The Cauldron (8 page)

Carl nodded. A cold chill had spread over him, as if he had just stepped inside from a blizzard. It wasn’t the internal, tingling chill of fear, but an icy physical chill that coated every inch of him with a biting sting. Shivering, Carl forced the weakness from his legs and hurried stiffly the rest of the way across the street.

Somehow his mind accepted, unquestioningly, the fact of his survival.

The Mazda—oh, loyal car!—was still waiting where he’d parked it. What next? he asked himself, getting in.

Neighbors.

O O O

“Mrs. McGrath?”

Carl peered through the back screen door. What he could see of the kitchen inside was spotless, and the woman standing at the sink looked starched and untouchable. Again, he felt the stirring of hope: something about her stance seemed familiar, something about the way her hair was wound into a tight bun seemed
right
, though he had the vague feeling the hair should be brown mixed with a trace of gray and not the fine silver it was.

“That’s right.” Maggie McGrath’s voice was an old woman’s voice, thin and reminding him of crystal wind chimes, but it was every bit as crisp as her appearance. She came to the door, taking him in with obvious disapproval. “All right, young man,” she sighed. “There’s only one of you, so I guess you won’t try to convert me. What are you selling?”

“Nothing.” Carl shook his head. “I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

“You can talk right there.” She made no move to unlock the screen. In fact, she put her hand on the edge of the inner door.

Carl swallowed. “Your new neighbor at 1733, Mrs. Goldstein, tells me you’ve lived in this house for a number of years.”

“Thirty, come next March.” Her eyes narrowed. “But if I ever decide I want to sell, I’ll pick my own real estate agent, thank you all the same.”

“No, no,” Carl said quickly. He backed down two steps, to put his face on a level with hers. “I’m not a real estate agent. I just have one question—”

She raised her chin, inviting the question and giving him the answer. But he had to ask it. “Have you ever seen me before?”

She leaned forward slightly, as if to examine him better. “Not you, young man,” she said, backing up. “Is there any reason I should have?”

“I used to live next door.” He nodded toward the house to his left. “At 1727.”
At least I think I did.

“You? When?”

“Until my father died.” Hopeless. “Eight years ago.”

“Your
father
?” Her eyes narrowed to needle-fine slits. “What was his name?”

“Warren Johnson. My mother—her name was Ellen—died a couple of years before that, in an accident.”

“Oh, yes?” She continued to search his face, her chin jutted forward in a challenge.

“I’m Carl Johnson,” he said. “I lived next door there, most of my life. You’re sure you don’t remember me?”

“Think anybody would forget the likes of you?” Mrs. McGrath shook her head. “You never lived in
this
neighborhood, young man.

“Could you tell me who
did
live there?”

“Art Siegel, same as now, that’s who. What is it you want? I may be old, but I’m no fool. Whatever your scam is—”

“No, no,” Carl said hastily. “No scam. Really. I—I must have been mistaken, that’s all.” Softer: “Going mad.” Even to himself, he sounded like a fool. Louder now, so she could hear: “I just must have been mistaken.”

“You can’t even keep straight in your head where you lived most of your life? Young man, you better get yourself a keeper.” The door closed decisively, not quite a slam.

O O O

Dazed anew, Carl sat in the car. What now? No work, no school, no father, no neighbors—impossible! Impossible that it was impossible! Morgantown High School. How could he not have graduated from Morgantown High School? He knew every word, every note of the alma mater. Knew the cheers from the pep rallies—
Smash ‘em, bust ‘em, that’s our custom! Go, Raiders!
He even remembered—could still
hear
just how the passing bells sounded, could
smell
the machine shop, the locker rooms, and the fresh floor wax in the halls …

What he should have done was look at other yearbooks.
Dimwit.
Of course, that was what he should have done. Probably he was thinking of the year ahead of his own—1965—something like that. Sure. Go find the
Raider
he
did
remember: that was the best bet. Go look up 1965 or 1964. He’d have his pictures in those.

Wouldn’t he?

O O O

Losing your past is like losing your keys
, he thought, climbing the library steps for the second time in two hours. You search the same damn pants, the same dresser drawer, the same jacket pocket again and again, run back and forth to the car to peer through the window and make sure they haven’t magically reappeared dangling from the ignition—and all the while, they’re–

Where?

But he kept climbing. This time the woman at the checkout desk was busy with something and didn’t look up. He didn’t see Mrs. Gates, who’d helped him the previous time.

First, the yearbooks.

He went straight back to the room with the long maple tables, squatted in front of the shelf that held the traitorous
Raider,
and scanned along the spines.

There it was! Black, with gold lettering!

He snatched it down and threw it open without looking at the date on the front cover. Still hunkered in front of the shelf, he began to leaf through it. A whispered “Yes!” exploded from his lips.

This was what
his
yearbook had looked like! Pictures square with the pages, captions neatly rectangular, nothing oddly skewed and fanciful … but he didn’t know these names, these faces. True, a Mr. Bullis taught mathematics, but he looked old enough to be
his
Mr. Bullis’s father. And the students—crew cuts and pompadours on the boys, conservative shoulder length and occasional bangs on the girls. And the car in the Driver’s Ed picture—

Swallowing, he shut the book and looked at the cover.

1930!

***

Chapter 13

His heart thrumming like a jackhammer, he shoved the book back onto the shelf and scanned along it for more gold-on-black spines. Earlier editions, and later ones. It seemed that every fourth year was black. But the black volumes ended … in 1946?

Twenty years before he graduated.

Before he was even born!

Taking the 1938 one down, he searched its pages, suddenly more afraid that he
would
find a familiar face than that he wouldn’t. Occasionally a face raised a ripple in his mind, but he found no one of whom he could say, yes, I definitely know him, yes, she’s someone I remember.

Until a name, not a picture, caught his eye.

Wait …

James Robert Denton. James Robert Denton. There’d been a Jim Denton in a couple of his classes, but this face was thinner, the hair straighter. In a section called
Senior Class Facts
, in a column under the heading, “usually found,” was the name of a grocery store.

He must have worked there, Carl thought, probably stocking shelves. His scalp crawled.
I remember the store!
My mother shopped there. The book open on his knees, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember exactly where the store had been. Where the K-Mart is, he decided, in a wave of regret. Any chance to find out about Jim Denton had been razed with the store.

Reluctantly, he returned the book to the shelf and began working his way back, quickly scanning each set of class pictures.

In 1934, he found what he had been hoping—fearing!—he would find: An unmistakably familiar face. Her name was Jackie Harrison. He’d dated her a half dozen times, but he’d eventually lost out to Wade Dillman, whose picture was nowhere to be found.

But he’d dated her in 1965! Something moved at the back of his mind at that thought. He couldn’t catch hold of a necessary fleeting notion. Like the dreams, the nightmares, but smaller, calmer, like wakening from an ordinary dream knowing only that it had been vivid a moment before and now was gone.

He shoved 1934 back into history and skipped again to 1930. Quickly, nervously, he flipped through the pages. Until—

Suddenly, the face of a girl leaped out at him from the yellowing page, literally taking his breath away.

I’ve dreamed of her,
he thought, his heart slamming against his ribcage at least as hard as it had in the nightmares.
I’ve
dreamed
 …

Slender features, soft with youth. Full lips, high cheekbones, but most of all oval eyes that even through the yellow curtain of the aging paper seemed to glisten with barely suppressed joy, a joy in living he
knew,
knew first-hand, as … as …

His stomach sank. His throat tightened, almost forcing a cry through the ache. Sitting on the floor with the book in his hands he began to sob. Compared to this, compared to this, nothing he had ever felt before had touched him.

But the name beneath the picture was the name of a total stranger: Claire E. Carstairs. Her classmates had called her Ceecee.

O O O

Wiping his eyes on his sleeve, he put the book back on the shelf, sat at one of the tables and composed himself, thankful that at least the room was empty. A few minutes later the woman who had been at the checkout desk put her head through the door to tell him the library was closing. No time to go back into the
Tribune
microfilm, even if he could have found the courage.

He retreated to the Adler Motel and let himself into his room. His suitcase was gone.

“Nobody stays here
two
nights, mister,” the man in the office said when Carl reported the loss. “Thought you skipped without signing the credit slip. Sorry.”

“
I’m
staying two nights.” His tone was so grim it surprised him. “Maybe three.”

“Okay, okay. Won’t happen again. Here’s your suitcase.”

Carl stalked back to the room, flung the suitcase onto the shelf provided, and slumped onto the edge of the bed. The Adler had had some pretensions at one time, he recalled. Now it was just a place to rent a bed, cheap. Not even in a decent part of town—the idea startled him: he had never before thought of Morgantown as having parts that
weren’t
decent.

He flopped back onto the bed, staring up at the stained ceiling.

I am Carl Johnson, he told himself with great deliberation. I know that. I lived in Morgantown through twelve years of school and a few years beyond. My parents lived and died here. I know that. And it’s this Morgantown. This one. But nobody in this Morgantown remembers Carl Johnson. Or his parents. Nobody remembers that we ever lived here at all, and from what I’ve looked up—the yearbooks, the newspapers—they’re right. We never did.

He rubbed his face with both hands. I got hit on the head, he thought. Or something. Amnesia. Sure, that’s it. Must have happened about the time I moved to Roseville near Milwaukee and started with Harry. When I woke up and couldn’t remember anything, I must’ve just—just made up the first twenty years of my life, made it up from bits and pieces of … what?

He felt his mind slipping away. Just when things started to make sense, just when he almost had it worked out, the solutions slithered away. He backed up and began again: slowly, methodically.
My name is Carl Johnson. Eight or nine years ago, something happened that gave me amnesia, and I … built a past for myself. I made all of this up.

He locked onto that notion for a moment. Why a past based on Morgantown? A town I’ve never lived in? I must know something about it or there wouldn’t be even the few matches I have between my memory and reality: the courthouse, the Adler Motel, the Tip-Top, the library, the location of the yearbooks in the library … I had to have lived here or visited here or seen pictures or—

Pictures!

That’s it!
Pictures! Yes! He remembered! In a Sunday supplement he’d found when he was unpacking boxes a month or two after the move. A Sunday supplement from some big city paper—Chicago? Cincinnati? That particular issue had featured Morgantown! A homey portrait of a small Midwestern town, just the sort of thing they ran now and then to let their big city readers know that small towns and small town values still existed in America. The paper had been three or four months old at the time, he remembered, so he’d had it for a while. Sure—he could’ve had it when he woke up and he could’ve used it, subconsciously, to generate a new life and—

Abruptly, the castle he’d been building—his mind had been building—in thin air began to crumble. Pictures in a newspaper wouldn’t account for created memories of his parents, for the house he thought he’d lived in or Jim Denton’s picture in the yearbook or an aging Charlie Marshall or where the yearbooks were kept in the library … or the girl whose face in one of those yearbooks had driven him into uncontrollable tears.

Unless …

Desperately, he tried to recreate the paper, the pictures, and the articles in his mind. Could Charlie Marshall, as a local businessman, have been pictured? Could the girl—Ceecee?—have been included? Maybe she had done something of note later in her life but she had died and that yearbook picture was the only one available and—

My god! Just listen to me. Talk about grasping at straws! This is as absurd as … as thinking I came to the wrong Morgantown. As absurd as … as …

Even as he struggled to find a suitably absurd comparison, the need for it faded. The Sunday supplement with its dozens of pictures and thousands of words about Morgantown retreated.

Still flat on his back on the bed, he shook his head. Where the hell had such a ridiculous pipe dream come from? There had never been such a paper. Had there?

But if not, why had he been able to see it so clearly, why had he—

Madness?

No. I am not mad!

God! It was back! He remembered the front page, the pictures, even a caption under one of the pictures, a caption with Charlie Marshall’s name in it, Charlie grinning at the camera.

A caption—and a picture of Charlie standing proud in front of the Tip-Top—that hadn’t been in that Sunday supplement the first time he had remembered it.

Stop it!

His fingers clenched on the frayed bedspread, almost ripping it as the two memories pulsed in his mind, alternately fading and brightening like a movie screen with two projectors trained on it, first one image dominating, then the other.

Stop it!

Whatever, whoever, is doing this to me, stop it!

The articles, the pictures, all faded. The memories remained, but he knew they were sham, something his mind had conjured up. Completely imaginary, not like his real memories of growing up in Morgantown … memories that had at least
some
basis in reality. Like Charlie Marshall.

A measure of ease returned with the thought. Charlie Marshall. He existed in the remembered Morgantown and the real Morgantown. He was far older than he should be, but he existed. And he owned the restaurant Carl remembered Charlie’s father’s having owned. It was as close a match between memory and reality as he had found so far.

Damn you, whoever you are, he said angrily to the thing in his mind. I’m not giving up!

Charlie Marshall was the next place to look.

O O O

The Tip-Top was almost deserted as Carl entered: one lone customer was at the cash register. The black-rooted blonde of the evening before was gone. Charlie Marshall—call him that—was behind the counter chatting with the man as he paid his bill.

“Sorry,” Marshall began. “We’re closing.” He stopped, his smile fading as he saw Carl.

“I’m not hungry,” Carl said. “But I’d like to talk to you, if you’ve got a minute.”

Marshall nodded slowly. The customer, a middle-aged man in a mechanic’s grimy work uniform, glanced at Carl. His eyebrows went up as he pocketed his change. “Gotta be on my way anyhow, Charlie,” he said, sketching a wave. “See ya.”

Marshall had sucked in his lips, squinting at Carl. Now he folded his arms and leaned on the counter. “Still think you knew me in high school, sonny?” he asked.

“No—no, I—obviously I was mistaken.”

Grinning, the man chuckled. “Unless you got a pipeline to to the fountain of youth, damn right. You got me mixed up with my kid, that’s all. When were you there?”

“I graduated in sixty-six.”

“Mmm. Jerry didn’t even overlap you, then.” Marshall straightened. “Graduated in thirty, myself. You weren’t even born yet.”

“You know a Jim Denton? Graduated sometime around you?”

Marshall’s eyebrows hitched up a fraction. “Been doin’ some research?”

“Sort of. Do you know who he is? Does he have a son named after him?”

“Jim Denton?” Marshall’s smile disappeared. “He joined the Navy, same as me. But he stayed in longer and ended up on the
Niblack
.” He rubbed his chin. “Ship attacked a German U-boat in April, before our official involvement in the war. Near Iceland. Paper said the
Niblack
was escorting a convoy to England. Jim died during the attack, April if I remember right, 1941.”

All Carl could do was shake his head slightly.
He
knew the name. Knew it meant death, not just for Jim Denton. A battle before the US formally entered WWII—

The silence thickened. Coming here had not been a good idea.

“Come siddown,” Marshall said, gesturing toward the nearest booth with his head. “Tell me why you came here.”

Carl swallowed away the heaviness. “I, uh, I’ve been trying to look up some people I, uh, my father knew, but I’m not having much luck.” Carl folded himself into the booth, on the outer edge of the seat. He wanted to tell this man that maybe he was losing his mind, but he kept the words inside.

“Just visiting, then?”

“Yeah. Staying at the Adler.” Carl glanced at the doors to the kitchen. He heard water spraying hard into a metal sink on the other side, two people chatting over the noise. “I thought I remembered this place, but I guess not.”

“Why?”

“I thought you had a counter, you know? Kind of U-shaped, with stools. I remember those stools, red leatherette tops and metal sides, chrome with sort of stripey ridges in it and black paint in the cut-in parts.”

Marshall stared at him. “You
remember
that? We haven’t had the counter since, oh, since the early forties. Remodeled the whole place by ’fifty. Everything but the sign.”

“Weird, huh?” Carl said, sorry he’d spoken. “Maybe my father told me about it.”

“And Annie says you knew Thelma.”

“Not really. Just her chili. Or I thought I did.” Carl’s lips twisted. “Thought it was the best chili I’d ever eaten.”

“Could have been, if you’d been around to eat it. Weird, all right. Haven’t thought about her in years. Your father go to school with me, you think? Your grandfather maybe?”

Carl shrugged.

“Same name as yours? Carl, was it?”

“No. Warren.”

Marshall grasped his chin in his hand, rubbing at a day’s growth of whiskers. “Warren Johnson, huh? Can’t place the name. You look like him?”

“Not really. I don’t think so anyway. He was shorter. Normal looking, I’d say. And dark.”

“He’s dead?”

“Several years ago.”

“Sorry.” Marshall pinched his mouth together again. “You don’t look like him at all? ’Cause, see, I have this feeling I’ve seen you before, but not really
you
, know what I mean?”

“Do you know Mrs. Gates, at the library?” Carl asked, feeling a pulse of renewed hope. “She said almost the same thing.”

“Sharon Gates!” Marshall smiled and leaned back in the booth. “I don’t see much of her, just around town now and then. Nice girl. Sharon Kelley when I first met her. But she married Tom Gates while I was at sea, had a kid by the time I got back.”

“I wonder …” Carl shook his head.
Too much of a coincidence.

“If Sharon and me saw you, or somebody who looked like you, when we were together somewhere?” Marshall finished for him. “You are pretty distinctive-looking … hey, yeah.” Marshall brightened. “Now I remember. Sharon and me and Tom, we used to go out to the lake to swim. That’s where it was. Tallest, skinniest character I ever saw in my life, outside a basketball court. Yeah, that’s it. He looked a lot like you—at least from a distance. He must’ve lived there a while, too, I remember seeing him in town after I got out of high school, now that I think on it. Maybe in the cafe, eatin’ Thelma’s chili, for all I know.” He grinned. “See? All it takes is thinking about it long enough and everything falls into place. You’ve really scratched my curiosity, I don’t mind telling you.”