Page 9
