Complication

by R.A. Graves

Debora was there first. She parked under a dead, bare-branched tree, as far off the road as she dared and waited. She spent more than twenty minutes pacing and scuffing her feet through the dirt until Michael finally pulled up in a cab. Debora almost didn‘t recognize him when he got out. He wore a plain white turtle neck, cargo pants and what looked to be a brand new pair of sneakers. He greeted her and she returned it with a gasp of amusement.

  “What?” Michael asked.

  “You didn’t need to buy a new outfit for the occasion.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t know what we would be getting into, I wanted to be comfortable.”

  “Are those new shoes?”

  “No,” Michael said looking down to inspect himself. “I've had these. I don’t wear them often.”

  “How often do you wear those pants?”

  Michael brushed past her and started into the field, stepping high to trample the tall grass. “The pants are new,” he admitted.

  Debora laughed lightly and followed the trail he stomped down. Though it had just rained, the vegetation was brittle and dry, poking and scratching at their legs. Ahead of them was a clump of trees, not enough to be called a forest, but more like an oasis clinging around a drying creek. Michael knew the place well. It was the abandoned Bandolier family leather mill.

  The band of the mayoral watch was crafted of Bandolier leather and it was likely that the map in the back of the encasement was as well. It was probably even made on site, which meant that there should be a printing tool left over, a plate or a punch. Debora had come across notes indicating that everything used to make the mayor's replica watch was then recycled for use in other machines. It was possible that whatever was used to make the map could still be in the old mill, buried in the trees that had grown up around it.

  The trees were spaced thinly which made walking through easy. At the center of the tiny forest was a deep but narrow stream with dry rocky walls and a sharply cut bottom. A small trickle of water slipped through it, a rare occurrence brought on only when it rained hard enough. Michael knew it would not last.

  On the other side of the creek were the buildings of the mill, enough to make a small village, all of them in disrepair. Trees had come up through the floors and proceeded through the roofs. Branches reached in and out of the windows and looked as if they were all that were keeping the buildings standing. A mill wheel hung halfway down into the gulch wrapped with vines.

  “So this is the home of your great-great grand-dad,” Debora said.

  “Give or take a few greats.”

  “Where should we start?”

  Michael shrugged and walked aimlessly, circling the old forgotten rock structures. He put both hands flat on a short stone wall that partitioned in a square patch of thorn bushes and briers. The stone felt cold and dry, rough against the soft skin of his palms.

  “Did you even know this place existed?”

  Michael hoisted himself up and stood on the width of the wall and looked out across the history that stood among the trees. “I knew,” Michael said, “but I have never actually seen it with my own eyes.” He stood on the wall for a while as if remembering a history that he was never a part of, seemingly connecting with a past that he was practically never attached to. “We’ll start over there,” he said, “and work our way across.” He pointed at the building to the far right. “That must be the main house; we’ll save that for last.”

  The buildings were still full of machinery and tools. Michael could only guess at their purpose. They saw locked up conveyer belt systems, a long barn with countless hooks hanging from the ceiling and a warehouse with bundles upon bundles of leather stock, damaged and stinking.

  They entered the crooked doorway of the main house with caution. The floor inside matched the floor of the forest and bushes claimed most corners. A squirrel stopped its scrounging on a moss covered tabletop to look at them with its sideways head, and then it leapt to a branch and scurried out through a window.

  Debora ducked into a room off the main hall. Michael went his own direction, down a narrower intersecting hallway and ended up in a study with walls of shelving. It was stocked full of the relics of his ancestry, books and figurines, model airships. All still in place, only a few items tipped over by nature and small animals. One shelf contained a row of identical books that particularly caught Michael’s eyes. They were thick, with a robust leather cover, embossed with the family name. But it wasn’t only that. He also recognized that they each had custom hand bound spines. Someone had put a lot of work and care into them. He ran his fingers down the row. At the end was a lead box. Time had buried it two inches in soil and a lily had taken hold against its base, its purple and white petals vibrant with life. Michael opened the lid of the box and it crackled on its fragile hinges.

  Another book, just like the others, was shut inside, kept safe from the elements that ravished the rest of the bookshelf. He took it out and opened it. Inside he saw faded hand writing. A date at the top of the page identified the entry as being twenty-five years old.

  Michael leafed through the pages and saw a number of different dates and realized he had found a volume of Bandolier family diaries that spanned at least a few generations, probably more. He looked back at the long row on the shelf. He couldn’t begin to imagine the secrets and history that must have been pressed between those covers. He flipped another page and it was blank. Unfinished. Michael frowned; here was a complete chain of Bandolier history and his section of it was blank. He had cut the chain.

  “Michael, come look,” Debora called from somewhere in the house. Michael slipped the books back into their box and placed the lid securely in place. He let his hand rest on top of it for a moment.

  “Michael, where are you?”

  “Coming,” he called back. He removed the lid again, took out the top book and slid it into the cargo pocket on his thigh.

  Michael found Debora waiting in the doorway of a dark room. “I may have found something,” she said. Michael looked over her shoulder and saw a massive machine. It took up majority of the room, touching the ceiling in some parts and leaving only a narrow path against the walls. Two of its feet had collapsed through the floor to the ground a few feet beneath.

  “What do you think it is?” Debora asked.

  “It doesn’t look like anything at all,” Michael said. It looked to him to be a large tinker toy of gears and pistons, rods and spindles. “An art piece, maybe? Or maybe it’s a hiding place, a hiding place for a very valuable punch rod. You go that way, I'll go this way. Check it over really well.”

  After they had inspected the outside, Michael ventured into the giant device, dipping and ducking and reaching through stalled cogs. He methodically searched the entire thing, placing a hand on every rusted out part and finally zeroed in on a single location.

  “This is it,” he said. Debora came around fast. She saw his legs sticking out from under a radiator-type block.

  “What's it look like?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. It is inside some sort of piston housing. I can only see the tip.” He ran his fingers over the blunt end and felt texture that was non-existent to the eye. “That’s definitely it,” he said again.

  The housing was more than two feet long, darkened with age. Michael was lying beneath, looking up at the tip of the rod. If the machine were to spring to life it would stamp the reverse of the map on his forehead, and then, of course, continue through his skull and maybe even the floor. That would be one way to get it out.

  “I don't suppose we have tools?”

  “I brought one of those big plumber’s wrenches. It's in the trunk.”

  “Go get it,” Michael said exactly while Debora said that she would. She ran back to the car and found what she needed in the trunk, then ran back to the building. Michael had not moved an inch. Debora tapped his foot with her own and slid the wrench underneath. As he worked, she stood in an askew window and looked out at the mill wheel that hung from its axle in the open a
ir. Once upon a time, it was halfway submerged in the gushing waters of a powerful creek. Now it hung crookedly against the building. Moss covered its paddles and the remnants of old bird nests filled the inside. Debora sighed, exasperating the lines between her brow and around her mouth. All that water, from this creek and the hundreds more that once made up the Delta was gone, diverted with the carving of the quarry to flow straight to the Great City; and all that was accomplished with physical labor. If Glen was able to get a hold of the complicator, there was no telling what he would be able to do.

  “Mr. Bandolier, you don’t believe the complicators exist, do you?”

  “Na-huh” Michael grunted. “But I do believe there was a map in the mayor’s watch, and on this bar too. They have to lead somewhere. Plus, I believe Mr. Post is serious about paying for them.”

  A creaking noise came from the machine and Debora turned her head just in time to see a rusted spinning wheel snap as it tried to roll forward. An explosion of powdered metal and rust filled the room and was followed by a second loud boom. She saw Michael’s feet flinch.

  “Michael.” Debora rushed to the contraption and lunged her upper body through an opening. Her feet dangled freely above the floor, her blouse pulled and contorted through the machinery.

  “I’m Ok,” Michael said. He waved the dust out of his face and coughed. Pierced through the floor beside his neck was a shiny, rust free bar. “I got it out,” he said, smiling at Debora’s hanging face.

  Ten