Chapter 6
After cold cereal at the picnic table in Lucas’ dining room, Harold threw up, then managed to keep down some coffee and relayed his story. He told them about everything starting with his leap into the bay and ending with the prowlers around his house. His hosts listened intently but gave no feedback other than encouragement that everything would be fine, everything would work out.
He surprised himself by being so frank about what had gone on with him recently and as they sat in silence he considered what it was that had made him open up. They were about the same age he guessed, about twenty years his senior, and they both looked like they had lived some hard years. They had the easy manner of people whose wants are few and who are used to accepting whatever blessings and curses the tides of life washed up on their shores. There was something in the way that Opal touched him with her small thin hands, feminine but with nails clipped like a man’s, that reminded him of Grandmother. Her face, weathered and free of makeup, was uncontaminated by secrecy, malice, or judgment. Everything about her made him relax. And everything about Lucas made him feel safe. His long wavy biker beard, half gray and half light brown, gave him a wise and powerful aspect. The tanned forehead above his bushy eyebrows was heavily creased and lined, a map to the places he had been and the things he had seen. Although there was nothing in his words or actions hinting of anger or violence, Harold felt that this was man who was capable of doing whatever was required to keep the people he cared about safe, warm, and fed. To Harold it seemed that he had landed in the eye of a hurricane, a place beyond time and troubles.
In fact they had been so kind and open with him that it made him feel guilty that he had not told them all of the details about what happened when he hit the muddy water. Just as he was about to open his mouth his cell-phone began to chirp on the coffee table back in the den. He rushed back and picked it up.
“This is Greg. Hi Bonnie. Yeah. No, I’m fine. I know what you said, you’ve said it a hundred times.” There was a long pause. “Look, I’m sober and I’m staying with some friends, I’m trying to get my head on straight. There’s a lot going on. I know it’s hard...okay, look, I’ll call you later, gotta go. Bye.”
“Bonnie your kid?” Lucas asked when Harold came back in.
“Wife.”
“Take it from me,” Lucas said holding Opal’s hand. “Enjoy your family while you can; you never know what tomorrow is going to bring. Someday you might be looking down from the hereafter wishing you had more time.”
“Look, I gotta go lay down, I don’t feel so good,” Harold said. Opal led him back to the spare bedroom like a child and laid her hand on the small of his back as he climbed in the big high bed, an antique that almost made him look for a stepstool.
“What the hell’s wrong with me? I know I’ve been drinking a lot lately, but I’m not a drunk,” he said, looking up at her.
“No, you ain’t a drunk,” Opal said. She put a cool hand on his cheek. “But you’re coming down in a lesser way I guess. Keep it up though, and you will be, sooner or later. Take it from one who knows. Sleep, and keep sippin’ water and Gatorade. You’ll be rolling in clover before long, you’ll see.”
Harold said nothing. He smiled, and on a high bed made in the days when folks feared sleeping near drafty floors would bring the grip, Harold dozed away the afternoon on top of the covers. There was no danger of illness bearing drafts now. The air coming in was as pleasant as the breeze across a plate of peaches. It swirled through the screen, in the window, across his chest, and up to the ceiling nine feet high.
In his dream he was behind the wheel of a child’s pedal-car shaped like a rocket. Beside him was his friend Alex, and in the sacred silence of the slumber world they were being pushed about in the little rocket-shaped car by his grandfather. The grass was close-mowed with a push-mower, and looking back he could see a white handkerchief on Granddad’s head to soak up sweat, tied comically at the corners with little knots. Some friends were over and he could see the men with their cans of Schlitz and Pabst, sweating like mad and playing Yard Darts, the kind with real points. It was one of those days when everybody drank but nobody got drunk, the coleslaw was homemade not store bought, and the laughter went on until the fireflies came out. Alex was making faces, and the more he laughed the more Harold laughed, and it went on until their cheeks were sore.
He woke up hard and disoriented. He had fallen out of bed and was on his side looking underneath the bed. His sticky eyes and lagging brain could not sort what was real and what was dream. Under the bed there appeared to be parked the little read rocket-shaped car.
There was a bang from the back bedroom. Lucas and Opal hustled back to see what had caused the sound.
“I hope he didn’t throw up again,” Lucas said on the way.
They went into the bedroom and saw that Harold was sitting on the floor running his hands over a shiny new peddle-powered car straight out of the 1950’s, a fire-engine red four-wheeled missile with a tandem cockpit and silver lightning bolts on the side. Lucas sat on the side of the bed. “Where that come from?” he asked.
“I was having a dream,” Harold said. “My Granddad was pushing me around in my little red car, me and another kid, and we were laughing like crazy. Pretty cruddy waking up, to tell you the truth. I fell out of bed, and I could see it under there, so I rolled it out.”
“Harold...” Opal said.
“Why did you do this?” Harold asked.
“I didn’t do it,” Lucas said. “Neither did Opal.”
“Then who did? Who did?” He began to pull away from it, got on the bed and pulled his feet up.
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. He went to the open window and looked out, but saw no one to blame for slipping in the car. “I don’t see nobody,” Lucas said.
“Bizarre,” Opal added thinly.
“We couldn’t have known you had a car like this when you were a kid,” Lucas said. “And even if we did, how could we know that you’d come over here looking for help, take a nap, and dream about it.” He said.
“It was them,” Harold said, louder than he needed to. “It was them, the ones from the water...” He jumped up and ran into the bathroom, shut and locked the door. It was dark in there, and he did not bother to turn on the light. He plopped down on the terry-cloth toilet seat cover and covered his face with his hands. “First they follow me home, now they’re trying to freak me out, and it’s really working, it’s really working...”
Outside the door Lucas said quietly, “Doesn’t make sense buddy. Why save your life, then track you, then plant a little car, you know?”
“You think I’m nuts,” Harold said. “Damn, what if I am nuts?”
“You ain’t nuts,” Opal said. “It’ll all make sense sooner or later. Just hold it together honey, it’ll all make sense in time, I just know it.”
“Don’t be a pussy, come on out,” Lucas said. “I’ll whip you up some grub since you didn’t hold the last batch down. How’s your stomach feeling?”
“Better,” Harold said. “But I’m still not that hungry.”
“I’ll make you whatever you want. How about some pancakes?” Opal asked.
“Lucas?” Harold began.
“Yeah?”
Harold opened the door and came out. “Will you go look out by the shed and tell me if my little red car is there? I want to know if this car here is the same one all fixed up, or if it just looks a lot like it. I haven’t been out in the back yard in months, but the last time I was out there, it was rusting out there under the awning beside the shed.”
“Come to the window and see for yourself. It’s still light out, you should be able to see from here,” Lucas said.
Parting the white eyelet curtains, Harold looked out into his yard next door. The spot where the car used to be was empty.
“It’s impossible,” Harold said. “Nobody could have...I want you to put it back. Put
it back where it came from, okay? It’s too weird looking at it.”
“Roger. Then breakfast-dinner. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, the whole nine,” Lucas offered.
“I love breakfast dinner,” Harold said. “I do that whenever Bonnie doesn’t cook because it’s all I know how to make.”
“I’ll start the sausage, it takes longer,” Opal said, trying to pretend like she wasn’t too freaked out while heading for the kitchen.
Lucas disappeared with the car while Harold watched from the window. He heard the back door’s screen slam shut and seconds later saw Lucas cross the lawn and pass through the picketed gate. When he saw that the car was back where it belonged, Harold shut the window and turned the latch.