The Kaleidoscope (11 page)

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Harold must have fallen asleep because he awoke in a flop sweat, the covers twisted around his ankles. Cooking in his own heat, he was unable to muster the energy to get up and open a window. The effects of the wine had worn off, and his dull head-throb had returned.

Now he understood what the others had gone through. There was an indescribable eeriness in an inanimate object that could show you a truth no one else could see. It was unnatural. Unreal. It was obvious he would have to be rid of the ’scope and the evil within. Morrie was correct.

Keith’s comment about the ’scope had conflicted Harold’s emotions. “I’m so glad you let me look,” he’d told him. “The Kaleidoscope forced me to do something my pride wouldn’t allow me to do before.”

Light from headlights passing outside crawled over the ceiling as he wrestled with what was happening to him. Harold forced himself to get up, padding to the kitchen. The cold drink of water sloshed into his empty belly and wound his head into roller coaster tracks threatening to defy the laws of physics. He sat at the kitchen table and stared blankly at the row of black and white Ansel Adams prints hung at precise distances along the wall. Harold had taken great care, measuring and remeasuring until their straight lines hung just so. The meticulous art and his spare furnishings, picked out after Georgia left, were usually reassuring, but tonight his small space held little comfort. She would have merely eyeballed, and then hung the modern art he despised, without so much as a tape measure. The circles and squares he could stomach, but the monkey pictures left him confused. Georgia had taken them with her pleather sofa and stacked them in the rented orange van. “Your boring black and whites are so bland, Harold,” she’d complained. “Just like you.”

Harold considered Adams’ landscape photography superior to anything Georgia brought home, and wondered if Frank would teach him how to capture images like them.

He had always wanted to see Yosemite for a couple of reasons. He’d studied it in fourth grade. Half Dome. Bridal Veil Falls. The Obsidian Forest.

Soon after his tenth birthday, which went unheralded as usual, his grandmother left him to finish his homework while she went marketing. Bored with memorizing dates and numbers, and forbidden to leave the house while she was gone, he wandered the rooms, opening and shutting doors. He was searching for something, but he didn’t know how to put the emptiness into words. At the hallway linen closet, he realized he’d grown tall enough to see into a new shelf. Behind the faded towels and extra sets of sheets, a cardboard filing box was shoved against the back wall.

Inside, he found his birth certificate, the court document giving his grandma legal guardianship after his mother’s death, and a faded, grainy Polaroid picture of a couple standing arm in arm, a waterfall rising behind them into a pale blue sky. His parents.

“Honeymoon—Yosemite” was penned across the bottom, the blue ink smudged. It was the only picture he had ever seen of his father, only his chin visible beneath the shadow cast by his hat. Harold ran fingers across his own jaw, wondering if he resembled his father. He sensed something favored the man, because the older he got, the more critical his grandma became of the man she blamed for his mom’s death. He’d shoved the picture under his pillow and gazed at it for hours by the light of the streetlamp outside his window. Ever since, he’d yearned to visit someday. Until then, he’d read everything he could get his hands on about the area and everything around it.

“We all knew his psychosis would harm someone, but we always hoped he’d kill himself first, not the mother of his child.” Harold overheard his grandma’s late night call to a sister in Bellville soon after his sixteenth birthday. “Let’s just hope this boy doesn’t carry the same evil. I don’t think anyone would blame me for hoping the police will call and tell me they’ve found the loser’s dead body hanging from a rafter. What if he comes back to harm the boy in one of his deliriums? Or attacks me? I’ll kill him with my garden hoe if he ever sets foot on my property.”

Chapter Nine

Walter finished scrambling an egg in the bacon grease and scooped his dinner onto a clean plate. His joints cramped and pinched, and he almost dropped the pan. He’d overdone working in the garden in his eagerness to get the vegetable plants bearing. Grasping the iron handle with both hands like a toddler trying to heft his father’s heavy briefcase, he set it in the sink. Outside, he heard voices. He sidled to the front window. More hikers had blown in on the leading edge of the storm.

“Sorry, full up!” he informed them and grabbed the shotgun he kept leaning against the doorframe in case they didn’t take the hint to move on. He stepped onto the porch as lightning flashed, backlighting the pines. The storm had already filled the shed with wall-to-wall bodies. The front porch was lined with packs along the rough wall as hikers had left them to dry out while they slept on the floor of his ramshackle barn. News of Walter’s abundant well water and an outdoor shower for anyone willing to brave the chill had spread along the Pacific Crest Trail, and thru-hikers passed the word he was willing to take unwanted items in payment. With the frequent spring rains, and situated within a half day’s hike to the nearest post office, his cabin had become a popular stop because it was one of the few stops between town and the trail with any shelter.

“C’mon, old man, can’t you find any room for a couple? We got a girl with us.” The kid introduced himself as Cody.

“Hey, don’t blame me.” The girl, who identified herself as Audrey, thumped Cody in the shoulder.

Most of the hikers adopted trail names, and these three were no exception.

“What’s yer handle?” Walter pointed to the third guy with the barrel.

“Popcorn.” Water dripped off his nose and down his beard. “Please? We won’t take up much room.”

Another flash made the girl visibly jump and Walter softened.

“You’ll have to bunk with me, but all I have is a couch and floor.” He lowered the barrel to let them pass and followed them inside. When they’d taken off their packs, he motioned to the table and sat across from them to inform them of the rules he gave everyone. “I don’t ask for anything except that you clean up after yourself.” And he added another caution for the occasional few who got to go inside the shanty. “And keep out of my room,” he warned. “I will kill anyone who steps in there.”

“Cody?” Audrey grabbed the hand of the guy Walter assumed was her boyfriend. One of those trail romances that blossomed like California poppies in the spring.

“We don’t have much money,” Cody hiccupped. “But I can offer you some of this.” He had been sipping from a metal canteen since they sat down around the kitchen table.

“I don’t drink.” Walter furrowed his shaggy brows. “And you shouldn’t be a’drinkin’ that neither.”

Cody, the group’s obviously trail-seasoned leader, opened a cardboard box and lifted out several power bars, a couple cans of Spam, and a bag of peanut M&M’s. Walter’s mouth watered.

“We don’t mean you any harm, sir.” Audrey had a similar, larger box. “My mom keeps sending me stuff I’d rather not lug.” In the lantern light, Walter watched a small pile of well-intentioned goodies amass as they each made offerings to his hospitality. He sorted through, accepting most of the loot. If he couldn’t use it, someone else who happened along would trade him for something he could use.

Walter gestured at the ceiling. “You might have to put some of these pots out when the holes make themselves apparent.” His back was still hurting from the weather change and overdoing the hoeing, so he grabbed his uneaten dinner and the bag of M&M’s, and hobbled toward his room. He turned back with one more caution. “And if you need to smoke, take it outside.”

“Don’t smoke,” Popcorn told him. “What do we call you, man?”

“Gus,” Walter answered with his prepared response. “Gus Katzenjammer.” He threw them a look that warned once again how serious he was about staying out of his room. “And the rest ain’t none of your business.” He retrieved the shotgun from its usual perch and then scraped the door into his lair shut behind him. Through the thin walls he could hear them, and a gap in the doorframe showed him enough he could watch in case any of them approached his door. He regretted not installing a deadbolt, but he’d wanted to plant that new row of pumpkins before the latest storm broke.

“Dude, PTSD much?” Popcorn circled a finger at his temple to indicate crazy. “Agent Orange maybe?”

“Who knows.” Cody shrugged. “All units on alert. Mountain man, armed and dangerous.”

Walter was glad his guests seemed to believe he meant what he said.

“I’m going to try and get some sleep so we can get out of here at first light. Cody, lie here next to me?” Audrey unfurled her sleeping bag, and draped it across a chair next to the stove to dry. “Keep old man Gus away from me. He creeps me out.”

“What do you expect? He lives out here with a shotgun for a companion.” Cody grabbed a sofa cushion to use for a pillow. “He’d pro’lly never hurt anyone. That you know of.” He threw an arm around Audrey’s middle, tickling her until she yelped.

“Lights out, and shut up!” Gus yelled from behind his closed door.

“Yes sir!” The three travelers hunkered down and grew quiet. An occasional snicker emitted until soft snores allowed Walter to relax.

****

The rainclouds parted, and a shaft of moonlight crawled along Walter’s pillow, the striped ticking emitting odors akin to the big cat’s enclosure at the zoo. Around him, newspaper articles flipped up from their pushpins as the rainstorms breezed along, and he watched cumulonimbus clouds lurking past the moon through a dirty pane. The weather was as unsettled as his thoughts.

He cradled the gun across his stomach, hand on the stock, barrel aimed at the door. Eventually Walter allowed himself to doze in between cracks of lightning, but he was ready to spring if anyone dared touch the knob to his room.

Walter was rarely alone any longer for more than a day or two. By word of mouth, his cabin attracted hikers going into town for supplies or for their forwarded mail being held at the post office. Most were kids or middle-agers fulfilling a lifelong dream. Some were his age. He had to run off a few alternative life-stylers when they lit up or showed signs of drug use. Most of them arrived late and left early leaving few signs they had even been there.

He had been able so far to keep them moving in and out overnight, exchanging only first names, usually nicknames. They were as interested in anonymity as he was, and no one expressed surprise he was living off the grid.

An unofficial agreement between the travelers was easy enough to develop. When he didn’t ask them prying questions, they were happy to leave him be. He picked up some of the jargon and learned the history of the 2660-ish mile long trail so he fit in. Walter often felt unsettled, like the very trail itself, its actual measured length fluid and variable because of property disputes and natural disasters. He’d learned long ago to adapt to the conditions around him, and one of his best skills was not calling attention to himself. His unprepossessing demeanor, reclusive ways, and use of rural slang were his latest camouflage of choice. At first he worried about all the people coming and going, but then he realized, sometimes to hide, it’s better to be right out in the open.

In just a couple of weeks, he had amassed a dozen bags and bars of granola in various flavors and stages of rancidity, half-eaten jars of peanut butter, cans of pressurized cheese, and several novels, most with their first chapters torn away by hikers anxious to lighten their load. If anyone tried to give him alcohol or cigarettes, he demurred. If they offered or asked to buy drugs, he chased them away. And they could roam the property all they wanted, as long as they stayed out of his room.

Under his bed, Walter kept a most prized possession. He’d swiped a mason jar clean of brittle bug skeletons and excrement, and emptied it nightly to count his coins. Some travelers dumped out their pocket change in exchange for a night’s shelter, or a refreshing shower. During the long afternoons when he was usually alone, after he’d worked his vegetable garden and before the first overnighter appeared in the clearing beyond the gnarled mountain juniper, Harold turned the contents onto the rough wooden table and counted. He calculated that if the summer brought enough kids seeking shelter, he could save enough money for the next stage of his plan outlined in a meticulous flow-chart kept in the notebook by his cot.

Chapter Ten

The next morning, Harold rolled over and checked the time. He vaguely recalled promising Pepper they would go to church. As guardian of the Kaleidoscope, Harold had been involved in more discussions about philosophies and mysticism and theologies than he had in a lifetime.

When Pepper learned of the place that started it all, she insisted he take her to see the church. Harold had agreed, but after last night’s wine and late hour, he would have to force himself to get up. He searched for his phone, knowing she would insist on coming over and nursing him if he confessed to feeling ill. That wasn’t so bad. But she might ask what he’d seen in the ’scope, and he was not ready to talk about it.

Resigned, he shook out several aspirin in the bathroom, hoping the effects would kick in soon. While he scraped his razor down his cheek, he rehearsed how he would change the subject when she brought it up. Pepper could talk about anything with anyone, and when she grabbed onto a subject it was hard to dislodge her from it. He went over what he knew about her interests, searching for conversation fodder.

For at least forty-five minutes, Pepper, Keith, and Frank had talked about art and the Getty, LACMA, and Geffen museums. Even before he became lightheaded, Harold felt like he was drowning in the sea of Etruscanism and Jugendstil, divisionism and rococo. They were words he’d filled in on the Sunday edition of the crossword, but these people easily batted them back and forth, an avant-garde mélange of taste and sophistication. A room Georgia would have thrived in.

Someone knocked on his door, and he toweled dry his face, pretty sure he knew who was there.