Winter Oranges

  “Benjamin Robert Ward. I have a billion questions—”

  “You have a billion questions? How do you think I feel?”

  “Me first!”

  “How about we take turns?” Jason suggested.

  Ben laughed, and Jason was struck by what a bright sound it was—so full of joy and merriment, hearing it was like throwing back the curtain in a dark room and letting in the daylight. “Fair enough.”

  “Okay. But I get to start.” Jason muted the TV, then wound the music box key as far as it would go to give them as much time as possible. “How’d you get in the globe?” he asked as he released it.

  “My sister put me there. My turn—”

  “No! Tell me the whole thing! Where are you from? How did this happen? How could you be in there all this time and—”

  “That’s way more than one question.”

  “Start with the first one, then.” Jason glanced at the globe, held upside down in his hand, and the key turning counterclockwise, ticking away the seconds. “Talk fast.”

  Ben obliged, letting his answer tumble out in a rush. “My sister put me in the globe after the Battle of Fort Sumter to stop me from joining the Confederate Army. My turn: Who shot J.R.?”

  “Wait! What? The Confederate Army? And who the hell is J.R.?”

  “J.R. Ewing! He got shot in the season finale, and by the time the next season started, the woman who owned the globe had moved me into this curio cabinet in the dining room—which they never ate in!—and I never found out who shot him.”

  Jason blinked, his mind reeling. “That’s your question? You’ve been stuck in a snow globe since the Civil War, and you’re worried about a plot point on Dynasty?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I bet it was Dusty. Or maybe Vaughn. Probably not Sue Ellen, but—”

  “I’ll google it for you later.” And then, seeing Ben’s confusion at the term, “I’ll look it up. Now back up. Answer my question again, but this time, start at the beginning.”

  Ben glanced pointedly at the globe, then waited until Jason had wound it again before he started. “My family owned a small farm in Tennessee. Mostly cotton, but we grew some corn and tobacco too.”

  “You were plantation owners?”

  “Not even close, although that was my father’s aspiration. When he first started the homestead, before I was born, he assumed he’d have lots of sons to help him get ahead, but it didn’t work out that way. My mother had six children before she died giving birth to the seventh. Only two of us lived: me and my older sister, Sarah. And I was never the son my father wanted. I was sick all the time. And I have asthma. I tried smoking stramonium, but—”

  “You had asthma, so you smoked?”

  Ben waved the question away impatiently. “It’s what doctors prescribed. Anyway, the planters were like their own little aristocracy, and my dad desperately wanted to be part of that, but we had too little land and only a handful of slaves. And yeah”—he held up his hand to stop Jason from talking—“I know now how wrong it all was. But at the time?” He shrugged. “It was just how my life was. I didn’t think much about it.”

  Just as Jason had never stopped to consider whether acting was something he really wanted or not. It was what his parents told him he wanted. As a child that had seemed like enough. He took a moment to re-wind the globe. “Go on.”

  “Well, my dad hoped I’d run the farm while he hobnobbed with the wealthier plantation owners, but I was too weak. I couldn’t even walk through the fields without suffering an asthma attack, let alone make the slaves work.”

  “Was that what you wanted?” Jason asked, trying not to let Ben hear the distaste in his voice. “To be a plantation owner’s son, forcing slaves to pick cotton?”

  “No. I wanted to be a doctor. I already knew how to read. I begged my father to send me to college, but he said it was a waste of money.” Ben shrugged. “He had no use for me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. You were his son. He must have loved you.”

  Ben shook his head. “I understand why you think that way, in this day and age. It’s different now. But when I was growing up, kids weren’t pampered, precious little pets. We were commodities. We were labor and mouths to feed. That’s about it.”

  “I know more about that than you might think,” Jason muttered, but waved for Ben to continue.

  “Well, since I couldn’t help my father, he figured he’d have to depend on Sarah to get him into the elite. He arranged for her to marry one of the plantation owner’s sons. His name was Theodore, and he gave the globe to my sister as an engagement present. He’d picked it up on a trip to France.”

  “What year was this?”

  “1860.”

  “And then the war started?”

  “Right.” Ben’s voice started to fade, and Jason had to re-wind the snow globe before Ben could continue. “People had been talking about secession since Lincoln’s election, but I didn’t pay much attention until after Fort Sumter, when the state voted to secede. Eastern Tennessee was still mostly pro-Union, but Western Tennessee—where my family lived—was heavily pro-Confederate.”

  “Including you?”

  “Honestly? I never thought about the bigger implications of the war, or about what was at stake. I only knew what my father told me: our way of life was in jeopardy. And for me, joining the army had nothing to do with furthering anybody’s cause but my own.”

  “What cause was that?” Jason asked in disgust. “Dying?”

  “If that’s what it took, yes.”

  Jason frowned, not understanding.

  “I was young, and all the men my age were joining.” Ben shrugged. “I was more worried about looking like a coward if I was the only one who stayed behind. And what else could I do? My mother was dead and my father wanted me gone. And once the war started . . .” He stopped, thinking, seemingly lost in his memories, and Jason took the opportunity to wind the globe again. “I heard Father say to Theodore’s family, ‘Maybe the war will make a man of him.’ And I thought maybe he was right. So I decided to enlist.”

  “But your sister stopped you?”

  “She knew I wasn’t strong enough. I probably would have died of pneumonia before I saw my first battle. But I was determined, so she put me in the globe and told me she’d let me out when the war was over, or when I’d come to my senses, whichever happened first.”

  It was a lot to take in. Jason wasn’t sure which question to ask next. He settled for, “When was this exactly?”

  “Late April, 1861.”

  “So you’re twenty-one years old?”

  “Twenty. I would have turned twenty-one in June. I mean, I guess maybe I did turn twenty-one, but I was stuck in the globe by then.”

  “So you’ve been in there for a hundred and fifty years?”

  “Give or take.”

  It was too horrifying to contemplate. “Okay. How do we get you out?”

  Ben laughed. “Believe me, if I knew that, I’d have told you already.”

  “There must be a way.”

  Ben shook his head, his smile fading. “I don’t think there is, and I’ve had a long time to think about it.”

  “But . . .” Jason’s mind reeled with questions. He stared into the dismal interior of the globe, shaking his head. “I still don’t understand how she could have put you there at all.”

  Ben shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. My sister always had this way of making things happen.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  Ben scratched his chin, thinking. “Well, we had a beehive, and she could walk right up to it and get the honey without ever being stung. And one time, a beau brought her some flowers. They should have wilted and died in a few days, but they stayed fresh in the vase for months. But then she found out that beau had run off with another girl, and the flowers were all dead inside of an hour.”

  “But still, how did she—”

  “I don’t know. I reall
y don’t. If I knew how she’d put me in, maybe I’d know how to get out. But she never told me.”

  “And she didn’t leave instructions or a note or anything?”

  Ben shook his head. “It was only supposed to be for a few months, and she assumed she’d be there to set me free.”

  “But she wasn’t?”

  “She kept the globe in the study and sometime later—I don’t really know when, because it’s hard to keep track of time in there—but at some point, a group of soldiers came. They were deserters from the Union army, on their way home. My dad let them stay, not because he was sympathetic to their cause, but because they agreed to leave my sister and the slaves alone. And they did, but when they left, one of them stole the globe.”

  “That must have been horrifying, being carried away and having no way to stop them!”

  “It was. I tried to stay behind, at the farmhouse. I thought at first it had worked. The man took the globe away, and I was still there at home. Until suddenly . . .” he snapped his fingers, “I wasn’t. It was like an elastic band pulled me right back to the globe.”

  “And nobody could see or hear you?”

  “Only family members. That’s what Sarah told me, although I never tested it on my father.”

  “So that means . . .”

  “We must be distantly related. You must be her descendant.”

  Jason shook his head in disbelief. “No. I mean, that can’t be it. What are the odds that one of her descendants would happen across the globe? It seems unlikely.”

  Ben’s laugh was distinctly lacking in humor. “Is that how it seems to you? Because I’ve been waiting for more than a hundred and fifty years for somebody to find me. It seems to me like it’s about darn time.”

  It was a horrible thing to consider—being trapped for so long with nobody to talk to. But as miserable as it sounded, Ben shook it off and leaned forward with a smile. “Now, your turn. Start talking. You’re an actor?”

  Jason groaned. “Sort of.”

  “‘Sort of’? How can you ‘sort of’ be an actor?”

  Jason hated to get into it. Then again, Ben had shared his story. It was only fair that Jason do the same. “My parents pushed me into acting when I was a kid. I did a couple of cereal commercials, but then, when I was eleven, I landed a part on a sitcom. It was a family thing—mom, dad, three kids. I played the only son. It did pretty well for five seasons, but then the star decided to try his hand at movies and quit, so the show ended. But by that time, I had something of a fan base. Mostly teenage girls. I was . . . Well, I guess I was a bit of a heartthrob.” His cheeks burned at the admission. “One of the cute boys they always talked about in those teenybopper magazines.” Ben frowned at this, clearly confused by the allusion, and Jason waved it off. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I had enough of a name that some TV executive decided to put me in a leading role. So when I was seventeen, I starred in this TV show called Those Darn Kids. It was about four teenagers—two boys and two girls—who ran around solving crimes with their dog.”

  Ben wrinkled his brow. He started to speak, but no sound came out, and Jason realized the globe had run down. He wound it up enough to allow Ben to ask his question. “Isn’t that copying Scooby-Doo?”

  Funny how even Ben, who’d been trapped in a snow globe all this time, could see it. “Yeah, well, that’s what the lawyers thought too. A lawsuit shut us down after five episodes.” Being only an actor, the suit hadn’t included him. It’d been aimed at the writers and the producer, but it had also ensured that those five episodes never again saw the light of day. No cult following or modern-day revival for Those Darn Kids. But that was where he’d met Dylan, so he’d never considered it a failure. “After that, I landed a supporting role in another TV show, but it only lasted one season. I had a couple of small parts in films that went nowhere. Then I did a slasher movie. Do you know what that is?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Have you heard of Scream? Or Final Destination?”

  Another head shake, and Jason realized he was talking about his own era. But Ben hadn’t watched a TV in twenty-five years. “How about Friday the Thirteenth, or Nightmare on Elm Street? Or maybe Halloween?”

  Ben considered, then nodded. “I remember some of the commercials, but I’ve never seen one.”

  “Well, this one was called Alley of Blood, and it wasn’t worth seeing. I mean, when I first read the script, I thought it sounded like fun. And it should have been, but the director was a nightmare. He kept firing actors and screaming at the sound crew and making the writers change the lines. And everybody knew he was banging one of the actresses, and so—”

  He caught Ben’s frantic hand wave. The music box had run out again, but he was able to read Ben’s single-word question on his lips. Banging?

  “Sorry,” Jason laughed. “He was having sex with one of the actresses, and so he kept changing things to give her a bigger part. She was scripted to die about mid-film, and I was supposed to be the one person who survived. But by the time it wrapped, she was the star and I was the nameless victim.”

  In hindsight, it shouldn’t have mattered. The director’s idiocy had caused their biggest-name actor to fall behind some dime-a-dozen D-cup blonde, losing them any chance of a run in theaters. Jason should have shrugged it off and moved on, but at the time, it had felt like a sign, as if the world was telling him that he had nowhere left to go. His heartthrob days were behind him. His fan base had grown up and moved on. It had seemed like his career was over before he was old enough to legally drink.

  Ben gestured for Jason to go on. He mouthed the words, What happened?

  “Well, I went through a really bad period.” He’d done what a lot of teen stars did—he’d resorted to hard-core partying. He’d taken any drug he was offered, and drunk more alcohol than any sane person should. He’d also landed in bed with Andrew, one of his Alley of Blood costars. They stayed carefully closeted, but for several months, they’d done nothing but fuck and get high. Right up until the night Andrew overdosed at a club.

  “I had a friend.” He hesitated, glancing at Ben. “A boyfriend.” Ben blinked, then slowly nodded his understanding. “He died. Maybe he committed suicide. I don’t know.” But suddenly Jason had found himself on the front page of every tabloid. Even the reporters had never guessed how intimate their relationship had been, but they knew Jason had been at the same club. They knew Jason had gone in the ambulance with Andrew to the hospital. He’d been one of their favorite targets ever since.

  Ben gestured for Jason to wind the globe. Jason obliged, and Ben asked gently, “Did you love him?”

  Jason closed his eyes to keep from seeing Ben’s sympathy. “No. Not really. But I did care about him. And the whole incident was a wake-up call. Made me realize I needed to get my act together.” He’d never felt like an addict, but he went to rehab because that’s what everybody in Hollywood did. And when he’d come back out, Dylan had been there, waiting for him like a knight on a white horse, saying he could get Jason a role in a movie he’d signed for. It was another slasher movie, with Jason scripted as yet another victim, but it hadn’t mattered.

  All that mattered was that he was with Dylan.

  Not that Dylan had ever seen them as a couple. They were friends with benefits, and nothing more. But the friends part was more than most people got from Dylan, so Jason had gladly accepted it.

  He’d been accepting it ever since.

  Jason cleared his throat and continued. “I’ve spent the last few years doing supporting roles in horror movies, and bit parts on TV shows—I played a serial killer on Criminal Minds, and a grieving husband on Castle, and a suspect on Law and Order. I did an independent film that was artsy and boring as hell. And then a couple of years ago, I did another slasher flick, Summer Camp Nightmare 3.” It’d been his first starring role in years.

  One he was about to reprise?

  He considered the script locked away in his drawer before turning back to Ben, who sat
watching him intently, waiting for him to go on, but Jason was ready to change the subject from his train wreck of a career.

  “That’s it. Pretty boring, huh?”

  Ben grinned and shook his head emphatically.

  “It’s wonderful!” Ben said, once Jason had turned the key again. “It must be so exciting, traveling all over and meeting so many different people! And pretending to be different people and getting paid for it!”

  “I guess.” He wished he could muster even half the enthusiasm people expected from him when they talked about acting.

  “Are you rich?”

  Jason laughed. “No.” But he stopped, considering. “Well, yeah. I guess by most people’s standards, I am. But not by Hollywood standards. Not even close. I’m a nobody.”

  Ben shook his head, suddenly somber. “Not to me.”

  It was a frank statement, spoken with something that bordered on reverence. Jason wasn’t sure how to respond, but Ben saved him by speaking again. “Can I see one of your movies?”

  Jason fidgeted with the turnkey on the bottom of the globe, not because it needed to be wound again already, but because it gave him something to look at besides Ben’s spectral eyes. “You don’t want to see those.”

  “Yes, I do. I want to see everything you’re in.”

  “They’re low-budget horror flicks with shitty scripts and cheap cinematography. They’re barely watchable.”

  “They’ll be the first movies I’ve seen in twenty-five years. Trust me. I’m easily entertained.”

  Jason searched Ben’s face for signs of mockery, but found none. He saw only an innocent eagerness that was refreshing, especially compared to the cynicism of modern audiences. “I don’t know where any of my DVDs are, but we could probably stream some of them.”

  Ben laughed. “I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded like a maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Jason agreed, although he knew what he really meant was yes.

  They started with Alley of Blood—not because it was any good, but because it somehow made sense to Jason that they go in order.

  “Promise me you won’t hold this against me,” he said as the movie started.