Land Beyond Summer

by Brad Linaweaver

  Mom and Dad fell through the silent sky in slow motion. She followed them down until they started drifting apart. Then she was following her father until he landed in a field of wheat where he picked up a scythe and started swinging it with long, sure strokes.

  A voice without intonation or humanity blasted her senses, threatening to shatter the frozen remnants of her consciousness: “Your father reaps wheat for a city. He sweats in noon sun. He has been at the task for a long while and cannot remember ever stopping, or needing to stop. He does not remember his name. He only knows that he must go on….

  His legs and arms have learned the way, so he doesn’t think about the work. He must swing the blade and cut the wheat for the good of his family and for himself. He has faith that if he does a good job, he will be allowed to rest — soon leaden legs can stop moving; soon tired eyes can close; soon he can apply himself to the serious task of sleeping without dreams.

  Inside the city, Grandfather watches. He mutters to himself that the worker in the field is not nearly industrious enough and there will be punishment if he doesn’t shape up.

  The wheat is golden in the sun. Your father thinks this a pretty color. The golden glow fills his eyes with beauty. He collapses and dies. Grandfather decides that your father has found his destiny … as fertilizer. But one day, the unexpected occurs. Sprouting from the exact spot where the reaper stood, there grows a gigantic weed.

  Your mother appears, surrounded by little hopping men who tear at her disheveled clothes. She is battered and bruised. She cries out to the weed that it’s just a little late to put it all back together again. Then she begins cursing the city. Grandfather informs her that soon she will join her husband and the two of them will make a lovely couple.”

  ***

  The picture went black. Fay wanted to scream but something prevented her. The dead voice was gone, replaced by the recognizable tones of Grandfather saying: “If they can stop loving each other, they can stop loving you.”

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  The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.

  Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NEW PARENTS ON THE BLOCK

  She woke up to a warm summer breeze caressing her face, and Wolf curled up next to her, head on her stomach. Directly overhead was a white cloud, as bright as a piece of cotton under a lamp. She thought of the trees as high, green reefs way down below the vast, blue ocean that was the sky. With sunlight glinting off her glasses, she felt like a silver scaled fish, hidden at the bottom where it was safe.

  For one wonderful moment, she forgot who she was. Then memory came back, as cruel as ever.

  Was this what it meant to come of age? To collect all your bad days and make a garment out of them, a hair shirt that you’d never neglect to wear — always chafing under the specially woven cloth of hatred that made warm days feel bitterly cold and cool days feel unbearably hot? To never have a moment of joy but that it was spoiled by memories of ill treatment and mean spirits. And most important of all: never to forgive.

  “I wish I could be like you,” she said to Wolf, patting him on the head. But even as the words came out she realized that she didn’t really mean it. Human happiness was tied to human unhappiness. Desiring a state of animal consciousness was just another form of suicide. Fay was mature enough to realize that her happiness had been sabotaged by family bickering, but that it was up to her to deal with it.

  She tried to think back to a time when the family had been happy as a family. If she could find the exact moment when everything started to go bad, then she could formulate a plan for correcting their mistakes. Only that was easier said than done. When life was going well, one didn’t notice the bits and pieces that went to make up a good day.

  Idly picking up a broken branch and swinging it, Fay mused over the age-old problem of the deficiencies of joy. Wolf hopefully regarded her hand, expecting at any moment that she would throw the stick. But she kept swinging it.

  “Let me see,” she said aloud. One of the many pleasures in having a pet was that you could talk to yourself but pretend you had an audience. “We’ll make a list. There must be at least one good time we had together, when we were all happy.

  Wolf barked, and she looked up from the ground to notice him wagging his tail. It’s as if he were saying that she was passing up an opportunity to have a good time right here and now. “Oh, all right,” she said, as if he’d actually spoken. “Go fetch it, boy!” And she threw the stick. But it didn’t go very far before bouncing off a tree, for she was in the woods, after all.

  “I’ll throw,” she said as he brought her the stick, “but you’ll have to help me remember.” She threw again. “The picnics we used to have,” she cried gaily. “Those were happy. We all liked those.” The stick was in her hand again. She decided this was a better game than watching Dad beat up Clive.

  “Let’s pick another time,” she continued, throwing the stick again. “Swimming! Dad taught me.” She remembered his strong arms around her in the water, holding her up, and there was something else about the two of them that day, alone in the pool with the sun baking down on their backs … something that quivered just beyond the rim of consciousness.

  She’d been afraid of the water before he taught her. They’d spent the whole summer with him teaching her first to relax, then to lose her fear as she slid into the water’s smooth embrace. Clive had learned at a much younger age than she had, except that he could never really float on his back except by doing a little kick to keep himself moving. Fay would always cherish the day Dad and she could show off that she’d learned to float on her back while completely still, like a cork floating in a bottle.

  “And he doesn’t dive as good as me,” she said to Wolf, returning with stick in mouth and wagging tail. “I mean as well as I do. You do insist on grammar, don’t you, boy? And my diving’s the best! Poor Clive usually does a bellyflop when….” She stopped short. All she could think was poor Clive.

  “Well, at least we’re not homeless,” she muttered, retrieving the stick and throwing it again. This time when Wolf returned she brushed the stick aside. This wasn’t going at all well. Here she was, hiding in the woods from her family; even hiding from her brother when he needed her the most. She didn’t think of herself as a coward, but try as she might there was no good light she could throw on her behavior.

  “Come on boy,” she said, half under her breath, starting back. As the girl and dog headed for home, her mind was racing a mile a minute. She remembered how close Dad and Clive had always been, so much closer than she was to Dad … or to Mom, for that matter. There was something in her that shied away from too much love. There was something unstable about emotion that burned too brightly. One minute it could warm you but the next you’d have third degree burns from a hate that would never die.

  The pictures flashing through her mind were perfect snapshots of Dad and Clive, Clive and Dad … playing baseball, fishing, going to the movies when it was something she didn’t want to see, smiling, laughing. But then she caught herself in the act of editing reality with an overly positive slant. Even before the recession, the Gurney family’s fortunes had taken a nosedive. Mom and Dad tried to put a good face on it at first. They tried to do more family activities that didn’t cost a lot of money, and Fay did her best to get into the spirit of fun they were so desperately trying to manufacture.

  Maybe that was it. The reason Dad was finally taking it out on Clive. Not because of a few practical jokes but because Clive had never masked his unhappiness at the turn in fortunes. They’d been fortunate about basic necessities. But luxuries had to be put in second place. Dinnertime became blander and healthier. Clothes were bought secondhand or from the discount stores. They dropped ca
ble and went back to what Mom called “regular TV.” Fay assumed they were fortunate to have TV at all. In contrast, Clive seemed to feel the good times were his due.

  Wrestling over the problem, she wouldn’t have been any more surprised if Dad had turned into a werewolf than to see him beat Clive for no reason. Money was not the god to Dad or Mom that it had been to Grandfather; so its lack was insufficient to explain the violence.

  Grandfather. That was the issue, not money but Grandfather! They were living under his shadow. The supernatural manifestations proved the old man’s crazy ideas had been true, at least in some respects. Fay and Clive could accept the intrusion of another world, another order of being, in a manner that there parents never could. Fay and Clive had so little control over the conditions of their life to begin with that new forces looming over their heads seemed redundant. For Mom and Dad, it was the last straw; one final proof of their loss of control.

  Wanting desperately to forgive her parents, Fay realized that even magical curses from other worlds didn’t excuse the mistakes of adults. Things had gone to hell long before Grandfather died. Magic couldn’t take the blame ultimately, she reasoned. If there were such a thing as bad supernatural forces, there must be good ones as well. She was sure of this on the grounds that not everything she was taught in Sunday School could be false.

  She was still mulling over these questions when she emerged from the woods. The first thing that caught her eye was a pile of wadded up paper over by the barbecue grill. As she drew closer, she recognized that she as looking at the final resting place of the troublesome wallpaper.

  As she cautiously aproached her house, she heard singing. The music didn’t come from the paper at her feet, fortunately. It came from the kitchen and it was the most pleasant sound she’d heard all day. Mom was singing! She had a very good voice. It had been such a long time since she last sang that Fay had forgotten how much she enjoyed it.

  The next surprise was waiting for her in the side yard. Dad was watering the grass, in itself unremarkable (although he had trusted Clive with the chore for some while) except that he was whistling while he did it. Mom and Dad were doing a duet! And they were in tune….

  Fay started in the direction of her parents, as if in some kind of trance, when she felt a hand on her arm. Turning around, she saw Clive. He had a black eye and his lower lip was swollen, caked in blood.

  “What happened?” she asked, knowing the question seemed foolish if addressing his appearance. She’d seen him beaten herself.

  “You won’t believe it,” he whispered, indicating right away that he was on the same wavelength with her. He pulled her along with him toward the red brick well that stood off by itself while affording an excellent view of the front of the house. Wolf was following along until he saw Kitnip running after something small and furry, and joined the chase.

  The Gurney’s were inordinately proud of their well water. They were far enough off the beaten track out here that it would be a major inconvenience to pipe in county water. Besides, the old fashioned design had been perfect for Clive when he was growing up and pretending the well was a fort. Lying at the bottom of the dark water were the remains of toy soldiers sacrificed to a young boy’s most furiously imagined battles. Now he used the “fort” as a location to plan a strategy in a real battle.

  As they crouched down behind the red bricks, he allowed himself to speak avove a whisper, but his voice was still low and he was so near that she could smell Trident cinnamon gum on his breath. “They mustn’t hear us,” he said.

  “Your face…” Fay began. “Dad did that.”

  “Well, it wasn’t Mom, but she didn’t do anything to stop him.”

  “Maybe she didn’t hear…”

  “She heard, all right. But that’s not our problem anymore. Grandfather did what he said.”

  “Huh?”

  “After you ran away, Dad really started hurting me. He called me names, a lot of sick stuff. Right after he punched me he called me a mental cripple and a moron.”

  “No, no,” was all that Fay could get out.

  “Yeah, I’m just glad they didn’t say anything about you.” This last was a true revelation for Fay. In only a few hours she’d been brought closer than ever to Clive. “You’d defend me after I ran away?” she asked.

  He scrutinized her before insisting, in a voice as firm as Dad used to have, “You did the right thing. Who knows what might have happened? Dad started beating on the walls of the nursery, trying to pull the wallpaper off with his fingernails. He cut a finger on the head of an old nail still in the wall. When he realized he was bleeding, he seemed to calm down a little. Then he got some tools and started scraping the paper off and running outside with it. He said he was going to burn it but he never did.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because all of a sudden weird sounds started coming from a brand new place.” Fay’s eyes were wide. He seemed almost embarrassed to continue, but he did: “The hall bathroom sort of exploded. Dad went to investigate. He came back giggling….”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, so I went to look and heard a gurgling voice. Fay, it was the toilet reciting the Gettysburg Address.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe you!” Fay had had enough. She stood up.

  “No, I’m sure that’s what it was. I had to memorize it in Civics.”

  “The toilet?” She would have left right then but he grabbed her arm and pulled her down so hard she fell on her bad ankle. Clive was considerably stronger.

  She cried out in pain but he didn’t seem to notice. He kept telling his story: “Dad said he was going to burn the whole house down. I’ve never been so scared. Mom came out of the bedroom then, screaming at him. They started wrestling, I mean he pushed her, not hard like he was doing with me, but a push, and she let him have it, I couldn’t believe it. She really hit him hard, and they fell.”

  Taking a moment to catch his breath, Clive seemed so miserable that it seemed indecent to doubt his word. Fay was staring at him again. She’d forgotten her pain and at least had changed her position so that she wasn’t sitting on her foot.

  Clive continued: “Mom finally broke away from him and got up. She said today was it. She wouldn’t take any more and she was getting a divorce. She said we live in a No Fault state and she could get the divorce whether he liked it or not, and said their names are together on everything. He laughed at her. He told her it was fine with him but she wouldn’t get anything because he was going to burn everything!”

  “Jeezus,” said Fay. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Yeah, and then….” He made a face as he swallowed his gum. “They disappeared.” He waited for her to respond in some way but Fay just continued to stare. He tried again: “Right in front of me. They vanished.”

  Fay came out of her trance and asked the obvious question: “Then who are they?” She pointed at the house. She wanted to do something with her hands.

  He didn’t need to answer. He only had to wait long enough for her to remember the day they had spent with Grandfather on Pine Lake. He had made them a promise and Mom and Dad had done the rest.

  Clive got into a crouching position so that he could peer over the rim of the well. Fay rubbed her ankle before deciding to do the same. Both of them watched the figure that looked like Dad watering the grass. They saw the figure that looked like Mom singing at the kitchen window.

  “Who are they?” Fay asked again.

  “I don’t know. But suddenly the TV set came on and we had the Nickelodeon channel again.”

  “But we lost cable!”

  “I know, I know, but we got it back. Grandfather’s powers are awesome. The TV started playing The Donna Reed Show. I couldn’t think of anything to do. I stood there like an idiot, watching the TV, and then the two of them appeared.”

  “You mean Mom and Dad reappeared.”

  “No! I mean two different people appeared; they just happen to look like Mom and Dad. This is exactly what Grandad said
would happen.”

  Clive and Fay continued staring at the kitchen window for a long time. The situation struck Fay as equally horrible and absurd. After what he had experienced, Clive was too numb to feel anything.

  “It’s creepy,” said Clive, “but while Dad was hitting me, I felt like maybe I could forgive him one day. The minute he stopped and I got away from him, it was completely different. Like, the worst hatred I’ve ever felt. I wanted him dead. And the way Mom didn’t do anything, when she had to hear, I wanted her dead, too. I would have wished them both away if I could.”

  “And then they were gone,” Fay finished for him. On top of everything else, she had a headache. The nearest aspirin was waiting in unexplored territory. For the first time, she put her arm around Clive, the only real family she had. He didn’t seem to notice. “I wonder what’s next?” asked Fay.

  They held each other tight and tried very hard to think of something to do.

  Go to Next Chapter.

  Return to Table of Contents.

  The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.

  Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A LETTER FROM MRS. NORSE

  “Maybe we’re lucky,” said Clive after reflection, “that the TV wasn’t playing The Simpsons.”

  “Or Married With Children,” said Fay, getting into the spirit.

  “Or The Addams Family.”