3rd Place winner of the Leslie Garrett Fiction Contest - Knoxville Writers' Guild

Lones Seiber has been writing fiction for about eighteen months.  His stories have been published in Thought and Anthology and have been accepted for publication in the GSU Review and The Oak.   

Mirages
by Lones Seiber

    Sheila calls to tell you about Brad.      You’re not sure  how she found out, or even why she should have been the one to know.   But then maybe you do.  Maybe you have for years.  It began with that trip you made together, the last trip you all made together,  you and Brad and Sheila and Emily, to Sanibel Island, for a weekend.  None of you were married then.   Soon after the trip, Brad left and took Emily with him.

    You collected shells during the day, took nightly strolls on the beach, had dinner at that little restaurant on the water: six tables, ceiling to floor windows on three sides, the menu on an easel, the food superb.   You had adjoining rooms at a motel on the beach.  On Sunday, your last  morning there, you woke to find Sheila gone.  The door between the rooms was partially opened.  Emily was sprawled on their bed, snoring, one breast exposed.  The television was tuned to cartoons, the volume up.  You stepped around some empty Budweiser cans on the floor and onto the porch that overlooked the beach.  And there they were: two figures facing each other, silhouetted against the sun hanging huge and crimson just above the water.  It could have been anybody out there. Featureless shadows.  But it wasn’t just anyone.  Their hands touched, and then they kissed, and then they walked toward you.  Brad slapped your shoulder and said something about breakfast.  He went inside and yelled for Emily to wake up.  Sheila followed, smiling, but not at you.  She never looked at you, never acknowledged that she even knew you were there.  Just followed Brad inside.  She never mentioned it, what had happened that morning out along the water’s edge. You would have felt better  if she had.  If she had smiled guiltily, her face flushed, perhaps, explaining that she and Brad had only been talking.  She could have at least had the decency to lie.  But she hadn’t.  Like she didn’t care what you thought one way or the other.  You made nothing of it.  What could you say?  That was the first time you  ever had doubts.  Had even thought of the possibility.  Still you married her; you don’t why now; maybe you thought it would make a difference, that it might set things right.  But, still, you started paying closer attention, watching, checking up, and then one thing led to another.  It took years, but, looking back, you know that’s when it started.

    From her voice you know that she has been crying.  You can’t remember her ever crying before, not in the years you have known her, not even in the last troubled year of your marriage.  That’s when she should have cried.  That’s when you first thought about it.  You don’t ask why or try to comfort.  You can’t think of a reason you should.  Maybe you relish the thought that she’s in pain.  You’d like to think you’re better than that, forgiving, magnanimous even.   But probably not.You’re surprised to hear from her.  Not that you never speak, because you do, now and then, but out of necessity, not out of desire or need.  Something about the kids maybe; sometimes about money, but other than that?  Nothing.  There is a point at which the resentment that divorce breeds becomes indifference, and then a cautious civility, but you are not there yet with her, nor she with you.  You like to think you handled it maturely, the divorce, and the emotional toll afterwards.  You acted civilly: you never keyed her van, never slipped into the house when she was gone and slashed the furniture, never told the kids what you sometimes thought of her. 

    After she composes herself some,  she tells you that Brad was killed somewhere just outside of Juneau.  She gives you a date.  Two days after you had seen him last.  The plane had just taken off, eight people including the pilot.  Off for some remote spot farther north when it lost power and plunged nose first back to the snow-choked earth.  No one  survived.  That’s what she says.  That’s what the authorities from up there told the papers.  But you know they are mistaken.
“Alaska,” he had said.  “The land of opportunity.”
“I thought that was Arkansas,” you said.
“Right!” he smiled.  “Have you ever been to West Memphis?”

    Brad had called that Saturday, saying  he would be at the airport for an hour the following Tuesday before continuing on.  You were surprised, apprehensive even, but, still, you arranged to meet at a bar and sandwich shop just outside security.  It had been ten years since you last saw him; there were postcards now and then picturing places you’ll never visit; and a year since he last called.  You  met in junior college, but he dropped out in the second year and went into construction and from there into the oil business.    You were never sure if he simply quit or if he  flunked out.  You were close in some ways,  shared many personal things, but grades were not one of them.  It could have been money. You never discussed that either.  You remember he worked a lot of different jobs.  All you did was hang out and study.   You didn’t have to work, even in the summers.  Your father sent you anything you needed.  Was glad to do it, he said.  Said he didn’t want you to worry.  Was proud that you intended to make something of yourself.  You would be an attorney, just like your father, but never as good.  One of the shrewdest criminal lawyers in the state.  That’s what everybody said about him.  They also used to mention big shoes to fill.  The group thinks that’s the source of your problem.  But you don’t believe it.  It’s just too pat.  Answers in life are never that simple, not in your life anyway.  But a lot of good it did him, the old man.  All that acclaim.  Now he lies in a bed, staring at the ceiling, drool running from the corner of his opened mouth, waiting to be changed. 

    It had rained that night,  a phantom wind slapping water against the windows looking out on the runways.  And it was turning colder.  Soon it would snow, but not when expected.  One morning you’d wake to find you’d been ambushed by winter.  The terminal was crowded, people staring, with  fingers in their mouths, at large boards with constantly changing numbers; others  running, with anguished expressions, trailing luggage, as if  pursued.  Pale faced ticket agents smiled like it had been slapped onto their faces.  Around you the sound of hundreds of voices speaking at once, a shuffle of words, like in a dream.  You’d been waiting for more than an hour.  His flight was running late, and you had gotten there early.  You’re always early.  But this time it was prudent, not just obsessive, as Sheila had said many times.  I’ll never let a clock rule my life, she used to say.  Never! 

       You would have been even earlier but for a wreck on the motormile, a surreal scene with the reflections of neons and emergency lights being sliced into rainbows by  water collecting on the road.  An Escalade, brand new with temporary plates still attached, had pulled out of the dealership into the path of a pickup.  A woman, her hair stranded by the rain, leaned on the front fender of the Cadillac, her head down, crying, pounding the metal with her fist.  A man, with no hair, wearing a suit had his arm around her shoulder, his mouth close to her ear.   The pickup was old, a Ford, F- something, you think, faded blue with a primered front fender.   It had been dented and abused even before the collision.  A large man in overalls and a camouflage jacket leaned against the door, his arms and feet crossed.  A skinny, brown dog with no collar stood in the bed, looking at you over the tailgate, its mouth open, its tongue to the side, its tail rolling indolently.  You couldn’t tell what kind it was.   A sticker on the back bumper read: Jesus Loves You.  Everybody Else Thinks You’re An Asshole.  
            
    And then another wait, behind a line of cars, at the entrance to the parking garage, as two guardsmen, in battle green uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, searched under the hoods and in the trunks of each car with flashlights.   You think paranoia has become a way of life, like AIDS and schoolhouse massacres.. The soldiers could have been twins.  They could have been clones.  They called you sir.
You ordered a vodka martini.  The waitress lingered after she set your drink on a napkin.  She smiled, a nice smile, a little too nice you thought.  She concluded each sentence like it was a question.  One of her eyes looked to the side with the other  trained straight ahead.  She asked if you were waiting for a flight.  You said no without explaining, and she moved along.  You think she wanted to talk, sensing a commonality, but you were not ready to admit anything.  You wondered if she’d called you a conceited  asshole in her mind.  She had bottled blonde hair with dark roots, and large breasts that moved when she walked.  Her skin was a tanning bed yellow.  She reminded you of a girl you used to know.  You couldn’t remember when or where.  She sat behind the bar, her head propped on a hand, working a cross word puzzle.   The pencil stayed in her mouth a lot. The rain had subsided.  You watched the runway lights and beacons smeared into a surrealistic collage by sheets of water racing down the window.By the time Brad got there, you were on your fourth drink.  You’d had a couple before you left.  You began to feel better about everything.  Despite the years apart, you recognized him immediately.  A little heavier, but still tall and solid.  He could have played football, but he never tried.  You asked him once why not.  He said he didn’t need it.  His hair was grayer and pushed farther back on his forehead.  He wore a checked flannel shirt, jeans and those burnished hiking boots for people who never go in the woods.  He still kicked his feet to the side when he walked, like some farmer negotiating a rutted field.   

    “You haven’t changed much,” he said and grabbed your hand.  He squeezed  too hard.  “Except for the suit and tie.”  He released you and waved the waitress over.  “What’s on draft, sweetheart?”  She named several, numbering them on her fingers as she did, looking up as if they were written on the ceiling.  “You decide,” he said and patted her hip.  “I’m in your hands.”  She laughed coyly.  He watched her walk away.  “Dynamite ass,” he said and looked from one side to the other as if he was expecting someone.
“It’s good to see you, old man,” he said.
“You too,” you said.   “How was your flight?”
He shrugged and unlaced the cellophane from a cigarette pack.   “Nothing special.  It’s  like I take off and land in the same place.  Nicaragua, Columbia, Venezuela.” And then he laughed.  “Sioux City?   No difference.   It’s a world of MacDonald’s, Kawasaki and Pizza Hut.”
The waitress brought his beer.  He said something to her.  She laughed.  You don’t know what.  You began to resent her.  Brad began talking about the places he’d been, things he’d seen, and then about the time he barely escaped being kidnaped by rebels in Columbia.  He laughed a couple of times while telling the tale.  He never looked at you as he spoke.  It was like he was dictating, composing as he went.
A man and woman entered and took an adjacent table.  You guessed him to be in his  fifties, squat and broad in an unbuttoned tweed coat.  His hair was gray and sparse and combed across the top from side to side.  The woman was younger, late twenties, early thirties, a thick, lacquered page boy, black, like her dress and nails, even her eyes.  She had a gothic appearance, an image accentuated by her overly long neck that looked almost extruded, and skin  paler than white.  She could easily have been one of those look-alike models from a Robert Palmer video.  Her dour, slack expression said that she was a creature without need.  The man seemed agitated, gesturing, talking loudly, but you could only catch a word or two, not enough to make any sense out of what was obviously a contentious but one-sided conversation.  She stared stonily at nothing at all, arms crossed on her stomach, never turning her eyes to him, saying nothing.
“Alaska,” you said when he seemed to run out of things to say.
“Yeah, and I’m excited,” he said.  “It’s the real deal this time, Larry.  No more knocking around, that big break always around the next corner.”  He stubbed the cigarette out and sipped his beer.   “They’ve discovered a new field up there.   Huge yield.  It’s a lock.”   He clasped his hands behind his head and crossed one leg on the other. “I’ll be the first on the ground.  Got my own crew.   We’re going up in a couple of days.” 

    “How’s Emily?” you said and watched his reaction over the rim of your glass.
He shrugged and shifted in his seat.  “Emily’s Emily,” he said and folded his napkin into an airplane.  “She has leukemia.”
“You never mentioned it.”
“She didn’t want people to know,.”  He wadded the napkin into a ball and arched a shot at a trash can.  He missed.
 “How’s she doing?”
 
    “Good days and bad.  It’s in remission.  So things could be worse.  She’s back at the Waffle House.  Down in Shreveport.  I told her not to work.  She doesn’t have to.”  He flicked something from the table top.   “But it’s what she knows.”
“Will she be going with you?”He shrugged.  “It’s up to her,” he said.  “But probably not.”  He sort of smiled.  “Ten years of marriage.  You know how it is.”  He stubbed the cigarette out and lit another.  “No I don’t,” you said and you both laughed.
“I mean, what can I do for her if she stays or if she goes?  What difference would it make?  None.  I’m not a doctor.”
The waitress came out of a door behind the counter wiping her hands on her apron.
You smiled.  “The Nebraska farm girl.”“A victim of the plains,” Brad said and scratched his cheek. 
That’s what she used to say when she had something to say, which was not that often, except for one night when the four of you went drinking on the strip after her shift.  She still had her tan and white starched uniform on and a pencil sticking out of the bun behind her head.  “Do you remember?” you said.Brad shrugged and glanced at the television suspended over the bar.  A basketball game.  The Celtics playing someone.  You know nothing of sports.  That crazy looking floor gave it away.
You had stumbled from bar to bar that night, finally stopping around midnight beside a closed market to let everything settle.  You sat on the sidewalk with your backs against the stucco wall. 

    You laughed at nothing and anything; Sheila became morose, and Brad tried to remember the words to some song he had heard earlier in the night.  You’d never seen Emily drunk before.  She began talking about Nebraska, and then about a night at a county fair she went to  when she was five or six, and a  fat gypsy woman there who could tell your fortune if you put a nickel in a slot on her stomach.  The sign said she could predict the future, that she knew all.  All that for a nickel.  Emily said it seemed too good to be true.   But she was not a real gypsy; just some machine.    Emily said she put a nickel in the gypsy’s stomach and waited.  It laughed a cruel laugh, like something was being twisted inside, raised one arm and then the other and turned its head from one side to the other.  before spitting a card out of its mouth.  It read: “You will have a long and happy  life.”

    “I still have it,” Emily said and fumbled in her purse.  When she couldn’t find it, she emptied it on the walk.  Brad yelled for  everybody to shut up and listen, and then he sang a full verse and chorus of the elusive song.    Sheila helped her sift through the scattered contents, but the card wasn’t there.   Sheila put her arm around her shoulders and tried to pull her close.  Emily brushed her aside.
“Stupid,” she said.  She struggled up and walked off.  

    Sheila called out to her in a plaintive, fitful voice as she gathered everything back in the purse.
Your mind started to focus; you began to think clearly.  It was time to find something else to drink, so you said you’d go to the Jiffy Mart around the corner and bring back a six pack.  But you couldn’t stand up.  And then things began to come and go.  The next thing you remembered was Brad carrying you in his arms, like  a baby, or someone old and frail.  Sheila said later that you had embarrassed her, that you embarrassed yourself.  You said that you were drunk, that you remembered nothing.  She said it was an excuse.

    A young priest with gray tinted glasses walked by the bar, looked in as he passed, and then returned in a moment.  He stood in the entrance,  waiting, and then checked his watch. “Do you ever hear from Sheila?” Brad said.  He leaned his head back, pursed his lips and blew a perfect smoke ring.“Now and then,” you said.  “She’s remarried, you know.”
“I don’t guess I did.”
You smiled.  “Crazy Eddie.”
“What?”
“Crazy Eddie.  That’s who she married.  Has a used car lot. Several used car lots.  Advertises on TV.  He wears those horn-rimmed glasses in the commercials, the ones with the big nose attached that were funny years ago?”
“So what’s the attraction?”
You shrugged.  “Who knows.  Maybe she’s happy; maybe she’s not; maybe she just gave up.  The last time I saw her, she had put on weight.”  You emptied the glass and held it up for a refill.  “But he seems to be good to the kids.  That’s all that counts, I guess.  They’re getting to the age where they don’t need anyone.  They love whoever spoils them the most.”  The waitress handed you a drink.  You took it without thanking her.
 
    You hadn’t seen your kids in four months, but you didn’t mention that.  At first you got them  every other weekend.  That’s how most of the divorce settlements go.  Unless the mother’s a slut or something.  Brandon was seven then, and Sylvie  five.  That first weekend you smiled and tried to seem really happy about everything.  That everything would work out fine.  It was best for everybody.  That’s what you said.
“Momma says you’re a turd,” Brandon said.  He said it without malice,  like he was just passing some information along.  He didn’t say much else.  Just looked at his watch and at clocks a lot.  You didn’t  know if he could tell time or not. He kept glancing over his shoulder as if he was being followed or was expecting someone.  Sylvie didn’t say much either.   She just looked at each person as if she had never seen a human being before and sucked her thumb.  She didn’t want you to help her bathe.   Didn’t even want you in the same room if she was undressed, and she cried when you combed her hair.  Neither one of them would eat anything you fixed.   When Crazy Eddie came along, you started getting them less and less.  It wasn’t Sheila’s doing, getting back at you through the kids or anything like that.  You don’t think she cared one way or the other.  It just seemed to evolve.  Naturally.  “It’s too bad, in a way.  About you and her.”   And then he smiled and looked at the ceiling.  He held his glass up for a toast.  “To Sheila, the crusader.”   Reluctantly you raised your glass to his.  But he was right.  When you met, she was the kid on the corner, the one with freckles and red hair pulled back and fixed with a rubber band, the righter of all wrongs, the first to pass out leaflets when the latest cause surfaced.  She could explain William Carlos Williams, but she couldn’t balance a check book. 
 
    “That was a long time ago,” you said and rapped the glass for a refill. “She was always a good looking woman,” Brad said.  “A good looking woman.”  He picked up the ashtray with his cigarette still in a slot and read the side: Mouse’s Ear.  Beside the name a tilted wine glass and a nude woman with hands clasped above her head.  He turned the name toward you with a sly smile.“It’s a topless bar,” you said.“You’ve been there.”  It wasn’t a question.“Once.  A going away party, a promotion for someone maybe,” you said; you couldn’t remember for sure.  Some kind of empty celebration.  You remembered one of the  dancers who smiled at you more than anyone else, or at least that’s what you thought.  A blonde with large breasts and swollen nipples.  You couldn’t take your eyes off of them.  When she caught you, you apologized.  But then you felt simple-minded for doing it.  She smiled and  touched your hand.  It felt warm, her touch.  It had been a while.  She  told you not to give it another thought, that she was not offended.  She called them her icebreakers.   She couldn’t dance very well.  None of them could dance very well, but no one seemed to mind.   She said that for five dollars she could sit and talk to you, that she’d talk to you for nothing if it was up to her, that she liked you, but the management wouldn’t permit it.  She said she didn’t feel right about asking, but those were the rules.  You pulled a bill from your wallet.  She told you to stuff it inside the fabric square between her legs.  You smiled and handed it to her.  You bought her a drink and listened as she talked and smoked.  The words were low and jagged, like her voice was diseased. She said she was divorced.    She said her exhusband was a good man, but things just didn’t work out.  You said you’d been there.  She said he worked at Home Depot, had been there for fifteen years.  Made keys for people who couldn’t remember things.    He wore an orange vest to work.  Each morning he starched and ironed it.  He would not wear it wrinkled.  She said wrinkles made him crazy.   She said she didn’t like what she was doing, but it was just temporary.  She wanted to be an actress, like... she mentioned a name, like it was someone you should know, someone who made it big from some strip club somewhere else.  You don’t remember the name.  Wendy Storm,  something like that.“It can happen,” she said.  “I just have to work my way out of here.  That’s all I need.”  She said she would like to get to know you, that you were nice, not like most of the filthy-tongued assholes she had to put up with every night.  She mentioned class.   It could have been the suit.   She said she didn’t want money.  Said she didn’t want it to be like that.  You said you didn’t see that it made any difference one way or another.  She said she didn’t understand.  You said you didn’t either, but you knew that it was true just the same.  Intuition, you said.  She shrugged and  took a pen from your pocket and wrote her phone number on your palm.  Call me, she said.  I will, you said.   But you washed your hands before you left.
He set the ashtray down.  “If we had more time,” he said and checked his watch.
“Yeah.”
The waitress gazed at Brad, absorbed.
“And Rachel?” Brad said.
“The divorce is final,” you said.

      He  smiled and winked at the waitress, holding his glass up.  “Probably for the best.”“But I’m engaged,” you said.
“Great!” he said.  “Congratulations!”  He sounded sincere, but you weren’t sure.“I’ve never met anyone quite like her,” you said.  “Her name is Janice.  She’s a paralegal in our office.  Sort of shy.  Very good looking.  We enjoy each other, you know?  Beyond the sex.”  He nodded and smiled.  “Don’t get me wrong.  The sex is great.  But there’s more, you know?”  You waited for the waitress to drop his beer and move along. “Sounds great,” he said. “Should have brought her along.”You had her picture in your wallet, but you didn’t mention it. 
      
      “How’s the law game?” he said.“It’s good.   Mostly routine.  Plea bargains.  Give and take.  That sort of thing.  Once in a while I get into court.”  He took the airline tickets from his front pocket, fanned them like a hand of cards, and seemed to study each one.  “In fact, I’m handling an armed robbery  right now....”“Did I mention the Northern Lights?” he said as he slid the tickets back into their envelope..  “What?” you said.
“I’ll get to see the Northern Lights when I’m up there,” he said.  “It’s like a religious experience they say.”
“I didn’t know you were religious,” you said.
“I’m not.  So it should mean more,” he said.   “I’m sorry.  You were saying?” 
“Nothing important,” you said, a little irritated,  and brushed imaginary lint from your jacket. 

    But it was.  If not important, perplexing at least.   A nice enough fellow, polite, soft-spoken, always stands when you enter his cell and offers his hand.  Black, mid-forties, he had killed someone over a girl when he was sixteen; kid’s stuff, he said, but  they  sentenced him to life in prison just the same.  Last year he was paroled,  after twenty years,  and now he’s awaiting trial again.  Why?  Of course you’d like to know, but you’ve never asked.  You think he would be surprised if you did.
        “What’s so hard to understand?” someone in the office said.  “They’re morons.  Think they’ll never get caught.”  And then he laughed.  “And if they are?  The next time’s always going to be different.”
           
    A porter in a gray uniform and a cap with a shiny bill pushed an old woman along in a wheel chair.  Her head  tilted to the side, her mouth opened, her clouded eyes staring senselessly at the floor.  Behind them, a man, just as old, in a faded gray suit and a shirt and tie that didn’t match, with cotton in his ears, carried a purse.  He seemed dazed, confused, his hair disarranged, as he shuffled along after them.  He walked with a limp, one foot kicking to the side, as if it wasn’t fully attached.  People rushed around them toward the ramp leading to the gates.
“Don’t you get tired of being tied to a desk,” Brad said.
“I’m not tied to a desk,” you said.
“You know what I mean.”
“It’s something you get used to.”
“I couldn’t,” he said.  “I’d go nuts.”  He traced his finger around the lip of his glass.  “Each to his own, I guess.”

    “That’s a nice ring,” you said and pointed.He spread his fingers and moved his hand side to side to catch the light.
“Twenty-six hundred.  Got it in Caracas.  Would have been ten grand here.”A half-dozen men converged around the priest still waiting just outside the bar.  While he held his hands overhead, a man in uniform searched him, another in a suit holding his briefcase.  When the priest lowered his arms, a second man in uniform, younger than the first, cuffed his hands behind and they all moved along, an older man in a gray suit trailing the others, talking into a portable radio.Brad shook his head.  “It’s a fucked up world,” he said and mashed another cigarette out.There was a garbled announcement over the PA that you didn’t understand. 
            
    “That’s me,” he said and slurped his beer and threw a twenty on the table.  You pushed it back.
“I’ll get it,” you said.
He took a pen from your pocket and scribbled something on the bill.  “Then keep it.  As a souvenir.  Something to remember me by.”   You turned it around.  It read: to my best friend Larry, Brad.You stood and took his hand. You held on longer than you should you thought. “Take care, old man,” he said.
“Any regrets?” you said.
“Never!  And you?”
“Sometimes,” you said but then wished you hadn’t.

    “I know,” he said.  And waved at the waitress.  “Next time, sweet cheeks.  We’ll do the town.”
She held a thumb up and then waved.He walked away but then stopped for a moment, turned and saluted..... and then he was absorbed by the security apparatus.  You paid the tab with the bill he gave you and another twenty from your wallet.  “What’s your friend’s name?” the waitress said.You told her.  She nodded like you had confirmed something she already knew.
        “Have you ever been to West Memphis?” you said.  She didn’t seem surprised.  “I’ve never been anywhere,” she said.
“Me neither,” you said.  She straightened and smoothed the bills and started to make change.  But you told her to keep
it.  She said  to come back like it was something she had to do.  Your eyes met for just a moment, but her expression was flat, penetrating, like she didn’t see you at all.  She didn’t smile.  You had a sudden urge to say something, maybe to introduce yourself, say something clever, but you didn’t know anything cleaver.  Besides,  it was too late.  Above and behind her,  a large red clock with yellow Roman numerals.  One of those novelty things that runs backwards.
 
    You found a pay phone and called Janice.  A fat Hispanic girl in a burgundy uniform and white Nikes with black trim worked the floor, a broom in one hand, a collector hinged on a pole in the other, sweeping up something you couldn’t see.   She smiled that vacant smile of the dispossessed. 

    The phone rang a long time.  You picked up a small pamphlet lying on top of a dog-eared phone book.  About the size of a cigarette pack, it was made of a coarse, cheap paper.  On the front, a crude drawing of a cross on a small hill, and below that: “Where will you spend eternity?”  It said not to despair, that life was something to be tolerated; nothing more; a temporary ordeal; a rite of initiation.  She didn’t sound like herself when she answered, like she was far off.  She asked what time it was.  You checked your watch.  You told her that you wanted to stop by.  She said it was late.  You said that it was important.  She asked if you’d been drinking.  You said no.  She said she was asleep when you called, that she’d see you at work in the morning.  You said  you understood.  She said  she loved you.  You didn’t say anything.  You hung up.  You stood facing one of the large windows looking out over the runways, rising on your toes, over and over, your hands clasped behind the back.   It had started raining again, water cascading down the outside; disoriented  waves washing to earth.  You watched a plane lift off,  tiny lights winking, your eyes following as it was absorbed finally by the night.  And then nothing but you staring back at yourself. 

    In a row of narrow, pink plastic chairs bolted to the floor, a woman in her twenties sat holding
a little girl about five or six in her lap.  Black crescents marred the skin beneath the woman’s eyes.  She had crystal earrings dangling from small chains that twisted and refracted the light.  She chewed a nail on her free hand.  She wore no rings.  A limp, canvas valise lay at her feet.  The sleeping child woke, its eyes wide as they searched about, until they fell on  its mother’s face. It smiled and put its arm around her neck.  Then it lay its head on her shoulder and closed its eyes again.  The woman smiled at you as you passed, like it was something  she was taught as a child she ought to do.   It was something you recognized.   Behind her, at an open newsstand, people  picking up magazines, looking inside and then putting them back.  A group of tall black men, some in shorts, most wearing “stolen from” sweat shirts, and all in designer  sneakers,  rummaged through the candy racks.

    A fragmented, mechanical voice over the PA system welcomed everyone to the airport, but warned  that anyone you meet might be a threat, to watch your luggage, not to take anything from anyone else on board.  Enjoy your flight, it added.

    You don’t know what to say to Sheila, and you imagine that she feels the same.  Whatever you might have said to each other at a time like this, you both left behind many years ago.  So in the end you place the receiver gently back in the cradle without saying a word.  It is one of those “where were you when...” moments, like 9-11.  You think back, remembering, Sheila, Emily, and Brad.  The good times.  A shuffle of images.  But in that collage of memories, you are plagued by something you saw on television a few days before, a  documentary  about some primitive tribe, in New Guinea you think.  On PBS.  It might have been  Discovery.   Anyway, some channel you have no reason to care about.  You can’t remember why you were watching.  Can’t remember the name of the tribe either.  It shouldn’t matter at all, not remembering something as mundane as that, but it does.  That’s how it begins, you suspect.  One of the first signs, perhaps.  That’s what happened to  your father anyway.  First the car keys.  Now he’s as good as dead.  Would be better off, you think.  You don’t know what he would think about that.  If he can even think about it anymore.  There’s no way of knowing.  Your keys are on the bureau.  You might have never given it another thought, that troubling documentary,  except it said the people there  have no concept of past or future.  Only the present, and their language is rooted now, with no accommodations for what might have been, or what might someday be.  If you lock them up, even temporarily, they will fall ill and die, because they know that it will be forever, or now, which is the same thing.  You harbor an acute, gnawing resentment for a people
whose name you can’t recall.  Savages. 

    You toss some ice cubes into a plastic tumbler and then fill it with bourbon.   Sheila said that  it had snowed heavily in Juneau the day before, but on the morning Brad died, it had turned cold, very cold, and had cleared, with no winds, so  weather had  not been a factor in the crash.  You imagine that it was a beautiful morning, the sky the deepest blue, the pure crystal blue that only the coldest weather can spawn.  The blue of hope.  The blue that God must love, if He can indeed love.  You imagine the plane lifting off, Brad smiling, the scent of a barmaid from the night before still in his mind, and telling his men about the good things that lay ahead.