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A little shopkeeper’s bell dingled as I closed the door behind me. I looked up at it and wondered what kind of place this was. The sign out front read The Mythic Center.
A woman’s voice came out of the shadows behind the bar. “You’re a long way from home.”
The place had a look that made me comfortable. The tables and chairs were light maple—all local and handmade, nothing imported and nothing with a machined #7 of 7,000 look. The place had a good, solid, well-worn feel about it. Whatever wasn’t maple—the paneling, the bar and stools, the booths—was oak, ash, or thorn. Some of the tables had chess and checker boards carved into them; a few others had cribbage boards carved into them. Serious gamers came here because the gaming tables had green-shaded, metal poker lights suspended from the ceilings over them. Between those and the bar and booth lights, the place was well lit without being blinding, what I’d call soothing, never too much light unless you needed it.
The woman moved out from the shadows so I could see her clearly, a waitress’ apron tied neatly and knotted in front and a towel with blue edging slung over her shoulder. “We’re more tavern than bar.” She checked me over, a seasoned waitperson’s eye determining what kind of tipper I was, and smiled. “More a way station, actually,” she added, her evaluation over. “Been traveling long?”
I nodded and smiled back, rubbing my hands against the cold they’d gathered in the day’s walking. I could have sworn I left the city in late summer but fall seemed to come fast in my wake. I was the only other person in the place so I’m sure she didn’t mind the company. “Seems a little lonely with only the furniture and walls to keep you company.”
“Alone, maybe. Never lonely.”
I walked over to a wall with several built-in bookracks and ran a finger over the spines.
“Are you a reader?”
“I thought so, but I don’t know any of these titles: Moral Calculations by Laszlo Mero, McFarlane and Saywell’s If2, Lattimore’s Acts and Letters of the Apostles, Smith’s The Essential Kabbalah, Barks’ The Essential Rumi, Margenau’s The Nature of Physical Reality. What are these?”
“Philosophy, mathematics, folklore, religion…” Her voice trailed off.
I looked up at her, shrugged, and shook my head.
“They’re mainly to keep up The Mythic Center image.”
The opposite wall sported a genuine British competition-style dart board, well used. I stared at it and my face must have lit up because the waitress asked, “Do you throw?”
I shook my head, no, although I walked over and lifted a dart from its rack. I ran my fingers over the flight feathers—again, no plastic, and the darts were competition weighted. “No, just an admirer of good things built to last.”
She stopped drying down a Monopoly gaming table and stood up to look at me, one hand on a hip and twirling the damp towel with the other. “Thanks.”
She was pretty in an older kind of way, and I wasn’t sure I expected someone in their late thirties to, oh, late forties to be tending bar on an old country crossroads at the northern edge of the New York-Mass. border. The light over the table captured her in a spotlight, and she let me take a long drink before she reached up for the chain and turned the light off. Salt-and-pepper hair that made a long thick braid down her back, cerulean blue eyes that my dad used to call “ice-eyes,” a wide face with lots of freckles but no wrinkles except laugh lines, and no makeup to disturb any of it. When she smiled there was a gap in her front teeth, and I caught myself thinking of Chaucer’s The Miller’s Wife then quickly shook my head.
It showed, I guess. The way she smiled at me, running her tongue over the gap in her teeth absentmindedly, looking down and to the side as she shook her head.
Under the full-length apron she wore a blue tank top matching her eyes. Her jeans were torn at the knees and faded from work, not from some designer’s idea of what work did to good clothing, and red high-top sneakers like I used to wear as a kid.
She quoted Bob Seger’s “Nightmoves,” singing it like a question, “Little too tall? Could’a used a few pounds?”
I wanted to say, “Not from where I’m standing” and, ever cool beyond measure, instead I sneezed, the smell of strong—not burnt—coffee finally making its way through the frost in my nostrils.
“Bless you.”
“Thanks.”
She continued to stand, one hand on her hip, the other still twirling the towel but now in the dark of the bar with that table’s light off. The music switched from Judy Collins’ “Since You Asked” to CSN’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and she went back to washing off tables.
“You closing? I know it’s late, but this is the only place I’ve seen with lights on—hell, it was the only place I’ve seen, period—since dusk.”
“Been this way before?”
“About thirty-five years ago, but I don’t remember any of these roads and I’d rather not keep exploring.”
“We got time for one more. Besides, the only people who come here this time of night are worn and tired.” She finished the next table and stood up, twirling the towel again. “Or lost.”
“Lost I get.”
She pulled a blue bandanna from her hip pocket, wiped her brow, then lifted both arms to tie it over her hair. The bar lights cast shadows over the curves of her body as her hands shaped a butterfly over her head. She kept her eyes on me the whole time, watching me watch. “I’m dyeing my hair scarf,” she said.
I laughed. “Where is this place, anyway? I noticed it’s not exactly a real happening burg.”
She laughed. “‘Happening burg’? Jeez, are you dating yourself. I haven’t heard that since, let me think when, ’75?”
“Obvious, huh?” I laughed and checked myself out in the mirror behind the bar. Burgundy felt hat pulled low, light parka, strong clean face that needed a shave, sharp clear brown eyes, still tall and broad, iron-gray flannel shirt. What I couldn’t see I knew from memory: faded jeans bottomed by crazy quilt wool socks and double-laced Tyroleans. Everything like it was on my original trip, everything I could remember.
Talking with her, I’d forgotten I still carried my pack, although now the straps were damn near separating my arms from my shoulders.
She nodded at the pack. “Take it off. Nobody here’s going to bother it.”
I unhooked the belt and slid the pack off my shoulders. As it dropped down, I fumbled a grab for it. It swung around and knocked into some chairs. My shoulders ached now the weight was relieved. “Sorry.”
“Must be quite the weight, carrying around all these years.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Want something to drink?”
“What you got that’s free?”
She laughed again. “Everything in life comes with a price tag on it. You just got to decide if you want to pay the price.”
I shrugged, partially in answer and partially to soothe my neck and arms.
“Tell me something,” she said. “You got a new pack, new boots, that jacket’s not army issue, and you look health club strong. You didn’t get that build working on a farm. You look like you got money. What’re you grubbing for?”
I looked at myself in the mirror again and could feel her flattery working. “You think I look good?”
She turned to face my reflection, leaned against the bar, and scowled. “For somebody in his, what, early fifties? Sure, you look good enough.”
She turned quickly to face me and reached across the bar for my arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You look great. How about a cup of coffee? On the house.”
“You working alone tonight?”
Her smile changed slightly. Her nostrils flared and her eyes took on a hungry look. Not a good hungry, just a hungry. In the back of my mind I heard, “Warning, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!”
“Me and Cook,” she said.
I held up my hands. “Hey, no problem. I was just going to say ‘How about a bowl of chili and I’ll do tonight’s dishes.’”
She looked down at the dish towel in her hands, shook her head, and the smile came back but, as Harry Chapin said, it was a sad smile, just the same. “Just working your way through?”
The music changed again, this time to Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.”
“Jesus Christ, what station are you listening to? Those tunes bring back memories.”
“Hang on a second. I’ll go ask Cook if it’s okay.”
She went through the kitchen doors and came back out with a one-eyed German Shepherd at her heels.
“Oh, jeez,” I said. “Accident?”
“Ran into a tree. He likes it if you rub the spot where the eye used to be.”
I sat down on the floor and did as she suggested. She jumped up and sat on the bar. “Hey, buddy.” I scratched the dog’s ears and looked up at her. “Buddy?”
“Budless, actually.”
I turned my attention back to the dog. “Happens to the best of us. What’s your name?”
“Cook,” she said.
I laughed again. “What do you say, Cook? Can I have some chili if I do the dishes?”
The dog woofed.
“That’s a ‘yes’,” she said.
An hour later she was still washing tables and I was tying on an apron. “Damn, that was good chili.”
“All food’s good to a starving man. You had two bowls full.”
“No, I mean it. I haven’t had chili like that since ’74, the last time I was through this way. It was a place called ‘Ms. Ruby’s Inn.’ I remember I went in there and asked to see a menu. The waitress looked at me like I was from the moon then disappeared into the kitchen. She came out a few minutes later dragging a blackboard with food and prices on it and apologized for taking so long. She said they had to go find some chalk. There was chili on their menu and I didn’t have a dime to my name.” I threw my head back and gathered the memories. “I made them the same offer I made you. I didn’t even know you had chili here.”
She stared at me, her blue eyes exploring, evaluating, wondering, deciding. “I thought you saw it on the menu.”
“What menu?”
She pointed to a chalkboard on the wall behind the cash register.
“I didn’t get any nachos this time. Ms. Ruby made these wonderful plate-size nachos, paper thin.”
“I ran out of those a long time ago.”
I stared at her, unsure of the joke. Besides, Ms. Ruby’d be in her eighties now.
“Was I wrong about you and money?” she asked.
Cook was giving me belly. I was rubbing his missing eye with one hand and ruffling his chest fur with the other. “One eye gone, you should have named him Odin.”
There was a loud caw from the corner opposite the bar. A raven was perched there and I nearly leapt off the floor at his call.
She nodded at the raven. “That’s Odin,” she said, then pointed at the dog. “He’s Cook.”
The raven cawed again.
“How long’s he been there? I didn’t see him when I came in.”
She was looking at me again with that evaluating, exploring, wondering, deciding, “What do I do with this one?” look in her eyes.
Odin cawed again, but it was almost a whisper. The glow of the outside lights went out, and the night outside the windows got noticeably darker. The waitress looked from the raven to me. “They’re on a timer.”
“Isn’t everything these days?”
Her eyes relaxed. The inspection was over. “You got a place to stay tonight? It’s gonna start getting awful cold out. First snow in a few days.”
“Odes to ancient children gone—”
“—we are one,” she finished the line and smiled that Miller’s Wife smile.
I looked at her, unsure. Odin cawed again. He’d been damn quiet until I’d said his name.
“I’m asking if you’d like to come home with me.”
“Umm… what’s happening here? It’s been years and I’m not sure I know the game anymore so… are you picking me up?”
She came over and guided me up off the floor, putting a finger over my lips as I was about to speak. With her other hand she pulled the apron knot free.
I put on my parka and picked up my pack as she shut off the lights. “Come on, Cook.”
“What about Odin?”
She pointed at a raven-sized, heavy plastic door in the wall by his perch but said nothing.
I heard the lock click on the door as the dog led us into the night. Odin laughed overhead.
* * *
She was gone when I woke up. So were Cook and Odin. “Hello.”
Nothing.
“Hello-o-o?”
Still nothing.
“Huh. She must’ve gotten up real quiet.” I chuckled. “But she wasn’t that quiet last night.”
Daylight came in through two lace-curtained windows. Out the windows I saw a dirt road and a field. I took a deep breath. The place smelled and looked like a farmhouse, at least from this one room. Comfortable, like the tavern and most of the furniture constructed from the same woods with the same handmade feel—the wardrobe, the dresser, the mirror frame. The nightstand was draped with pitch-black towels. There was a brass moon-and-star candlestick with a beeswax candle on the dresser. I looked around and noticed there weren’t any lights or light switches in the room, and a fine, white china bowl and cistern with blue glazing the color of the waitress’s eyes, and—typical, I’d never even got her name—of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, except Red was a guy and the Wolf was voluptuous and not in the vulpine sense.
I shook my head and stared at it. “Freaky.”
The bed was a three-quarter four-poster. It didn’t seem that small last night. The sheets were still crinkly fresh, and both the quilt and comforter were back over me (we had kicked them off during the night). Steam blew from my nostrils. I stretched under the covers, scratched my stomach, and slowly worked my way down.
I stopped at my balls and used both hands to explore. Finally I threw back the covers and checked myself like the doctor taught me. The small lump was gone. My dad died of prostate cancer and mine was just beginning. I was so excited; I couldn’t even find my vasectomy scar.
The cold air was making everything pucker, so I pulled the covers back over me. “Hello,” I called. No answer. “Hel-lo-o?”
I rolled away and pulled her pillow over to me, just to make sure, smelt her there, and for a moment relived last night.
Half an hour later I had sponge-bathed, dressed, and filled my water bottle from the kitchen pump. I hefted my pack, adjusted the straps, stepped out the door, and stopped, looking for something familiar. The road went east to west. There were no cars.
To the right was a barn in such a state of disrepair that I smiled. My dad used to say “I think we got one more mortgage payment on that one” when we drove past such relics on country drives when I was a kid. Nothing had used that barn in twenty-five, thirty years, and I couldn’t believe that the waitress I’d slept with would have let it fallow so.
I called out again, “Hello!”
No answer. I looked east. “We came that way, didn’t we?”
A wind blew and something rattled. A shutter was loose and about ready to fall off. I walked over and noticed it was the shutter to one of the bedroom windows. “The least I can do is fix this.”
I didn’t trust the barn though. “Maybe there’s tools in the house?” I turned back to the door and stopped. The house, the house I’d slept in, was in the same state of decay as the barn.
A raven perched on a joist protruding from the barn hayloft. It cawed and flew off to the west. I adjusted my pack and followed.
Two hours of straight walking later I was still on the dirt road and beginning to not like it. The road wasn’t graded, which told me it wasn’t heavily traveled. I hadn’t seen a school bus, car, truck, tractor, or another farm since I started walking. I hadn’t seen the field or farmhouse where I started since the first bend, and that was early in the first hour. The woods didn’t get heavier, but they didn’t thin either. I got to a crossroads and dropped my pack.
The tavern had been at a crossroads.
On the far side of the crossroads from where I stood was an old highway marker—a sign this must have been a heavily traveled road in its day—but the signs were broken off in all directions. “Great. Don’t know where I’m going and not sure where I’ve been.”
A raven landed on the marker. “Odin? Is that you? I thought I lost you way back in the woods. Which way is out, buddy?”
Odin or whoever it was just stared at me. “Not even a ‘Nevermore’?”
Nothing.
I hadn’t had any breakfast and my body knew it. My dad used to say that any direction’s the right one when you don’t know where you’re going, so I started west, anticipating a forced fast and a march.
Last night’s memories grew dim.
The day was cool without being cold and that made walking decent. I didn’t bother listening for cars. I hadn’t seen one since yesterday and didn’t think any’d come by now. The road itself had enough turns and dips to make the travel interesting without being occupying. The surrounding woods and fields were quiet. Eventually I found myself remembering the last time I’d strapped a pack on my back.
It was great. I was a kid, a little too young for Woodstock and a little too old for much of anything else. I’d had a few years of college and that went nowhere, except to get me a wife and a kid, both of whom I adored but neither of whom I wanted. I remember coming home one day and watching Paula—my ex—playing with David-Jeremy in the backyard where we lived. She was a great mother. She just knew how to be with a kid. She wasn’t older than me, but she was, if you know what I mean.
So one day I asked if she’d like to go down and visit her mother in Virginia. Her mother hadn’t seen the baby, so that seemed like a good idea.
“Let’s stay a couple of weeks. Give me a chance to see if there’s a good job down there.”
I think she knew. She must have. How could she not know?
The third day there, I told her I was going out for a pack of cigarettes. She looked at me for a minute but said nothing. Finally she just kissed me and let me go.
I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never smoked cigarettes.
I drove as far north as I could on the gas I had. When I stopped to get gas, I sold the truck and used the money to buy a good pack, some hiking boots, whatever I thought would be necessary gear and supplies, and headed up the Dragon’s Spine. Those were some of the best years of my life. Worked when I needed to, met some good people, some bad. Got into some pretty bad fights once or twice when I started out. Met a lot of fine ladies. Met some pretty important people too.
One time on that trip, high in the Catskills, I needed to get into a town to pick up supplies so I could continue north, making my own underground railroad, thinking “the norther you get, the freer you get.” I came down out of the hills and walked into this town called Acra.
Jesus, that was a time.
It started to cloud up. I quickened my pace.
* * *
I’d been walking most of the day and it grew dark. The sky never cleared, and cloud-covered nights on dirt roads in heavily wooded foothills weren’t the most comfortable. I could barely make out the road in front of me and kept hoping it didn’t branch before I got to whatever town was listed on that signpost I’d seen earlier in the day.
That’s when I heard the guitar up ahead and coming out of the dark, so faint I had this image of encountering the toothless hillbilly from Deliverance. Whoever played experimented with chords and fingerings, like they were searching for some melody they weren’t sure of.
The wind picked up and blew the guitar notes at me. Something rattled off to my side. An old wooden town marker. I brushed off some dirt and had to feel the letters carved into it.
Acra.
Acra?
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
But right now I was too tired, hungry, and thirsty to do anything but laugh. I swallowed my last protein bar, gulped the last of my water, and followed the music in.
It had changed a lot since my last visit. There are two for real ghost towns in New England, and both are in Massachusetts: Dogtown just outside of Gloucester and Purgatory down by the Rhode Island border. Both towns have similar histories, and both are spooky as hell.
The Acra I stood in qualified for number three.
There was a general store in front of me and not much else. To the right was an Esso gas station—that shows you how old it was—and to the left an apothecary. All three buildings had broken windows and doors falling off their hinges. The whole town shimmered briefly as if warm air had risen from it. The music came from the general store and I went in.
The general store was pretty clean inside. One side was set up like an “open-mike” bar, although there was no bar to be seen. There were tables and chairs with ashtrays and those little votive candles in holders on each table. The stage—more a platform wide enough for a stool and a mike—was against the wall and draped with purple cloth. That’s where the guitarist sat.
If he saw me come in, he didn’t show it. I picked a table near the middle, pulled out a chair, turned it so I could keep my pack on—you never know when you have to leave these kinds of small-town places quickly—and sat, hoping somebody would be by with a menu or something. Coffee would’ve been fine.
All that happened was that this guy played. I recognized his style and form, but the actual tunes he played were new to me. His blond hair was shorter than I remembered, and darker, now just bright blond strands amongst the darker rest. Same beautiful blue eyes, same killer smile. Somebody once told me it was a shit-eating grin, and I smiled, remembering. His playing was smoother, more relaxed. The last time I’d heard him was thirty-five years ago in Acra, and back then his playing had this bizarre intensity, as if he had something to say but didn’t know how to say it and his music echoed his frustration. He had lost a lot of his baby fat since then and had the look of someone who’d been physically working for a long time. His sleeves were rolled up, and I could see veins and the movement of his muscles as he played. The last time I watched him, his arms still carried some baby weight and there was no clean separation of muscle movement. His skin was darker too. Tanned, like someone who’d been out in the sun. I couldn’t see any tan lines, but the fact that his face, neck, and what I could see of his chest matched the color of his arms told me his work was real, not just for relaxation or performed as leisure. I looked for a watch mark and saw none. He was timeless.
Then, my jaw dropped. I’d only eaten a couple of protein bars all day, so maybe my mind was weak. I didn’t think of it at first, but now it came on me like a strong waterfall—I remembered this guy.
“Frampton!”
He looked up at me and smiled. Without a break, he went from whatever he was playing to “Show me the way,” acoustic. His voice still had the power and intensity I remembered, but now, hearing just him and his guitar, it seemed like he’d found out where he was going.
He sounded great.
“You-ou-ou, show me the way.” His bright eyes fixed on me. “Hey, Joe.”
All I could get out was “Frampton! Jesus Christ, Frampton.”
He laughed and put his guitar down. “That’s twice we’ve been confused.”
“You remember me?”
“I remember then.”
I leaned back and felt my face flush. My breaths came high and shallow. The whole place shimmered again, and I laughed like I just took a major hit of some Acapulco Gold. My eyes ached and started tearing before I could cover them. “Prove it.”
“You came into town just like you did this time—you walked. You came in for food. That’s the same. I was playing and you listened. Same. You said, ‘You know you look like Peter Frampton?’ I said, ‘People have told me.’ You said, ‘You even sound like Frampton.’ I said, ‘Thanks. I work at it.’ You listened some more and said, ‘Frampton. Jesus Christ, Frampton.’ That puts us back on track, I think.”
I was still breathing fast and high and getting dizzier by the minute. “You said, ‘That’s the first time we’ve been confused.’”
He continued, “I asked you if you played. You nodded, but when I asked you to join me you said no.”
“The stage,” I said. It was getting hard to see. Everything was bubbling and fading in and out. “There wasn’t enough room for two.”
“Back then there was barely room for one.” He came over to my table, grabbed my hand, and pulled me towards the stage. A foot away from the table he stopped and pointed at my pack. I didn’t let go of his hand and unfastened my straps with my free hand. My pack fell from my shoulders and crumpled to the floor like some animal hit while crossing the road.
I lifted it and leaned it against the table. He watched me and smiled. “Not going to let go?”
“There were others,” I said, confused.
“While you listened, David, Steven, and Graham came in. We started to jam. You listened.”
“I remember.”
“You stayed a few days.”
“I needed time.”
“Joni came in the next night. You were on your way to Montreal, maybe further. You had a decision to make. Arlo came in the night after.”
“Ode to ancient children gone, we are one,” I mumbled. The stage got bigger with every step.
He supported me in his arms as we walked. It felt like a good friend helping me home after a good drunk. Except I never drank. Never drank and never smoked. Cigarettes. Helped a lot of other people home though. Just like this.
So this is how it felt.
“That wasn’t the song.”
His statement shook me. I wondered if the waitress had given me something because the stage ended at the curvature of the earth. I kept shaking my head to clear it, looking at the floor instead and nodding. “I know. I got this far and couldn’t go on because I wasn’t really sure. Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, and some of The Hawks came in and started playing “The Weight” and… I don’t know. I made my decision here. I made my decision, and I could go on.”
Beside his guitar was another. I hadn’t seen it before. He sat me down on the stool and put the guitar in my hands. There was another stool beside mine. Then another and another and…
“I still can’t play good.”
“You play good.” His arm swept over the audience. Where did they come from? Everybody I’d ever helped, everybody I’d ever cheated, everybody I’d ever hated or loved, and right there in front, Paula and David-Jeremy. “All the world, huh?”
“What?”
“Not to worry. Besides, we’ll decide if you play well.”
“Huh?”
The audience was applauding.
The stools filled. CSN, Joni Mitchell, Maria Muldaur, Robbie Robertson, and Richard Manuel.
Neil Young walked in. “Arlo won’t be able to make it so I came instead.”
“Thanks,” I said. Frampton adjusted the mike for me. The lights went down and somebody caught me in a blinding spot. I cleared my throat and pulled the mike closer. “It’s 2005, not 1974. What are you folks doing here?”
“Not yet, Joe.”
“That woman from the tavern?” I looked at Frampton. “She coming? That’d make this complete.”
He smiled. My head cleared, and the room settled down to where and what it’d been, although it was still awfully warm, considering the doors and windows were all busted and first snow was coming soon.
The door opened and Frampton pointed at a young man standing there. “No. He makes this complete.”
He was a handsome kid. Just shy of too tall, nice build, although towards thin. Long brown hair, brown eyes. His beard had blond highlights. He looked like he’d been on the road for a while.
A waitress came out from behind the bar. Not the one from last night, the one from thirty years ago. I could feel my eyes bulging out of their sockets. “How—”
Frampton put a finger over my lips. The boy looked up at her. He had a terrific smile. I bet that smile got him into lots of beds thirty years ago. Nowadays, I only hoped he carried protection.
“You got any chili?” he asked.
A dog barked outside. A moment later I heard a raven’s caw.
Frampton smiled. “Your ride’s here, Joe.”
The store shimmered again. Everyone was gone and the place looked deserted, like it should have when I first entered. I put a hand to my chest. It felt like my lungs were closing inside me. Somebody was softly crying, and I saw the kid was still in his chair. In front of him was some chili in a cracked bowl. There was a scene on the outside of the bowl. It was the same as was on the farmhouse cistern.
The kid sobbed as he shoveled the chili in.
I reached for Frampton. He was melting. I could feel him radiating heat, like he was burning from the inside out.
“Am I dying? Is this it?”
Mouths formed where his eyes had been. “I don’t think so,” his eyes said.
I couldn’t get any air and the pressure was killing me. “That boy. He’s me?”
Frampton’s features and clothes were completely gone. All that remained was a white, human form, as if beeswax had been given human shape. There were no flames, but the heat stifled me.
“No, not you.”
“Who?”
“A boy, needing time to make a decision. Unfortunately, I got in the way.”
I put out a hand to him for support but he wasn’t there. Talking took too much energy, too much of what little strength I still had. I shook my head. I didn’t understand.
“What you call thirty years ago, I came through here, through what you think of as this place, just a traveler. A tourist, really. You came through here, too, passing me as I rested. You entered my dream and found solace there. That was fine. But we exchanged unequal weights. You took some of my reality and I took some of your dream. Neither of us could survive. My people carry our realities wherever we go. Your people carry your dreams. I used one of my realities to bring you back.”
“Where?” I sobbed. “Here?”
“Yes, here, where your dream ended. You needed to come back to your first great decision, to that moment when you first dreamed of how different things might have been.”
I wanted to cry, scream…I wanted to do something to get this ache away from me and onto someone else. My first great decision. Made here. In a place like this. My decision to leave my wife. To not hear and relish and comfort the sobbings of my son. When I dreamed they would be better off without me, with someone else. A young boy’s dream. A dying man’s sadness.
“I give you back your dream. I take back my reality. Your kind can not know different yesterdays; you can only accept those you know you had.”
The ache was ripped from me. That weight, my pack that I’d carried for thirty-some years, caught fire, burned bright for a moment then died. It went dark.
* * *
A strong light came through the cracks in the wall. The dog barked again, the raven cawed, footsteps and dancing lights outside.
The waitress opened the door and caught me in the spotlight she held in her hand. “Joe? Christ, we’ve been looking for you all day and night. I went out to get some stuff for breakfast, I come back and you’re gone.”
Cook trotted up to me. Odin flapped in and landed on his back. “Caw!”
The waitress reached out for my arm. “You okay? You look like shit. Where’s your pack?”
Caw!
“I dropped it. Somewhere.”
“Yeah, well, it can’t be far. You’re only about two miles from the house. But you must’ve walked some crazy trail to get here. Cook zigzagged and doubled back half a dozen times.”
Caw!
“Leave it. Let whoever finds it have it. I don’t need to carry that weight anymore.”
She dimmed the light and shined it in my eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”
Cook nuzzled my free hand. I scratched him behind the ears. Odin hopped forward and I smoothed the feathers on his head. I took the waitress’ hand in mine. “What’s your name?”
She laughed. “Sheril. Sheril Anne. With an S and an i, not a C and a y.”
“May I come home with you, Sheril Anne with an S and an i, not a C and a y?”
She walked beside me. Cook walked ahead of us. Odin flew overhead.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Joseph Carrabis has been everything from a long-haul trucker to a Chief Research Scientist and held patents covering mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics. He’s the author of The Augmented Man, Empty Sky, The Inheritors, Tales Told ‘Round Celestial Campfires, The Shaman, Search, Tag, and the non-fiction neuroscience-based That Th?nk You Do, all available through Ingram and Amazon.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “The Weight”:
Magical realism stories are literary pieces in a real-world setting to which one or more elements of the mystical or supernatural are added. Certainly “The Weight” by author Joseph Carrabis fits this definition. But regardless of how one classifies this story, we found it to be a fine piece of writing that fit nicely with our October issue.
The author first paints a compelling setting then takes us on a journey with his main character in search of something he lost long ago. Or maybe it’s something he sought but never found. Until now.