Sammie & Budgie

by Scott Semegran

  "That's good to hear," he said, slurping some more tea and adjusting his poker visor a few degrees to keep the ever-shifting sun out of his eyes.

  Just then, way off in the distance, I saw good ol' Sammie Boy running back towards me with his little sister right behind him. He was flailing his arms all over the place, so much so that he looked like a little bird trying to take flight for the first time. He was yelling something but I couldn't make out what he was saying.

  "I have to go," I said to the old man. "It was nice meeting you."

  "It was nice meeting you too, young man. Hope to see you again," he said.

  "We'll see. Might happen."

  I started walking in their direction and Sammie's arms flailed and flapped more and more intensely as he ran. The closer he got the more I could see that his face was as red as can be. Something seemed to be wrong so I picked up my pace, turning my hurried walk into a jog. Soon, he reached me but was in such a panic that he bent at the waist and propped himself up against his knees. He was wheezing and panting all over the place. I thought he was going to pass right out.

  "Daddy! Daddy!" he said between gulps of air and heavy panting.

  "Are you OK? What's wrong?"

  "Daddy! Daddy! That man."

  "Yes? What about him?"

  "That man. He's..."

  And just then, a heavy weight pushed down on me like a hot mass of air from above. I knew something was wrong and had a bad feeling about it. It was happening again.

  "He's dead."

  I turned around to find the old man face-down in the grass, his body sprawled out in front of his wife's grave. I quickly made my way back toward him and when I reached him, I looked down at his frail body--his hands gripping some grass, his arms spread out in such a way that it appeared that he was hugging the earth above his wife's grave. The glass of tea laid in the fuzzy grass, all of its contents spilled out in a small heap. I looked back at my boy, his face bright red and sweaty. He looked like he was about to cry.

  "Please don't be mad at me," he said, whimpering.

  "I'm not mad at you," I said, putting my arms around him. Jessie ran over and tried to put her little arms around the two of us. We all stood there together--embracing each other--next to the old man lying in the grass. He was on his way to be with his best friend. "I'm not mad at you one bit."

  ***

  ***

  I sat at the desk in my cubicle at the Texas Commission of Employment and Benefits--staring off into space, my mind far and away from the work at hand, sorting through possible explanations of why and how my son, good ol' Sammie Boy, could see into the future. Just how could he do such a phenomenal thing? I racked my brain but I really had no idea. So, rather than work on the long queue of service requests for network access, email issues, and server hard drive space waiting for my attention, I decided to, instead, fuck off from work and sort this thing out, this ability of his, this power that literally was like that of a super hero. I mean, he had been predicting things left and right, things that would happen moments later, events that he could only be receiving from the ether somewhere. Who does that? A super hero, that's who. My boy could one day be a part of a ragtag group of super mutants or vigilantes or crime fighters or whatever. Don't believe me? After what's happened so far, you should. It's true.

  On my desk surrounding my computer monitor was an army of miniature monuments made or purchased in my honor by both of my children--little clay sculptures, totems constructed of colorful beads and Elmer's glue, Father's Day pens and medals, origami animals of twisted construction paper, and an artificial rose with maroon, felt petals and Kelly green, plastic stem and leaves, a little dusty from living on my desk for so long. The vision of my mind's eye blurred, returning focus to my actual eyeballs, and I surveyed this army of knick-knacks given to me by my kiddos, particularly a green, coiled snake made of clay, sitting on a pallet of purple--maybe it was an island or a lily pad or an oblong pancake. It was hard to tell. The snake had one red eye, placed carefully and with precision by good ol' Sammie Boy on the right side of the snake's head, and it seemed to stare at me. It was a beautiful reminder of how much my kids loved me, that they put that much work and effort into things that many parents immediately tossed in the trash the minute after their own children gave it to them. I had so many of these lovely items and I had been collecting them for so long, they all had a layer of dust over them like kudzu vine covering a barn in the Georgia countryside. Some even had cob webs, homes to miniature spiders and their brood. I picked up the clay snake and dusted it off, then blowing the remaining dust from its underside onto the carpeted floor of my cubicle. 'What a lovely gift,' I thought. It really was lovely. 'Where do these visions of Sammie's come from? His subconscious?' I thought some more as I examined the clay snake.

  I set the snake back on my desk and decided to look it up on Google. Who doesn't look things like this up on Google? A damn fool, that's who. I typed this in the search box: is seeing the future possible? And what did you know? A long list of links to dubious websites and questionable articles written by--who?--a bunch of whackos appeared on my screen, their blue and green links hovering above the article descriptions like doodled paths by a demented seaman on a pirate treasure map, most likely taking me to the same place as the disillusioned pirate diagram: absolutely nowhere. I scanned over the article descriptions and saw they were written by self-proclaimed precognition gurus, parapsychologist experts, and real professional psychics, all of which I was certain were absolutely full of shit.

  Terms like precognition or parapsychology seemed based in science being that they were fancy, scientific sounding words and all, but really they were fancy words for things that scientists thought were bogus but nut bags, whackos, and psychos thought were real phenomena. I mean, precognition is an alleged psychic ability to see events in the future but it goes against almost every proven scientific fact, things like antecedence, or the notion that an effect does not happen before the cause and shit like that. Even Aristotle parsed the idea of precognition in dreams and came to the conclusion, after mulling it over for hundreds of pages, that precognition was nothing but a mere coincidence. How about that? If Aristotle thought it bunk, then it must be bunk. Right?

  But I couldn't get it out of my head that no matter what I read about precognition and no matter how I analyzed it in my own head--rationalized it, scrutinized it, examined it, considered it, questioned it--the things I experienced with good ol' Sammie Boy were real. Maybe once or twice could be declared a coincidence but then he continued to do it. The afterschool counselor, dozens of coin tosses, the lottery scratch ticket, the fire on the balcony, the old man kicking the bucket at the cemetery, he foretold them all. When do you cross the line from coincidence to fact? After it happens three times? Four times? Ten? When do you stop being a skeptic and start believing? I mean, this wasn't some bullshit story that some crackpot televangelist was shoving down my throat on late-night TV. This wasn't a tall-tale told by a weathered world-traveler just returning home from a foreign land I had no knowledge of, telling me of fantastical creatures and magical humans and talking animals that he swears existed over there. This was my son. And he wasn't just telling me things, I was seeing his ability with my own goddamn eyes. I mean, I saw it all! What was I supposed to do? I can only be skeptical for so long. After a while, after seeing him do this over and over again, I would just have to believe it. Right? You would believe it too if you were me. It's true.

  I became so frustrated with my Google search that I decided to get some fresh air. I pushed my leather, executive chair away from my dusty desk. I got up and walked away from the web of unreliable information sources on the internet, walked through the labyrinth of cubicles occupied by my coworkers--some brilliant, some morons--in the Information Technology Division of the Texas Commission of Employment and Benefits. There was Ryan, all snaggle-toothed and hunch-backed and awkward, the epitome of the nerd stereotype. His technical skills were overshadowed by his unfo
rtunate dingy gums and dirty, crooked teeth. His choppers were in such mangled shape that I affectionately called him Snaggle; and when I say I affectionately called him that, I mean I called him that to myself. There was also Melvin, a nerd so tall that he could play third-string backup to a center for a Division IV collegiate basketball team, except that his main skill was talking, not dribbling. He talked so much that I affectionately called him Spellvin, as in he could put you under his spell on account that he talked so much. His monotone stories about his drinking escapades or his outings with his kids or his arguments with his wife or his shenanigans with the ladies in Human Resources were spellbinding. Really. Finally, I walked past Tim, the most annoying guy in my entire division; the guy whose cubicle was repurposed to be his own, personal kitchen away from home. Every morning once he came in from riding the Metro Rail, he would start mixing his breakfast of oatmeal and prepping his pot of coffee and his bowl of sliced fruit and his toast and whatever else he craved, opening and closing the mini microwave door, setting then popping his toaster, pouring water into the coffee pot and starting the coffee maker, and stirring and mixing and clanking his kitchen utensils all over the goddamn place. It was a miracle that he ever got any work done 'cause it seemed that the only work he was doing was cooking then shoving food into his pie hole. And once he was done after an hour of prepping, cooking, then eating his breakfast, he would then sit in his cube belching and farting for another hour. It was infuriating! I affectionately called him Farty McBelcher on account of all his farting and belching. Original, huh? Original or not, it was appropriate as hell.

  After walking past my so-called colleagues, I stepped down the stairs at the back of the building, out the exit door, and into the sunlight, a day so bright and luminous that I couldn't remember the last time it was so beautiful outside. The Texas Commission of Employment and Benefits resided in the building directly behind the capitol building of Texas, the largest state capitol building in the entire United States, and they shared a massive 22-acre lawn that contained oak trees, pecan trees, and monuments to heroes of the Alamo as well as Confederate heroes. It really was a sight to behold and it was something I enjoyed on a regular basis, a place to get away from my friendly yet sometimes very annoying coworkers.

  My favorite bench sat under a pecan tree on the northeast corner of the great lawn, one with a wrought iron frame and a wood seat as sturdy as the capitol building itself. In the 1880s when the building was constructed, its location in Austin was selected for several reasons but one of the more practical being that it attracted the winds from the Hill Country that came across Lake Travis, providing the building with natural, cool air conditioning most of the year. Most of the time, when I sat on my favorite bench between the state capitol and the building of the Texas Commission of Employment and Benefits, a strong breeze blew across the great lawn, making the sit under the tall pecan tree as pleasant as possible, even in the hot months of summer. This day was no different. As I sat on my fave bench, I watched the canopies of the other trees across the great lawn sway to and fro above me, their branches poking and tickling and intertwining with each other. It was nature's dance. The squirrels and grackles hunted and pecked for pecans, nuts, and food bits left by the visitors, politicians, and government workers that careened across the sidewalks and grass. And I contemplated the power my son possessed.

  I may not have been the smartest man in the world, but I did know a little of science and philosophy. I was well-read, you know. I was curious and inquisitive and contemplative of my place in the world and the solar system and the galaxy and so on and so forth. For lack of a better summary: I thought about things. Who doesn't think about things? If you don't think about things, then you are a goddamn fool, I tell you. It's true. So I sat there under the pecan tree, in the cool breeze watching squirrels and grackles and politicians and other random people and, for some reason, I thought about space and the sun and the planets and how the planets circle around the sun in such an orderly fashion, spinning and rotating and orbiting to their heart's content--occasional blips like asteroids and comets and meteors flying around and smashing into each other. I thought it strange how atoms looked and acted like miniature solar systems with electrons orbiting around a nucleus of protons and neutrons, building all the things in the world we see and feel and eat and destroy. And if we were made of atoms and we looked out into space and we contemplated things like time travel, made possible by refracting light across great distance, then why couldn't it be possible to see into the future? I mean, just looking at other galaxies through a telescope was a sort of time travel into the past being that they were hundreds or thousands of light years away and their light taking millions of years to reach our eyeballs peering into those telescopes. Our brains were also made of these same atoms that made up this beautiful world that sat in this solar system that careened across our galaxy, across time and space and shit like that. If time travel was possible across space, then surely precognition was possible in our minds? Am I wrong? Maybe. I don't know. It's a lot to think about; a lot to digest and parse and extrapolate. They say anything is possible, right? There are days, too, when I think anything is possible.

  I sat there for a good ten or fifteen minutes before I realized that my boss--the kind and amiable and talkative and polite Mr. Healy--had somehow snuck up on me while I was in deep contemplation and sat next to me without detection. I didn't feel him sit down next to me at all; the bench didn't move or squeak or creak one bit. It was as if he floated down from the fourth floor of the Texas Commission of Employment and Benefits on the southerly winds from the Hill Country like a feather, carefully landing next to me and not disturbing my trance-like daydream. I didn't know he was next to me until he said something to me.

  "Hey there! How's it hanging, pardner?" he said. I about jumped out my skin, I was startled that much. He scared the shit out of me. It's true.

  "Oh! Hi there, Mr. Healy. I didn't see you," I said, my breath hard and hoarse and loud. "You scared me."

  "I didn't mean to scare you, my boy. I was just walking around--going for a stroll, as they say. I saw you and thought you might want some company. Would you like some company?" he said, smiling with the inquisitiveness of a child.

  "Sure," I said. I lied. I didn't really want any company but who was I to turn down a visit from my boss? I mean, I did owe him quite a bit for hiring me in the first place. Where would I be without him? Nowhere, that's where.

  "Great! You seemed to be contemplating something of great importance. Do you mind telling me what you were thinking about?" He crossed one leg over the other, wiggling his rear end into the bench as if he was going to stay for a while--a long while. He was making himself pretty comfortable, that's for sure. I didn't know if I wanted to tell him what I was really thinking about. He might think I was a kook or something. I mean, you don't just tell people that you believe your son can see the future. That just sounds crazy and all. Doesn't it?

  "Oh, I was just daydreaming. That's all."

  "I see," he said, wrapping his two hands around the peak of his knee--intertwining his fingers in a tight lattice to hold his posture together--as if settling in for a long stay on the bench (maybe hours). I wasn't sure I was prepared for a long visit with him. Who is prepared for a long visit with their boss? A brown-noser, that's who. And I was no brown-noser. "And how are your children? What are their names?"

  "Sammie and Jessie?"

  "Yes! Yes, Sammie and Jessie," he said, untangling his fingers and slapping his knee like a game show contestant smacking a red buzzer to answer the game winning question. "Cute as buttons, those two!"

  "Yes, they are cute. Thank you."

  "And their mother? How's she?" he said. Then the awkwardness crept in, like a dense fog oozing through the trees of a forest, choking the air. As he looked at me--smiling like a TV news anchor--his dopey smile drooped upside down when he remembered that my kids' mother was no longer on this earth and the time off from work I needed to take the k
ids to the funeral was systematically approved by none other than himself. I could tell he immediately felt bad about asking that question. Everyone seems to feel bad about asking me that question. It's an uncomfortable topic, just not fun at all. "Oh, Simon. I'm sorry I asked that. Of course I knew she had passed away."

  "Sure," I said, shrugging it off.

  "I'm really sorry."

  "It's OK. Really."

  "The kids are holding up well, I hope?"

  "Yes, as good as can be," I said, gazing up at the sky.

  "That's great," he said. He unlocked his crossed legs and wiggled himself upright, as if to get up. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I'll just be on my..."

  "No," I said, extending my arm, impeding his ascension from the bench. I felt bad that he felt bad, especially considering I didn't really feel bad at all. In fact, I'm not sure why I gave him any grief whatsoever, intentional or not. I guess I was as shocked as anybody that he even forgot at all. I mean, how can you forget such a gruesome thing? He knew all the details of my ex-wife's car accident. I sat in his office the day after it happened and told him everything in a brief moment of unbridled confusion and confession. I was embarrassed for days after the way I conducted myself. I was hysterical and not for any of the reasons many people thought. I was simply a goddamn mess. "You don't have to go. It's OK. Really. Please have a seat."

  "Are you sure?" he said, his posture frozen like a lightning bolt caricature, a zig at the hip here, a zag at the knees there.