The solitary cricket made a friend across the lawn and they began to banter back and forth, then three, four, ten, and then the whir became the same chant, “Okie-dokie, okie-dokie, okie-dokie.” He hurried toward the hotel, walking at first then a jog and finally a flat out run. The chant faded with distance until three blocks away it was gone all together. Stopped, exhausted, hands on his hips, his breath coming in deep gasps, he listened. Scott turned in all directions and listened, nothing but the sound of the occasional passing car, a dog barking in a far off yard and the leaves slightly rustling in the breeze.
He inhaled deep into his lungs and let it out, his breath still hurried, but close to normal, he continued, his stride more deliberate now. A tune popped into his head, he didn’t know what it was called, nor did he remember the words but it was very familiar. It was a child’s song and he began to whistle it. The song calmed him, and the good mood he had before he saw the shadow man behind the fence in centerfield returned. He could see the glow of the hotel sign two blocks up. There was no joy in returning there so he slowed his pace and began to look around at the old buildings. They were all two to three story houses, converted into restaurants, convenience stores, women’s boutiques and doctor’s offices. This was assuredly the place where the well-heeled of Salina lived during the twenties and thirties. The structures were well-built and still had their original charm.
In front of one of the old houses, which was now the Just Like Mom daycare center, was a silhouette cutout of a man leaning on a tree. It was mounted against a huge Sycamore and with the floodlights illuminating the front of the building; it could have been a real man. Scott stood watching the plywood man, standing on one leg the other bent at the knee, foot resting against the trunk of the tree. He began to feel better about what he may or may not have seen in the outfield. If light and shadows could make this thing look like a real person then maybe Gwen was right, maybe it was just shadows playing tricks on him.
Scott waved at the wooden lawn ornament and said good night. As he turned to head back to his room something moved in his peripheral vision and on instinct he looked back to see the plywood man tip his hat and say, “Goodnight Scott.” Scott held his ground, looking directly at the plywood man. It stood motionless against the tree. Okay, he thought, lights and shadows can’t say goodnight. He needed a closer look so he crept up the sidewalk that split the front lawn in half. The man was still two dimensional and still not moving. When he got to within six feet of the old sycamore something crunched beneath his foot stopping him in his tracks. Scott looked down. He was surrounded by crickets; the biggest blackest crickets he had ever seen. They began to fall from the branches of the big tree like black rain. The chirping started up louder than ever, “Okie-dokie, Okie-dokie…”
He ran, he ran like he had never run before. He ran as if his life, or at the very least, his sanity depended on it. He didn’t stop running until he was pushing the elevator button in the hotel lobby.
Inside his room it was safe. He leaned his back against the door, his chest heaving, his lungs burning. He stood there for what seemed like hours. His breath coming in slower waves, his lungs were no longer on fire. He could feel the tightness in his legs as he slowly made his way to the bathroom. He stood under the harsh light reflecting off the mirror. His own reflection sickened him right now. He had acted like a frightened child and he was no child. As he looked himself in the eye, his attention was drawn to a small dark spot on his shirt sleeve. A big, black cricket was clinging to the fabric, his little antennae twitching in all directions. “Uh,” he moaned, as he brushed the insect off and stomped on it with his full force. When he raised his shoe there was nothing left of the bug but a dark spot on the tile floor of the bathroom. Scott stared at the cricket’s remains and was startled to see the stain on the floor had the same shape as the plywood man from the daycare center. He pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the counter, picked the cricket up from the floor with them and tossed the whole mess in the toilet and quickly flushed before it could leap out. He then stepped carefully around the spot where the cricket had been, clicked off the bathroom light and went over to the bed, sat down then let his body go limp and he fell back. Scott just lay there in his clothes, staring at the shadows on the ceiling until exhaustion and sleep took him away.
Chapter Twenty
Roger woke with a convulsive jerk through his whole body. His skin clammy, his heart beating faster than it had been when he finished his round tripper in the slow pitch game. He had never been this awake this fast in his life. He had another bad dream, but this one didn’t linger in his conscious mind. He had a vague feeling that there was a big dog with glowing red eyes. Someone else was there, maybe it was Beth, he didn’t know for sure. As the seconds turned to minutes, his whole recollection of the events in the dream melted away.
His attention drifted to the orange glow of dawn creeping through the window of Beth’s bedroom. The pale light gave the whole room the appearance of a photonegative. The mirror over the chest of drawers had an odd reflection of the luminous window. The floral print wallpaper, barely discernable in this light looked more like poorly done graffiti. An ominous gleam off the eyes of a wooden rocking horse gave Roger an anxious feeling. Partially covered with clothing, the horse looked like a blob with eyes. Roger stared at the eyes thinking they could have been the eyes in his dream. With each passing second, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, the eyes glared ever brighter.
He diverted his gaze from the horse to the window. Recollection of the events from the previous night replaced the faded images of the nightmare. The Jeep, the stop at Billy’s dealership and Jack’s heart-to-heart. Mostly Jack’s heart-to-heart. His chest began to pound as it had when Jack described the cougar hunt. The biggest thing, the event that weighed heaviest on him was Jack’s admission that Beth is his favorite. Roger began to feel as uncomfortable now as he did standing in Jack’s study getting the
don’t make me regret my decision,
speech.
He looked over at Beth lying next to him. The dim light brought in by the sun as it only now breached the horizon cast an angelic glow on her. Her hair spread across the pillow framing her face. The top edge of her floral duvet left only her face, left shoulder and neck exposed. As he looked down at her, her right leg moved out from under the covers and took on a radiance in the subdued light from the window.
Shit, now he had done it. He didn’t want this to happen. He liked Beth, hell he liked the whole Walker family, but he wasn’t ready to start another relationship. He wasn’t over Paige when he left Vermont and now he was lying naked next to Beth, who as far as he knew was also naked. Last night had been great. Beth had hugged him when they got back upstairs, the hug turned into a kiss and the kiss into, well into this. What, after all, was this? What ever it was, it made him feel just a little ashamed. He wanted to be here with Beth, but he also wanted to run like hell.
Roger left Beth’s room as quietly as he could, gathering his clothes on the way out. He returned to the guest room, used the bathroom, then went over to the window where he leaned on the sill and watched the sun rising, casting long shadows over the pool. The statue of the naked lady continued pouring water into the hot tub. The Jeep was directly below the window, its yellow finish gleaming in the early morning light. The cattle in the far off fields were beginning to vocalize their hunger. A rooster crowing brought a smirk to Roger’s lips. How cliché was that, the rooster crows at sunrise.
He was second guessing his invitation for Beth to join him on his trip, he began to wonder whether it might be best to pack his stuff and hit the road before anyone had a chance to wake up. He went into the bathroom, thinking it might be a while before he had a hot shower again. He shaved as quickly as he could and took a shower in record time. He brushed his teeth then packed all his bathroom stuff into the small plaid pouch he got from his dad. It was a little tattered; having seen several of his dad’s business trips but it served Roger well now. He straightened up the bathroom, hanging the towels and wiping the water off the counter. In the bedroom, he pulled some clothes from the bureau drawers. He tossed them all on the bed, if only he hadn’t unpacked. He could be gone already. He dressed in the same clothes he wore the day he met Beth at the rodeo. He picked up the rest of his things and began to stuff them into his backpack, stopping briefly, when the sweet smell of the freshly laundered clothes gave him another twang of confusion, or was it guilt. The clothes even made his old pack smell nice. Who washed the clothes, he wondered. It couldn’t have been Beth, they were never apart long enough. He didn’t think Bobbie would even know how to wash clothes.
Roger sat on the bed, the sun well up in the sky now, and the light of a new day filled the room. He picked up his pack and returned to the window. Roger looked down on the pool, and his mind drifted back over his time here with Beth. He stood statue-like, wrestling with his emotions.
Suddenly the sound of the pouring water stopped. The stream from the flask looked frozen. The surface of the water no longer sparkled. It was as still as the surface of a mirror, or a frozen pond. He caught a slight movement in the corner of his eye. The naked lady was gone, replaced by a young girl dressed in a snowsuit dragging a toboggan. She stepped down from the edge of the hot tub, steam billowing up from the surface. Roger then noticed the pool; it was now surrounded by snow. How is that possible? He swam in it yesterday. He was standing next to an open window and the warm breeze was bringing perspiration to his face. The girl now stood on the frozen pond, not pond, pool, her face no longer obscured by the steam from the hot tub. It was Lisa, his sister. His dead sister standing on a frozen pool in the middle of a heat wave, dressed in winter clothes, over two thousand miles from the only place she had ever lived. Roger absently raised his trembling hand and waved. She just stood there looking up at him. He pulled the second strap of his backpack over his left shoulder. At that moment, Lisa shook her head. He stared down at her, clipping the chest strap on his pack but not taking his eyes off her and again she shook her head.
She didn’t speak, not a sound came from the pool, but Roger knew what she wanted. When they were little Lisa was always able to get Roger to do what she wanted without even asking him. He dropped his pack and she smiled up at him. Her smile seemed so familiar, like he had just seen her yesterday. She waved and turned, walking back toward the hot tub. She had taken three steps and a long sound sent shivers all through Roger’s body. It sounded like a tree breaking under the heavy strain of an early spring ice storm. But, it wasn’t a tree, it wasn’t spring and there wasn’t any ice storm. The girl looked down at the ice she stood on. A large fissure was working its way across the pool. She looked up at Roger, a frightened little girl, rooted to the spot.
He wanted to yell something encouraging. Don’t move, I’m coming, I’ll be right there, it’ll be okay. Before he could say any of those things, she disappeared through the surface. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor. For the second time he had watched her fall through the ice and for the second time he was helpless to prevent it. With resolve he sprung to his feet, he wasn’t a little boy anymore; he could get her out before it was too late.
“Hey, Vermont, what’s shakin’?” Beth was now standing in the doorway.
Roger looked out the window at the pool. The water flowed into the hot tub from the naked lady’s flask, the snow was gone, the ice was gone. Lisa was gone. Lisa had come to tell him not to leave and then she left. She left him the same way she left him when he was nine. He was shaking, his mouth was open just slightly and his eyes stared unblinking at the pool.
“Roger, are you okay?”
He still didn’t answer. He staggered back to the bed and sat down. He looked at Beth, then back to the window. Bewildered, he didn’t know what to say and even if he did he wouldn’t know how to say it.
Beth sat beside him and put her arm around his waist. “Did you have another bad dream?”
“You have to be sleeping to have a dream, right?”
“So, what then?”
“I wish I knew.” He got up and shuffled over to the window. Peering out, he saw a gorgeous summer morning. The sun was completely above the horizon now; the view could have been a picture from Better Homes and Gardens. The sky was metallic blue, only a jet stream, streaking from the east broke the monotonous hue. The lady statue continued to pour the crystal clear liquid into the hot tub, the gurgling sound gave the whole scene a serene feel. No sign remained of Roger’s dream, hallucination, or apparition. All seemed to be well in Nebraska this fine summer day.
He did his best to explain what he had just seen, or what he thought he had just seen. Beth felt a twinge of sadness at not having anything to say that might help. She had thus far lived a charmed life. She hadn’t lost anyone close to her. She was not equipped to deal with this kind of thing, so she tried to cheer him up by joking that he wasn’t allowed any more late night snacks. Then she opened her robe, flashed her naked body, and giggling like a schoolgirl, she ran back to her room.
When she emerged, she was dressed in denim shorts, a tight white T-shirt and bright white Reeboks. Roger had gone out to the playroom. That was Beth’s term for the main room of the apartment. The room with the huge TV that came on when you entered. She sat beside him on the couch, kissed his cheek and said, “Well, are we going to the Grand Canyon or are you going to watch TV all day?” Roger had settled into a gloomy reprise of the scene at the pool and jumped a bit at the sound of Beth’s voice. He was sitting, staring at the TV, but not seeing it. He was unaware of the veejay, introducing a video by Alanis Morissette. The skin on his arms and neck had crawled to life, covered in gooseflesh, as though he were actually standing beside that frozen pond.