by Pati Nagle
There was movement out in the fog. Definitely. Looked like someone walking.
“Look, there he is again!”
“Where?”
She pointed and he looked, but the mist had obscured the figure. He shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“I’m getting my jeans,” she said, shoving the flashlight at him.
She hobbled back around the car and headed for her suitcase. She crouched, opened it and pulled out her jeans. A pair of sneakers—her favorite black ones—lay in the case beneath them.
“Shit!” she cried, truly frightened. She fell back, sitting down hard and nearly tumbling over backward on the sloping verge.
“What is it?” He came running up, flashlight bobbing in the mist.
“I didn’t pack them,” she said, shaking her head and clutching the jeans to her chest. “I know I didn’t pack them.”
“What are you talking about? Are you OK?”
“I didn’t pack my sneakers.”
He knelt beside her, gathering her into his arms. “It’s OK, baby, you don’t need them. It’s all right.”
“I’m scared.”
“Shh.”
She buried her face in his shirt. He held her close, rocking gently back and forth to calm her down.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe she’d imagined it. Had she hit her head in the crash? Was she hallucinating? She didn’t feel dizzy, but when she looked again the sneakers were still there.
“Can you see them?” she asked.
“See who?”
She pointed toward the suitcase. He glanced at it, looked back at her, frowning. “You just said you didn’t pack your sneakers.”
She sighed, comforted by the fact they were both crazy. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t,” he said. “This is not the time for this kind of game.”
“I’m not playing games. I really didn’t pack them.”
He picked up the sneakers. “Then would you care to explain this?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have a clue.”
He frowned, looking concerned now. “You should lie down. There’s a blanket in the trunk—” He started to get up.
“I’m OK,” she said.
“I think you’re in shock, a little. You should rest.”
“I’m fine.”
She stood up and stared out over the barbed wire, but saw only mist. She took off her coat and tossed it in the car, then unzipped her leather miniskirt and quickly took it off, stepping into her jeans and pulling them up while he watched. Behind the appreciation in his eyes was a shadow of uneasiness. She sat down on the pavement and pulled on her sneakers, extracted a sweater from her suitcase and shrugged it on over her tube top.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t think you should be walking around,” he said.
“I’m all right,” she said, her voice taking on an edge.
“This place gives me the creeps. Let’s go.”
“We shouldn’t try to walk out,” he said. “I just realized we don’t have any water.”
With a sick certainty, she went to the car, knowing and not wanting to know that she’d find water if she looked for it. He followed her and watched as she reached into the back seat and felt around until she found a plastic bottle. It sloshed as she hefted it and handed it to him without a word.
“That’s weird—”
“—you don’t keep water in the car,” she finished for him.
“Did you bring it?”
“No.”
He frowned. “It isn’t funny.”
“No, it isn’t.” They stared at each other. “Got any cigarettes in your glove compartment?” she asked.
He pulled the pack out of his pocket and offered it. “No, in your glove compartment.”
“No.”
“Open it,” she said.
He set the water bottle on the seat, opened the glove compartment, reached in and came up with something. He shone the flashlight on a pack of cigarettes. His brand.
“Cut it out,” he said sharply.
“I’m not doing it!”
He gave her an angry look and stalked back toward the engine. She called after him. “What did you leave at home that you wish you had now?”
“My socket wrenches,” he snapped.
“You’re sure they’re at home?”
“Yes.”
She reached into the glove compartment and found a smooth metal case. She carried it around to the front of the car and held it out to him. He looked at her like she’d offered him a scorpion.
“In the glove compartment,” she explained.
“Shit!” He took the box, opened it, picked up a socket. It gleamed softly in the moonlight. “Shit!”
She leaned against the car, staring out into the mist, and started to giggle. “Why don’t you just wish the car back to life?”
“It’s got a loose connection somewhere,” he said.
“Oh, well no wonder. If you gave it a loose connection, no wonder it doesn’t work.”
He gave her a dirty look, then bent over the engine. The socket wrench made a rachetty noise.
“Why don’t you wish for a taxi?” she said. “Or a helicopter?”
“Baby, please go lie down. You’re making me crazy.”
She giggled again, hysteria creeping into the laughter. She couldn’t stop, kept giggling and giggling until suddenly he took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
“Stop it!” he yelled into her face.
She gasped, hiccupped, and was quiet. She clung to him, shaking a little. “I want to get out of here,” she said.
“We will, as soon as I get this fixed. Go sit down, baby. Please.”
Reluctantly she moved away from him and walked back to her suitcase. She stuffed the heels and her skirt into it and closed it, carried it back to the car and set it down.
A whisper of sound reached her ears, like a far away voice, saying “.... all right.... safe now....”
“What did you say?” she asked, knowing he hadn’t spoken.
“I found it! I found the connection!” He ran around to the driver’s seat, turned the ignition. Nothing happened. “Aw, shit! There must be another one.”
“If you say so,” she said in a numb voice.
This could go on indefinitely, she realized. Despair crept over her and she glanced around at the fog. A patch of it parted and a taxicab appeared, driving toward them from the empty desert beyond the fence. She yelped, running back to her lover, and the taxi faded.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” she cried, grasping his arm.
“Let me finish,” he grumped.
“You’ll never finish! As long as you keep looking you’ll keep finding loose wires—OHMYGOD!”
He flinched as she shouted and his head bashed into the car hood. “Ow!”
“Get down!” she yelled, dragging at his arm as she crouched beside the car.
A helicopter with blue-white running lights swooped toward them. He ducked. The chopper vanished into the mist. All was still again.
“Sonofabitch!” he hissed, rubbing his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said as they got back to their feet.
“What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
“I wish I knew! Just be careful what you think about.”
“Huh?”
“Whatever we think about’s turning real,” she said, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh!!”
A shimmer disturbed the fog past the fence and she whimpered, shrinking behind him. Again she thought she heard the whisper of a voice, but couldn’t make out the words.
“Did you hear that? Did you see—”
“Yes, yes,” he said, shushing her. “I’m thinking.”
“I want to go home,” she mumbled into his shoulder blade.
“This must be some kind of weird dream,” he said.
“Oh, right! We’re both
having the same dream?”
“Well of course not,” he said, looking uncertain. “Can you feel this?” He reached out to pinch her.
“OW! Dammit!” She punched him in the ribs, then rubbed her arm where he’d pinched.
“It’s not like my usual kind of dream,” he admitted.
A glow of light nearby caught her attention. She gasped and grabbed his arm.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
Just off the edge of the road her apartment living room had appeared. Sunlight was pouring through the windows onto her Chinese carpet. She took a couple of steps toward the vision, then looked back uncertainly.
“Don’t go in,” he said.
She turned back, staring at her apartment. It looked real. There was only one way to find out.
She took a deep breath, then stepped off the highway onto the plush carpet. The living room was warm and bright, and silent. She went to the sofa, picked up a cushion. It was real. It was her apartment, everything was right except—it was too clean. All the ashtrays were sparkling, and it smelled of fresh country air, not the city smog she was used to.
She walked to the window, saw empty green fields where there should have been a street filled with noisy traffic. A shiver ran down her spine and she looked back the way she’d come. The front wall was still open to the night and the deserted desert highway. Her lover stood by the wrecked car, watching her.
“It’s not the same,” she said. “I mean—it’s the same, but it’s different.”
“Come out,” he said, looking nervous.
She glanced around the living room again. “Yeah. Yeah, OK.”
She started back, but then on impulse stepped into the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the refrigerator. She looked at the oven. What the hell, she thought. She opened it and pulled out a boxed pizza, fresh hot.
“Here,” she said, handing him the beers.
“Are you sure we should eat this stuff?”
“We’ve been smoking the damn cigarettes!” she snapped. “I’m hungry.”
She balanced the pizza box on the edge of the car and opened it. Pepperoni and mushroom; the warm smell rose enticingly. She picked up a piece, accepted the beer bottle her lover had opened for her.
“It’s disappearing,” he said, pointing back toward her apartment.
She bit into her pizza, holding down the panic. “I guess I can get it back if I want.”
He took a swig of his beer, looked at the label and nodded.
“Where do you think we are?” he asked.
A weird keening sound rose all around them and she jumped. The air seemed to quiver like heat convection waves.
The noise faded in and out, like a bad radio signal, and a tinny-sounding voice came through it: “.... home .... you’ve....” Then it faded into silence.
They stared at each other.
“All right,” he said, “we’ve got to figure this out. What started it?”
“The cigarettes,” she answered. “I was out, and you found more in my purse.”
“That was the first thing?”
“Yeah.”
“OK. Why cigarettes?”
She shrugged.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“You just noticed?” she said, and took a gulp of beer. Fizzy-cool, delicious.
“Why cigarettes,” he repeated, starting to pace in a little circle beside the car. “Why—”
“I don’t think it’s the cigarettes,” she said impatiently. “That’s just where it started.”
“Maybe there’s something in them!”
“Oh, for crying out loud—”
“Where did you buy them?”
“I didn’t buy them! Mary Poppins put a whammy on my purse, and they just showed up!”
“Before that—where did you buy the ones before—”
“I bought them at the gas station, and I’ve been smoking them all day. And you haven’t,” she added, “not until after the wreck.”
He glanced up at her, stopped pacing. “After the wreck. This all started after the wreck.”
The shivery feeling started creeping up her spine again. She tossed the crust of her pizza to the side of the road and shook another cigarette out of her pack. “So?”
“Do you think we’re....”
“No!” she shouted.
The word echoed hollowly and hung in the air between them. She lit the cig, the scrape of the lighter echoing strangely. She took a long drag and just stared at him. He stared back. The sinking feeling in her stomach matched the dismay in his face. Then his eyes flicked to the car behind her and got big.
“Look out!” he said.
She glanced at the car. It was shimmering, quavering like it had been hit by a sci-fi disintegrator beam.
“Shit!”
She jumped away from it, went over to stand beside him. He put an arm around her shoulders and they watched the car evaporate into nothingness.
“Hi, folks.”
They turned their heads toward the fence. The mangled barbed wire was gone and a guy in t-shirt and jeans was smiling at them from the edge of the field.
“Glad I finally got your attention,” said the guy in jeans, still smiling. “I’m kind of new at this myself. You ready to come along?”
“W-where?” she asked, clinging to her lover.
“Well—home,” said the newcomer. He gestured toward the field, where light spilled out of a causeway she hadn’t seen before.
She glanced up at her lover, eyes full of questions, and saw them reflected in his. He looked back at the guy in jeans.
“I, um.”
She felt him shift beside her, and clung tighter, glancing up at him. He looked uncertain and embarrassed.
“I thought there were supposed to be—you know, angels and stuff.”
The guy shrugged. “You can have that if you want. We figured since neither of you is that religious we could just skip it.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Should I—”
“No,” she said hastily. “No, don’t. It’s fine.”
She looked back at the causeway. The light was brighter than anything she’d ever seen, brighter than the desert sun, but it didn’t hurt her eyes. It had a smell, too, and a flavor. It tasted of home.
“Shall we go?” said the newcomer. “You’ve got friends waiting.”
She found her lover’s hand and squeezed it hard, looked up at him and nodded. They started toward the light.
“Oh, wait.”
She paused to take a last drag on her cigarette, then dropped it on the road and stamped it out. She glanced up at her lover with a sheepish grin.
“I thought they tasted kinda light.”
The Courtship of Captain Swenk
“Where d’you suppose General Lee might be going?” asked Buck McAlexander of his two companions as they strode through a thicket of cedar.
“Idiot,” said Henry Ball, pushing a branch out of his way. “That’s what we’re supposed to find out. Didn’t you hear a word the judge said?”
“Course I did, and I ain’t an idiot, thank you very much,” Buck replied, tossing a shank of black hair out of his eyes. “If we don’t try to guess where he’s going, how’re we going to know where to look?”
“Got you there, Henry,” said Nathaniel Swenk, their companion and fellow scout.
Apparently considering this statement the end of the discussion, Swenk returned to chewing on a blade of barley-grass and gazing over at the column on the pike in a contemplative way. Mr. Ball observed this bovine activity with an expression of distaste.
Captain Swenk, recently returned to town after receiving honorable discharge from the United States Army, was understood to be courting, and was consequently considered not quite in his right mind by his acquaintances. If there had been surprise at the captain’s failure to re-enlist after his two-year term of service had concluded, it had been abated by his popularity among his townfellows, and by curiosity (extending, in some reprehensi
ble cases, to the placing of bets) as to which of the eligible ladies in the vicinity he would select for his bride.
He was fairly new in Chambersburg, having moved to town early in 1861 with the announced desire of settling permanently there and starting a family. The commencement of hostilities had preempted this amiable scheme, but since his discharge it had apparently been foremost in his mind, and the little task of ascertaining General Lee’s movements seemed not to be interfering overmuch with his prosecution of it.
“And anyway, these fellers aren’t with General Lee. They’re under D.H. Hill,” Buck declared.
“Rodes,” said Ball, shaking his head. “Hill has a beard.”
“Well, and so he did have a beard when he rode by.”
“No, he had a mustache, but no beard.”
“It was trimmed close—”
“Hold up, boys,” Swenk interrupted.
They came to a stop just inside the end of the grove. Before them was an open oat field, recently relieved of its crop. A short distance to the east lay the turnpike out of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, full of Confederate soldiers marching north and stirring up a good deal of dust as they went.
They gazed at the marching Rebels. Buck shifted from foot to foot.
“Over to the creek,” Swenk said softly, and struck west toward the Conococheague. The trees growing along the watercourse would afford them cover until another wood could be reached.
The three of them—Swenk, Ball, and McAlexander—had been charged with their important task by Judge Lemmik who, since the 22nd of June, had sent messages by secret means to General Couch about the activities of the Confederate forces occupying Chambersburg. Getting this information past the net of Confederate pickets surrounding the town was impressive in itself, though Buck, being merely nineteen, had expressed the opinion that the secrecy of Lemmik’s operations robbed them of all glory.
Kept from enlisting by the earnest entreaties of his mother, whose husband had been visiting relatives in Tennessee when the war broke out and had not been heard from since, Buck had been overjoyed to receive the judge’s invitation to act as an observer, gathering Important Information to send on to the Union army’s headquarters. It had sounded more glorious than it had so far turned out.
“We must’ve walked every danged road in the county,” Buck complained. “We know General Lee ain’t here. We should be looking out south of town.”
