By: Laurie

“Why don’t you take a seat?”

I had followed the priest, Father Daryl O’Connor as he introduced himself, through to the adjoined house.  The first thing to strike me about the lounge, in which I now sat, was the colors of it.  The walls were an oppressive green, angry red runners and cloths were draped wherever there was room for them.  It was garish and vulgar, not beautiful and striking as I suspected it was intended to be.  Faint lights glowed on the tiny tree in the corner of the room, with no warmth or appeal.  It all reminded me too much of the first Christmas after my mom had died.  The only difference was the company.

It was a pretty big difference, too.  I was standing in front of a man who, in all honesty and truth held the future of my life in his hands.  And now, all he found to say was,

“Have a cookie.”

I was starving.  I don’t remember how many of the cookies I ate but gradually the anxiety I felt subsided and I started to feel more and more sleepy.  A little woman walked in carrying a small tray with two coffee cups on.  She looked across at me through silver rimmed specs and smiled with such sincerity that I felt compelled to return the gesture.  I wondered how many people she had given this warm welcome to and how many were in the same dire straits I was in.  She didn’t care if I was murderer or completely innocent.  For now I was under her roof and that meant I should receive her hospitality.

“What can you tell me about Chuck Harley, Father?” I asked as the housekeeper left the room.  I could no longer wait for him to tell me, I had to know all I could.

“That you are reported to be his accomplice,” he smiled slightly, “though you are either guilty and very clever or else innocent or you would not have come back here.”

“Father,” I began.  “I don’t know how all this happened.  I was traveling across the States, and for some reason we left the interstate and ended up here.  I can’t remember, now, why.  This guy came up to me in the bar and started talking to me like he knew me, like he’d been expecting me.  He was reeling off riddles and the next thing I knew he shoved a gun in my ribs and someone else shot me.”  My pace was quickening as was my pounding heart and I could feel my eyes tingling as though the tears that formed there were tiny pins that dug into me with desperation.  “Then I went back to New Jersey and three months passed before I got arrested, got bail because the whole case was circumstantial, and then was persuaded to return here and try and straighten this whole thing out.”

“Are you a Catholic, Laurie?”

I blinked back the tears in surprise.  Everything that the priest before me had said had been far from what I expected, I didn’t know why I was still surprised.  He just watched me, unfazed by anything I had told him.

“I was, I think I am.  I went to church every Sunday and most Wednesdays when I was a kid.”

“Well, I did know Chuck Harley a little.  He had left by the time I got here.  He came back quite often though, always hiding from the cops, keeping a low profile.  He had his own reasons for coming back, I guess.”

“Do you know them?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

“Suffice to say, the case against him was in part circumstantial, too.”

Father O’Connor would not say any more, so I endeavored to prompt him.

“He told me that what I was looking for was down by the river.  Where is there a river near here?”

“There is one feeds in to the north side of the lake, it’s only about five or six miles from here.”

“What was it that he thought I was looking for?”

“When his wife died, he also lost all his money.  I believe it was buried with her.”

“He did kill her, didn’t he?  That’s what this is all about.  How did I get tied up with all this?  What made him want to talk to me?”

“Now, that, I can help you with,” he answered and leaned forward to pour himself another cup of coffee from the pot and did the same for me.  He did not seem in a rush to divulge anything to me and the continued waiting was making me grow more and more nervous.  Was it all an elaborate set up?  Was he keeping me here just long enough for the ginger headed cop to get here and make the arrest he had been waiting twelve years for?  “He was not alone in this, you see,” Father continued, sitting back on the brown armchair and shaking his head slightly.  “He had a friend from Europe, I never met him, but I know he helped to bury the money.  Netty Harley was not short of money.  She was from some French business family from all I can make out, but Chuck never spoke to me of her outside of strictest confidence through confession.  I believe that his friend knew nothing of her death, but just saw it as a robbery.  I guess Chuck realized that he had to admit to his associate that he had set him up for a murder rap.  In exchange he was going to give him all of the money.”

“Why did he bury it in the first place?”  I could not understand the logic behind any of the thinking that had gone on surrounding this man.

“The money was Netty’s and most of it in the form of jewelry and the like.  It is a funny thing, Laurence, tragic, but Chuck really loved her.  That’s why he did it all.”

“But what about his daughter?”

“He loved her, too.”

“Why, in God’s name, did he kill them then?”

“I’m quite sure he gave you more answers than I can.”  He crossed his gangly legs and studied me thoughtfully.  I lowered my gaze, unsure about the calculation he seemed to be regarding me with.  I felt like an open book, albeit a book of puzzles, to the man before me.  His face never altered, hard and set, but in no way judgmental.  “I think it is time that Chuck Harley’s name faded from these parts.  Will you help to bury the ghost?”

“I never wanted to the hear the name Chuck Harley, Father.  If there was anything I could do to clear myself of it, believe me, I would.”

“Then that is what you should do.  Chuck Harley was not the monster that people thought he was.  There are two sides to every nickel and that is something that no one could ever realize about him.”  He smiled slightly.  “You’re a brave man, Laurence, you will be just the person to prove the dilemma Chuck found himself in.”
“What do you mean?  Whatever your hopes and expectations are, Father, I should warn you: I am a pitiful coward when confronted.”

“Not at all,” he replied the smile growing on his features, looking both natural and unusual.  “You returned from New Jersey to Oklahoma to find out the truth.  That took courage, New Jersey legislation would have protected you from the chair.  Here in Oklahoma you are risking your life.”

It was a strange way of praising me.  It didn’t feel like a compliment, it felt like a warning.  The thought of my mistrial presenting execution had never occurred to me and now I longed more than anything to be back in New York City, behind bars but away from the electric chair.  My head spun and I felt sick.  I tried, in that instant, to be the man that the priest before me believed I was.  I tried not to think of a premature death for a crime I was innocent of.  I tried to think of any way out of the situation, but the truth was I was stuck in Pontford.  I had, as my mom would have told me, made my bed and now I would have to lie in it, but it did not stop me rising quickly to my feet and rushing to bathroom feeling overwhelmingly sick.

It was here, with the door locked and myself pressed against it as though I really thought the lock was not enough to protect me, that the tears came.  They burnt as they streaked my face.  They were of fear and tiredness, but more than anything they were tears of desperation.  I remained pushed against the door as seconds turned to minutes, staring straight in front of me but seeing nothing.  I wasn’t even thinking anymore, I was just standing in a dazed state of subconsciousness.

How long I had been like that, I didn’t know, before I looked across at the small mirror over the sink and watched as a man, now becoming a stranger to me, looked back.  I watched as he rubbed the tears from his face but was too numb to feel my own hands doing the same thing.  What had happened to that man before me who, six months ago, had all he wanted out of life, a job, a girl and a home?  What cruel, calculated attack had fate laid at his feet to result in him becoming the outlaw he now was?  Why had Chuck Harley so foolishly picked him and why had he even left the interstate to trek through the backwaters of Oklahoma?  The answers, I realized, really didn’t matter.  I had to become who Father Daryl O’Connor believed I was, I had to expose whatever the truth was and that, I knew, could not be done by the coward whose large, scared eyes looked back at me.

I spun the cold water tap and tucked my hands under the thin trickle of water.  Little by little I began to feel calmer, things faded back into manageable proportions.  I told myself, over and over as I looked in the mirror, I was no more likely to get caught now I had been told about the death penalty than I was before.

Somewhere, deep inside me, courage was beginning to form.  In Father Daryl O’Connor I really felt that I had a friend or in the least a confidant.  How accurate my assessment of the priest’s character was time would reveal, but now as I cleaned my face and unlocked the door I felt like a different person to the one who had rushed in there.  No longer did I feel cowardly, though I was still afraid.  Desperation had been replaced with determination and, for the first time in three months, I felt that I could control what would happen to me.  This elation was to be short lived but I, for that short time, really felt invincible.

By: Laurie

Since my mother’s death the holiday had never been the same.  The first year, my father had tried to pull what was left of our family together, but it was half hearted on all accounts.  For years I had blocked it from my mind, but now as the dismal weather increased and Christmas loomed, it was every present.  Oklahoma is a state to whom snow visits every year but scarcely more than a covering at a time, but for me that covering was enough.  My feet had stung with cold before I began to lose feeling in them completely as I wandered along the edge of the empty highway.

If I was living in a movie, two days before Christmas, mysterious things would begin to happen, but as Christmas Eve dawned I found myself being dropped off outside a filling station and watching as the Toyota that had carried me this far vanished into the Christmas card scenery.  There was no miracle for me.  Only that I was alive and, to this point, safely under the eyes of the state police.  I waited until I was completely alone, with no living creature in sight, before I turned around and walked in to the small hut.

A Christmas song was blaring out from a stereo that sat on a wooden counter.  It was turned up to full volume making the sound distorted and warped, like when I was awaking from the coma.  The thought frightened me and I pulled the collar of my well worn shirt up about my ears but it made little difference to the sound.  A young boy, perhaps five years my junior was sitting almost on top of the sound box and was kicking his legs against the counter in what he felt was the rhythm of the piece.  He was out of time, adding a nauseous syncopation to my spinning head.  I rubbed my throat, feeling overwhelmingly sick, and the music abruptly stopped, so quickly that I rocked forward as though the sound had been, literally, repelling me.

“I didn’t think yer’d ever come in,” the boy began, jumping down and facing me.

That drawl reminded me of a hundred things I wished never to have experienced nor ever to again, but there was a warmth to his features and I forced myself to smile at him.

“I just got thoughtful out there.  It sure is nice.”

“Nice?  Say, yer not from these parts.”

“That’s true,” I conceded, realizing that once again my movie based knowledge of mid west lingo was entirely removed from the real thing.

“Nice’s a word for Englishmen – but I don’t reckon yer European.”

“No, I’m from New Jersey.”

“So whatcha doin’ here?”

Lying has never come comfortably to me.  On occasions, when necessity has called for it, I have been known to skilfully mould the truth to my purposes, but for whatever reason that gift escaped me now.  Perhaps it was the boy’s blunt questioning or my own tired unguardedness, but the words had left my mouth without thinking about the weight of consideration and consequence.

“I’m looking for Chuck Harley.”

The boy gave a slight whistle through a large gap in his teeth.  “Yer six months too late for that, sir.  He’s been in the ground since August.  Why yer seeking a murderer if yer don’t mind me askin‘?”

“I work for the Times.”  It was a blatant lie.  I had stepped foot in their offices no more than twice.

“Holy…  New York Times?  In our town?”

“Yes, but here’s my problem,” I continued, not pausing to think through my explanation but continuing regardless.  “My car packed in and I had to hitch up here, but now I’ve got no idea where I am or how to get there.”

“It’s not a problem,” came the awestruck reply.  “Come, I’ll show yer the map.”

There was a large scale map of the county stuck onto the surface of the wooden counter and he placed a long, oily finger down on its glossy surface.  “This is where we are.  Yer gotta head up the highway for about twenty min-”

“I haven’t got a car,” I interrupted.

“Well, I can drive yer there.”  He smiled at me across the map.  “When I shut up tonight it’ll be for the holiday.  Can yer wait a few hours?”

“Sure,” I whispered in reply feeling relieved to have found someone so willing to help me out, but having to constantly remind myself that I was now a New York journalist.  But despite my overwhelming lie and the nagging feeling that it was going to catch me up unless I paid more than my full attention on living it, I managed to sleep.  There was a little office in the back of the station with an old, thin couch in it, but to me it was heaven.  My eyelids fell shut the moment my head was back and I slipped out of anxious consciousness into the disturbing realm of the mind and the frightening, lifelike realities that the subconscious throws at you.

I did dream.  I don’t remember what, only that my sister was there.  She wasn’t happy, her face was set in a deep frown and she kicked at the ground in a sullen way.  It was impossible to age her, sometimes I felt that she was a young child, sometimes as old as she would have been today, had she lived.  When I awoke, shaken by my new misled friend, Becca was all that remained with me, imprinted in my mind, almost as confused as a negative from a photograph, an exact opposite to reality.

It was an odd light outside, a chilling light of moon glow on the thin, slushy snow.  There was something almost magical, as though I had gone to sleep with all the cares of the world and awoken without bond or confines.  For a time I simply sat and stared around me.  Waking up in alien rooms and places was becoming almost normal for me.  I could define my positioning only by the face that looked across at me.  Now, it was a young, fresh face, that peculiar warmth catching his features once again.  He picked up a fob of keys and looked expectantly at me.

“Are you old enough to run this place?” I muttered as I pushed myself to my feet.

“Is that yer journalistic side talkin’?”

“Yeah,” I whispered in reply, recalling who I was to this person.

“It’s my pop’s really, but he ain’t so well at the moment.”

I allowed him to guide my out the back out the station and he ushered me into a truck with an open rear and wide hubcaps sitting over the wheels.  It looked like the type of vehicle an Oklahoma man should drive, as far removed from a sleek city dweller car as could be imagined.

“Tell me what you know about Chuck Harley,” I implored as we pulled out onto the road.

“Why, he’s a local legend.  Yer’ll never meet a soul so black.  Born and bred in Little Pontford, went off to one of them colleges, traveled to Europe and when he came back it was with a wife in tow.”

“What was she like?”

“I don’t remember anything of her, ‘cept she’d stand by the shops and grab people.  Hell, I was only nine when he killed her.”

“Why did she grab people?”

“I don’t know, but half the folks in Pontford were glad to see her go.”

“Did he kill her?”

My chauffeur glanced across at me for a moment before turning back to the road.  For a time there was silence except for the sound of the melted snow striking the under belly of the truck.  I spared myself a quick glance out of the window and saw a magical world stretch away that would have looked complete to have laced it with bison and canvas covered carts.  I wanted to feel the magic that Christmas had given me in the past, I wanted to look at the snow and imagine Rudolf and Mr. Kringle completing their tour of every house the globe over, but the words that shattered the silence brought me firmly back to the present and banished thoughts of any benevolent figures.

“There’s no doubt he killed her.  Just that nobody knows how or where.”

“Why did he do it?  He must have had a motive.”

“Tired of her, I guess.  He couldn’t divorce, being a good Catholic and that.”  He flicked the indicator that made a constant ticking noise until we finally turned right and it clicked off.  “What’s yer interest in him, anyhow?”

“Outlaws,” I replied quickly.  “Whether we love them like we used to.”

“I don’t reckon so, here.  Ol’ Chuck got shot through the heart.  I don’t know why he came back though, he was safer out there in Europe.  Where yer stopping’?”

“Er,” I tried to catch up with the sudden change of topic.  “Drop me at the church.”

“What for?”

“The Catholic church.  If Chuck Harley went there it would be interesting to hear the priest’s view on events.”

My driver, whose name I never thought to ask, didn’t speak to me after that.  I could only assume that it was my comments on the church but he left me in near silence with murmured Christmas greetings at a set of tall, spindly iron gates that looked like they had been lifted straight from a horror movie.  I didn’t want to stand waiting, I was unsure here who knew me and who was a friend or an enemy.

I had not set foot in a Church since my mother’s requiem mass.  Somehow religion and I had simply drifted and I was left, as I now stood, out in the cold.  I had never questioned myself in the issue of belief since, but had lived on in a blissful ignorance of religions and believers, but now how many memories flashed past my brain?  It took me a great deal of time to gain the courage to open the door, and when at last I did, it was simply to run and hide from approaching voices from the sidewalk.  It was like being young again, that odd smell of fading incense in the air, smelling different with each breath you inhaled, becoming accustomed to its overbearing power.  The noises of the church were minimal.  Occasionally the wooden pews would creak, though nobody sat on them, as they settled in their weightless warmth.  At first I was walking defiantly up to the altar but my pace slowed and I felt someone take my hand and whisper,

“It’s not a race, Laurie.”

I turned, half expecting to see my Mom standing there, but I was alone in the church.  I felt intrigued by the memories this place stirred in me, and frightened of its power to do so.  My pace steadied and I found that I was walking on tiptoes to be as silent as I could.  I stood a few paces back from the altar and just stared at it, trying to recapture what it had been to believe so strongly.

I must have cut an odd figure, standing with my hand reaching out towards the altar, my eyes screwed tightly closed, and I could feel myself rocking slightly.  Combined with the surroundings, an empty church, or so I thought, I did not look a perfect Christmas picture.

“Son?”

“Huh?” was all I could reply with and turned to look at the priest who stood a short way to the side.  He, too, had his hand out but towards me, not the altar.  He didn’t look much like a Father.  He was a thin, gangly man, taller than me but not so tall that his height was noteworthy, but there was something about him that looked hard and strong.  Perhaps it was because I felt like I was about to be told off, as though in my mind I really was a child again.  That feeling melted away as he smiled and I felt myself visibly relax.

“You don’t come here week in, week out.”  He spoke clearly with no trace of the Oklahoma drawling accent.

“No,” I replied, although it was a statement not a question.  “I’ve never been here before.  Well,” I began again, trying to correct what I meant.  “I have been to Pontford, once, last summer, but not in this church.”

“Come and sit down,” was all he said, and motioned to the front pew.  I nodded and trudged forward, slouching onto the wooden bench and suddenly studying my hands.

“Sorry, Father,” I muttered.  “I’m not very good at this.”

“At what?”

“I came here to be safe.  Will you keep me safe?”

“Safe from what?”  He did not seem fazed by the question, not even intrigued.  The only tone I could hear was one of genuine care, and for that reason alone I abandoned the New York Times story and whispered,

“I don’t know.  The police, I think.”

“What have you done?”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, what haven’t you done?”

“I don’t know, I got shot and then nothing happened for three months, then I was arrested.  Father, what do you know about Chuck Harley?”

“Enough to satisfy you, I’m sure.  What’s your name?”

I paused.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to give my name, my real name.  For the moment, no one knew I was back in Pontford.  A part of me wanted to keep it that way.  The priest just looked at me, his expression never faltering.  As the seconds passed by, too many thoughts flashed through my head, rapid and racing, like the racing of a river crashing down.  I had visited the Niagara Falls on a few occasions, the power, force and jumble of the leaping water as it crashed down was matched now by the thoughts in my head.  He was a priest, but he was also in Pontford.  My Mom always wanted me to be a Catholic, to trust people like the one before me, yet her death, painfully premature and unfair, was in part why I could not.

Eventually I realized that I had to give him a name, any name, and that he wouldn’t stop staring at me until I did.

“Laurence,” I whispered, feeling unease grow over me as the priest smiled slightly.  “Laurie.”

“Yes,” the priest began, rising to his feet and offering me his hand.  “That’s what I thought.”

By: Laurie

It was a strange thing to watch the landscape pass by me in its opposite coat to the glamorous colorful decking I had last seen it in.  As so many other New Yorkers I scarcely left the city and now as fields and gentle rolling hills passed us by I could not understand why.  The sun rise was invisible in the eastern sky, except that there was a dusting of color on the landscape instead of the shades that the three quarter moon had offered.  It was strange to see how quickly the country passed me by.  The tree clad towns that clung to the highways and the open spaces that stretched on forever away from the two of us as we sat in the wagon, the world rolling past.

We ploughed up Route 80 towards Cleveland where the truck had its first stop.  I never asked what he was hauling, I didn’t want to.  A driver who would pick up a man dockside and take him on a three day trek was not someone I wanted to question.  It was mid afternoon when we pulled up at a large depot overlooking the great expanse of Lake Erie.  Canada was visible as a hazy form beyond the water but looked neither majestic nor pleasing, only distant and daunting.

Three men appeared from the enormous doors of the warehouse and now, for the first time in the nine hours of traveling together, the truck driver spoke.

“Y’oughta stick this on.”  He reached behind his seat and tossed me a florescent jacket.  There was something about the sound of his voice that made a blade of ice slice down my back.  Perhaps it was nothing more than that he spoke with that long drawl that reminded me of the ginger haired cop back in Oklahoma, perhaps it was just that I was sinking into a terrible state of paranoia.  For whatever reason I simply nodded and tucked my arms through the vest.

I wasn’t sure how much of my thoughts he had picked up on, and I couldn’t look him in the eyes in case it was more than just nervousness that he had seen.  It didn’t matter, he was already heading out of the truck and walking over to the other three men.  I stayed in the cab.  I could feel my eyes narrow as he pointed back over to where I was sitting and the four men all laughed, but none of them came to talk to me, for which I was grateful.

The men were unloading from the back of the truck without a second consideration for me, and now, sitting alone in an alien cab began to feel odd.  I reached forward and pulled out the compartment beneath the dashboard.  It was a mistake, I realized straight away as my gaze fell upon a cardboard box of cartridges.  There was no gun, leading me to suppose that my chauffeur was carrying it with him.  I felt frozen with fear and yet my palms and forehead were damp suddenly with sweat.  I couldn’t run.  He might shoot me there and then, and I knew next to nothing about Cleveland and even less people who lived here.  There was something about Canada, now, that distant, unobtainable country, that beckoned me.  Would I be safe there?  Would it be better to journey down to Oklahoma and find out why I was being framed and who Chuck Harley really was?

The decision was made for me as the driver’s door opened and the stocky man who had been my companion so far pulled himself into the cabin. I heard myself swallowing loudly, he heard me too and turned his puzzled face towards me.  He didn’t speak though.  Neither did I.  He just pulled down the handbrake behind the wheel and the heavy wagon crept forward.

As we drove through the outer limits of Cleveland down Route 71, the silence began to become too much for me and my thoughts continually shifted to the box of cartridges and the pain of the gun wound last summer had given me.  It might have just been my imagination, but he seemed more uncomfortable too.  Awkwardly, I fumbled around words that could become a conversation.  They were juggled in my head as I tried to survey the damage each might cause if they fell.  Eventually I decided on one route and asked,

“What are you hauling?  I thought Clarrie said it was empty.”

“Just about empty,” came the briefest of replies.  He seemed to notice the anxiety I knew was evident in my words and he shrugged his broad, heavy shoulders.  “See, I don’t get much over the holiday, so’s I need to do a bit of running as well.”

“Drugs?” I whispered without considering the damage and impact of the single word.

“Hyell, no,” he replied in his Midwest accent, laughing around each word.  “D’ya think that warehouse we were at looked like somewhere to store drugs?  I was loadin’.”

I didn’t believe him.  At least not entirely.  I’d seen them taking things out of the wagon in the mirror.  He didn’t seem bothered, though, but continued to provoke.

“A man who’s reckoning on hitching ‘cross half the country ain’t in a position to have morals.”

“I think you’re right,” I replied.

“Yer heading home?”

“I think so,” came the whispered reply before I nodded more affirmatively.

“So yer got a name?”

“Laurence,” I replied, smiling across at him.  A little bit of the mistrust and fear slid from me.  I’d given him my name.  It is a primitive idea that a name can hold any power, but I felt like now he knew it I had gone beyond the stage of stranger.

“Kelly,” he said briefly.  “Eddie Kelly.”

I nodded, and the journey continued in silence for a time.  The world around us was going to sleep, entering now   There was a dusting of snow on the top of the higher hills that shimmered any color but white in the fading sunset.  Eddie kept driving.  He didn’t notice the rainbow pinnacles or the frozen slabs of ice that jutted out from the sides of rivers that were crossed by the pioneering interstate.

When the night was complete and the temperature gauge on the dashboard sank down to fourteen degrees, Eddie finally pulled off the wide carriageway and pushed the handbrake up, securing the wagon.  He opened the door and the frozen air rushed in, striking my bare face and hands, he laughed, bellowed, at me, but showed me how to pull the cab seat down and it opened onto a bed at the back.

“Sleep well,” he said curtly, locking the door and vanishing from my sight.

I didn’t sleep well, I couldn’t.  I thought I was tired, I knew I had been, but sleep eluded me and I lay awake puzzling over how I had managed to find myself in the wilderness of Kentucky.  The tall evergreen trees towered over the cab, even from where the road was elevated, and the stars shone with a twinkling radiance, that was both comforting and chilling as it spoke of the bitter temperatures outside.  I was enticed.  The night and my fears held me captive and I could not surrender to sleep.

Or was I asleep?  I could hear voices, women’s voices.  I thought they were singing, but it was faint and lost, chilled by the same night that warmed me in the knowledge that I was out of the cold wind.  The tall pines seemed to be bending in the icy gale, but I was sure it had been quite calm when last I had looked out.  The voices stopped as I sat up.  I was in silence once again excepting when a vehicle drove past, but they were scarce.

I did fall asleep, then.  I’m sure I didn’t dream, but awoke into the peculiar reality that my life had become, still unsure how much of the night before had been actual.  Eddie spared only a few words before we drove forward, the wagon warming up with each turn of the wheels, driving me forward to the loneliest Christmas I would ever have.  The road was icy and our progress stunted, so that we reached Nashville at four, by which time the light was just beginning to dip as the sun became lost to Nashville’s famous, futuristic skyline.

Today had been almost as quiet as the day before, but after another night of scarcely any sleep, my companion opened up and began to talk freely about the family he was returning to, most especially his young son and daughter.  He was ready to roll by six in the morning, and we crossed Tennessee talking about Christmas and Arkansas discussing his own history.  If ever the subject of myself arouse I dismissed it all behind a screen of unfortunate issues.  He accepted it and asked no questions beyond those that the conversation demanded of him.  Finally, as we bypassed Fort Smith and entered Oklahoma I fell silent.  I felt choked by being back in this state and guilty for feeling this way when the man beside me loved it more than anywhere else on the planet.

“Where should I drop yer?” Eddie asked and I tried to recall the route I had taken in summer.

“There’s a place past Muskogee, fairly barren I think.”

“I can’t head that far north.  There’s a station where the road turns to Tulsa, I’ll drop’ya at.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, wondering how far I could make it on the small amount of cash I had left.  “Have you heard of Chuck Harley?” I asked, once more disregarding the outcome.

Eddie made a thoughtful noise before shaking his head.  “Don’t reckon.”

We didn’t speak anymore.  He never uttered another word to me, while all I offered him was a farewell and thanks.  I was left standing in a parking lot near to the interstate junction with only a handful of dollars in my pocket and scarce belongings in a small rucksack on my back.  It was cold and I turned to walk towards the seedy roadside café.  Strangely, Chuck Harley did not worry me as much now that Eddie hadn’t recognized his name.  Instead, I could not escape the ringing of those voices I had heard two nights ago.  They were not there now, but my memory was so vivid that they could have been right behind me.

I pushed my shoulder against the door and walked in.  Eyes stared at me, some welcoming, some questioning, but all of them looked like the old man’s and once again Chuck Harley replaced all of my thoughts.  Whatever happened in the room after I had picked up the keys to one of the chalets, I do not know.  I had to escape from such anxious paranoia as followed me everywhere.  I crashed down on the bumpy mattress and pulled out some of the newspaper articles Jen had copied me.  I had to understand who Chuck Harley was, I had to know what he had done and why he had done it.  That was the only way I could prove my innocence and be rid of such a haunting that chased me.  I rested my head on my straining fingers and sighed.  It felt that I would never be rid of it, that I was doomed to live out my life in the shadow of fate’s cruel hand.

The bed, however uneven and poor, was soft and comforting to me after three nights of traveling and I soon drifted off onto the plane of dreams, haunting, anxious but unreal; and in that I took my comfort.

By: Laurie

When I awoke in the morning, it was to find that I was lying alone in the hotel apartment. The vertical blinds were still closed, but there was a dull light that shone through, disregarding of the fact the blinds were there to stop it. There was a smell of perfume in the air that reminded me of Lucy and for a moment my mind was unclear about not only where but when I had awoken in to. The conversations of the day before, the hearing, the bail, the cocky but likeably agent who was entwined in more ways than one with my niece, and of course Clarrie herself, slowly filtered back into my head and I fell back on the sofa, trying to unravel all of what had gone on.

And the worst of it was, I did not know why I was in this situation. Whatever Chuck Harley had wanted to tell me, whoever he thought I was, he had taken it all to the grave. He was my chance at escape, he held my freedom in his lifeless hands, but he had gone. There was something that had been mentioned last night, something that Clarrie had said about Jen finding out about Chuck Harley…

I jumped up. Something suddenly sparked inside me. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or determination, but it was suddenly there, driving me forwards. I had slept in my clothes last night, so all I did now was thread the leather belt through my jeans and button up my creased shirt. I walked over to the breakfast bar and flicked the switch on the coffeemaker. There was something evilly pleasing in knowing that Maggie was paying for all this. I’d had enough of her and my brother endlessly cutting me and our past out of the picture. Our mother and our sister had been very real parts of our lives and no amount of blinkered refusal could stop that.

The coffee helped only to wind me up as tight as a coiled spring and I found myself walking backwards and forwards across the floor of the apartment, muttering under my breath. I don’t know what I was saying, only that it was something desperate and pitiful. I spent over an hour doing this before I heard the door open and spun to look at who was entering. I don’t know who I expected, but it was Clarrie who stood there. She looked across at me through her large eyes, and I felt both nervous and pleased to no longer be alone.

“Have you seen Jen, Uncle Laurie?”

“No,” I replied slowly.

She just nodded and took the long scarf from her shoulders and crashed down onto the couch that had been my bed last night. She tipped her head back and stared up at the ceiling for a while, seeing far beyond it, but unwilling to disclose her wandering thoughts. It did not matter to me, I stared out at the tiny portion of the city that I could see, the same silence seizing me as Clarrie. The silence lasted as second and minutes ticked by. There was a quiet grinding groan of city traffic, choking the streets, but it was truly remote at this height.

“He’s trying to find out about Chuck Harley for you. Do you like him?”

“I think the real issue is, do you, Clarrie?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “He’s done me a lot of favors.”

“I’m not sure that answers my question.” I sat down beside her on the sofa and looked levelly across at her. For a while she studied her hands before she whispered, “I don’t want to end up like Gramps. I don’t want to be alone like he is.”

“I don’t think that is going to happen, Clarrie.”

“But it won’t with Jen. He’d do anything for me, and I would for him. Is that what love is, Uncle Laurie?”

“Clarrie,” I cautioned. “I’m not the person to ask about that. You saw what happened with Lucy.”

“Did she leave you because of Chuck Harley?”

I felt myself visibly wince at the name and responded by simply nodding. In the silence that followed I spared the briefest of thoughts for Lucy before considering once again that day, trying to remember what had happened.

“What has its freedom when it’s bound? What can we live with until it’s found? What’s left when all the rest is gone? What can’t be stolen, for it has no home?”

“What are you talking about, Uncle Laurie?”

“That’s what he said. I’d forgotten.” I sounded mad to my own ears as me voice echoed in my head. “God, what did it mean?”

I didn’t expect an answer, I hoped for one, hoped that so often seemingly remote figure would issue me with a voice from heaven, or a sign. I hoped so hard, willing Him to, that when, only moments after I had spoken the words the door opened, I jumped. Jen walked in and Clarrie stepped over to him and kissed him. I felt more than uncomfortable and shifted noisily on the couch until I had their attention.

“Ah, Laurie,” Jen began and I felt myself cringe at my own name. “I got some information about Chuck Harley, it might give you a start, anyway.”

“Give me a start?” I repeated foolishly without checking the frenzied, petulant tone in my words. “A start on what?”

“On finding out why you’re being accused of murder,” Jen ignored my anxiety and continued to speak, and while at the time I hated him for it, since then I have realized how much I needed that verbal slap into place. “He was a university graduate, through Yale, no less. That was years ago, though, back in the forties. Anyway, it seems he got married and had a kid or two, then was accused of murdering his wife and daughter. It was quite a big case at the time, I think. Well, he had dual nationality, his mother was from somewhere in Europe, so he went there and vanished off the map. That is until he met you.”

“He killed his wife and daughter?” I whispered. It seemed to be the worst thing imaginable to me in that split second, like nothing else in the room or world around me mattered.

“Yep,” Jen replied in a voice almost as low as my own. “Did it help?

“In a way.”

“Great,” said Clarrie with such an enthusiastic tone that I jumped when I heard it. “Because, it is time I got back home since Mom’s card receipts will be hitting her soon. And I’ve found you a ride out to Lawton. It goes tomorrow at five.”

“I can’t get on a train, then they’ll know I’ve broken my parole.”

“It’s not a train, Uncle Laurie, I got you a place on an empty produce wagon. Local truckers will tell you more than any papers. You can find the place from there.”

Everything was decided with that closing statement and I found myself standing in the industrial zone of the city, waiting by the near silent docks.  I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared. I could hear my breaths coming in ragged, frozen strains to my ears, second hand on the biting wind. I had bid Clarrie goodbye and even Jen who I had begun to see for his own sake and come to like in the past day since that conversation. A large truck pulled up, flashing its powerful headlamp and the driver leaned over and called out.

“You Laurence?”

“Yes,” I replied in a voice that was so quiet that it was impossible for the man to hear, but I was already climbing into the cab. All the fear went as we pulled away from the docks and headed towards the interstate. It should have been the other way round, I knew. I should have been anxious and scared that anything could happen now. Instead, the mock leather seats felt beautifully comfortable and far more soothing than any bed I had slept on in days. Subsequently, before the sun had risen fully I was asleep, safe away from the police, Oklahoma and Chuck Harley. Yet such a sweet reprieve had to come to an end, and what a crashing, tumbling fall that would be.

By: Laurie

The streets of New York were filled with festive cheer.  Lights glared in the onsetting evening, music spilled out from the shops, old songs that would have been long forgotten if they had not been on the topic of Christmas.  There was even a thin layer of snow on the ground, that had been turned and churned into a slushy mess that splashed over the tops of my shoes and with wet feet I felt colder than ever.

“Let’s grab something to eat, Uncle Laurie,” Clarrie said as she dragged me into one of the hotels.

“We can’t afford to eat here,” I hissed.

“No, but while I’m being Mom, I might as well make the most of the fact she can.”

It was a strange thing for me to watch Clarrie, radiating confidence as we sat down at the table, attracting questioning looks from the other customers for the shabby figure I cut.  Clarrie looked perfectly at home here.  Her blond wig fooling anyone to believe she was a bombshell and it was alarming how much like Maggie she looked.  We ate in near silence.  I was starving anyway, so the arrangement suited me, until at last we ended the meal and walked outside.

New York was still a hive of activity, although the sun had truly set now and flakes of snow were drifting down, many melting to rain before they even hit the ground.  Clarrie pulled her mother’s coat about her and smiled across at me.

“Clarrie,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice as quiet as possible as though I really expected someone to be following me to catch me out.  ”What are you doing?”

“Come on, Uncle Laurie,” Clarrie laughed, unconcerned about any of the other people on the sidewalk, simply confident they were engrossed with their own comings and goings.  ”I know you didn’t murder anyone, or kidnap people.  When the letter arrived at Gran-Pop’s about you, I found it and realized that no one else was going to even give it a second thought.”

“How did you explain it to Maggie and Neil?”

“I’m staying with a friend, they think I’m there.  That’s where we’re heading now.”

“Clarrie, I have to go back to my apartment-”

“I never thought you were a fool Uncle Laurie, but that’s an idiot’s idea.  They’re only waiting to build up their case against you.”

“I can’t break parole, it will make me look guilty.”

“Or sure that you’re innocent, defying everything to prove it.”

I looked around me and was surprised to find that we had entered a hotel foyer and Clarrie was leading me over to an elevator.  The lights were dim in the corridor and I stared hard at all the people who were passing us, as though I thought they were following me.  Clarrie punched the sixth floor button and the doors began to close.

“Now tell me what happened in Oklahoma,” she said firmly.  ”Tell me about Chuck Harley.”

The elevator bell rang and we stepped out onto a rich red carpet.  Clarrie fumbled in her mother’s handbag for the swipe card and spilled out half of the contents.  I knelt down to pick them up but she pulled me to my feet.

“Forget it, Uncle Laurie, Jen will pick them up.  I think you need a drink.”

I walked into the room and felt my eyes bulge at the sight before me.  It was a chic hotel suite, a bar in one corner, and two enormous sofas that stared at the view onto the city street and the enormous forty inch television set.

“Jen,” Clarrie called out and I coughed in surprise at the person who walked through from the bedroom.  I had been expecting a girl, about Clarrie’s age, maybe blonde with a sweet and innocent shine to her.  Instead, I was looking at a giant of a man, stocky and solid, and about my own age.

“Just grab that stuff, will you?” Clarrie continued.  ”I’m going to get Uncle Laurie a drink.”

I watched as he obediently began to gather the spilled items before I grabbed Clarrie’s arm.  She slid back the wig with her free hand and looked up at me.  There was no anger, just confusion, in the gaze she gave me.

“What is it, Uncle Laurie?”

“Clarrie, how did Maggie let you do this?”

“Do you mean Jen?  His name is James Newton, middle name Edward.  I told her I was staying with a friend called Jen, so I got away from home, Mom got to think I’m partying with girls, you got to be out of prison and Jen and I get some time together.  No lies told, everyone’s happy.”

Without really knowing why, I found I was telling Clarrie everything about what had happened during the summer.  Jen listened too, plying me with drinks when the coffee mug in my hand was empty.  It seemed as though Clarrie was far older than me as I related the story and I realized by the time I’d finished that I was looking for her approval.  A strange thing to think that she was so much younger than me.

“Here’s what we’ll do, Uncle Laurie,” Clarrie said with a certainty that I envied.  No one in the months following that terrible summer day had formed a plan so quickly or so helpfully.  She was in her element now, and her dark eyes shone with an excitement that I could feel rubbing off on me.  ”Jen can get onto finding out about Chuck Harley, I’ll have to keep an eye on the police.  You should go back to Oklahoma.”

The excitement went.  It didn’t even fade, it just left me as she spoke the last six words.  ”I can’t go back,” I stammered.  ”That will only make me look more-”

“Like you’ve got something to prove,” Clarrie interrupted purposefully.

I shook my head and felt suddenly old.  What Clarrie was asking me to do was out of the question, but I didn’t know how to tell her.  When all she was trying to do was help my denial would only come across as ungratefulness.  And she had stuck by me, no one else had.

Clarrie was still talking.  I didn’t hear her words.  I was holding my head in my hands, and trying to solve the insane situation I found myself in.  Jen held out a full coffee cup and placed his hand on Clarrie’s shoulder.

“Clarrie, let him think over what you’re saying.  For tonight you should stay here,” he added turning to me.

Clarrie shook her head as though she despaired of us both before she walked out of the room and into the bedroom adjoining.

“She’s doing this all for you, you know,” Jen said softly, trying to keep his voice well down so that she wouldn’t hear.  ”Just hear her out, she’s been planning it for the last week.”

“How do you know Clarrie?” I asked, the blunt nature and tone of my question echoing in my ears.

Jen just looked at me.  He didn’t say anything, he just looked, his eyes reading each of my features and the thoughts that hid behind them.  His set mouth neither smiled nor frowned but betrayed nothing.  He was like a rock in his expressionless and there was something about him that frightened me, and yet reassured me.  It was as though I knew I couldn’t understand him and yet could trust him.  I lowered my head a little but kept my eyes on him.  Eventually he spoke.

“How well do you know Clarrie?”  He shook his head.  ”Did you know that she has been appearing in a string of performances for the last five months, an understudy to the stars?  Did you know that she considers her mother to be her greatest threat, and that she idolizes not the movie stars of the past or present, but her own grandmother?  Did you know that she’s been in a relationship with her agent for the past three months?”  He pointed to himself before adding, “And did you know that she is the greatest disguise artist I have ever seen?  She can be anyone.”

All the while he had been speaking I had felt my brow furrowing and my jaw dropping.  I didn’t know whether I was impressed or disgusted, but I was certainly shocked.  Jen just shrugged his shoulders.

“She wants to help you, she believes in your innocence, and she’s made a believer of me, too.  Just follow her plan.”

I felt threatened by his last four words and the tone in which he said them and I watched as he walked into the room he was sharing with Clarrie.  I don’t think he meant to have this effect, but my mind was racing and I set down the coffee cup, unsure that any more caffeine was a good thing.  Walking to the window I surveyed the tall rooftops and vanishing spires of Manhattan and thought back over the twists and turns that life had given me, formed me into like a potter with clay.  If I had known when those formative molding moves had been made what impact they would have now, I would have made so many different choices as the road forked.

I rebuked myself half-heartedly.  Idle dreaming was futile, but then, I realized, it was all I had left to cling onto.

By: Laurie

There was a pool of blood on the floor.  Not a continuous pouring stream like on that day in summer but enough to make me feel faint.  The incessant pounding that had woken me continued and I heard myself whimper in a pitiful manner as I hoisted myself upright on the hand basin.  Queasily I lifted my hand to my split lip and tried to piece together what had happened leading up to this situation, but I felt too dizzy and the constant hammering did nothing to help.

Finally a loud bang reached my ears and I became aware through snatches of words and things being moved that I was no longer alone in my apartment.  Panic is what I felt and to that end I cannot explain what thoughts passed through my head, nor can I truly remember them beyond being a frenzy of horrors and ideas.  I don’t know how long I knelt like that, one hand still on the wash basin, the only thing keeping me vertical, while the other held my bleeding mouth.  It felt both like eternity and a split second.

“He’s here,” a voice announced.  With my eyes closed, as they now were, it was impossible to discern whether the speaker was male or female, but there was a quality to the hostile tone that made me shiver.

“There’s blood all over,” replied a man, his voice unsure compared to the first.  “Shouldn’t we get a doctor?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, but the distorted, incoherent sound spoke of the lie itself.

“This is SC4,” the first voice began.  “Get me a medic, will you?”

I opened my eyes, more through curiosity than anything, but wished I had not when I saw two young men, the eldest about my age, looking down at me.  One was built like a house and looked like his muscles might burst through his pale blue shirt at any time.  He had a face that was full of obtuse angles and something hard about his features made me feel he was as obtuse in his mannerism as in his looks.  The other man was closer to my own build, neither stocky nor slim, only an average size and average in every description.  He seemed to find me as curious as I found him and it was he who knelt down to be on the same level as I was.  He made no effort to move forward but remained in the doorway.  I heard his stern voice speak my name and I nodded as though it was a question.

“We’d like to ask you some questions – are you able to answer?”

“There’s a doctor on the way.”  His friend was motionless and expressionless as he spoke.  “We’re officers from NYPD – I’d suggest you answer what questions you can.”

I nodded and tried to say something but I felt as though my mouth had been displaced and I no longer had any control over it.

“Here,” the first began and pulled the chair that was in the bedroom through to the en suite.  Shakily I moved over to it and sat down.  “I guess we’ll start with yes, no questions since you seem unable to speak.”

If the last three months had taught me anything it was that things, and more specifically people, are often not as they appear to be.  I had made an assumption from crime dramas and movie thrillers that the older, larger and brusquer man was in charge.  But over the period of time the three of us stood or sat there I realized that the younger man was clearly the senior officer.

“Are you familiar with the name Chuck Harley?”

I had begun nodding before he’d even finished saying his name.  I knew it could only be about him.  Ever since the day of his death all anyone seemed to want to talk about was Chuck Harley.  I wished I’d never even seen him.  That dead, distant figure was to color my future and shadow everything that happened to me.  Ten minutes, at most, I had spent in his company, but ten years would not, now, be enough to shake him away.

“And you talked with him?”

I nodded again.

“For any length of time?”

I shook my head.  “He collared me at the bar,” I mumbled but my own words sounded odd and I clutched my chin as it throbbed.

“Did he tell you why he’d gone back?”

I paused.  That was to be my error.  I shook my head.  Neither of the two officers said anything more for a time until a knock sounded at the door.

“Pete?  You want a doctor?”

“Through here,” the other, larger officer called.

I watched as an older man walked towards us, dressed in a paramedic’s uniform.  He looked at me with an equal portion of compassion and contempt, as though he felt sympathy, but knew at the time he should not.

What happened next was, and still is to this day, a blur.  I don’t remember how I got to the Emergency Room, but I was there.  I don’t remember the police officers coming either, but they were there and when they left, two more uniformed cops appeared.  As though I was in a movie I tried to plan my escape.  If one of them went it would be easy to slide out unseen amongst the other bustling and hurrying people in the hospital.  While both remained, the fire escape seemed the best option, but the doors were alarmed so I would either have to outrun them, which seemed unlikely, or else hide in the dumpster just outside…

But where would I go?  I had broken ties with my family and Lucy, who despite knowing for such a brief time I had shared everything with.  I had nowhere left to turn, no one I could trust.  And that was when it occurred to me.  I had been framed.  No, set-up, not because it was me, since no one cared that much about me in a negative or positive way, but so that they were no longer suspected.  It was a glorious setup.

These mad thoughts spun through my head much faster than I could focus on them, making me feel sick with the effort.  My hand reached over to the cord that hung by my bed before I corrected myself.  Staying calm was becoming increasingly difficult and I was relieved of the company when a middle aged man wearing a long white overcoat that identified him as a doctor, walked towards me.

“What am I doing here?” I whispered, the words sounding strange as though they were formed by a kid, not a man of twenty seven.

“What were you doing last night, Laurence?”

“What?”

“You know there is plenty of psych-”

“I don’t need a shrink,” I replied firmly, “besides, I can’t afford one.”  I rubbed my temples and sighed.  I had never understood why people did that but it made me feel calmer and ready to face whatever the doctor was going to say.

“Then you’re free to go.”  He flipped closed the file he held.

I didn’t feel free to go.  I was still lying on the hospital bed, unsure what had happened in the last twelve hours.  My mind flitted between fear and anger at an alarming speed so that my pounding head couldn’t keep up with it.  The police officers still stood outside, I couldn’t get past without them seeing me.  It was foolish, I realized, to even try it.

Reluctantly, I swung my legs from the bed as I rose to my feet.  There was no escape.  All my talk to Lucy about how I was in the right faded from mind and significance.  Those blue clad officers were waiting for me, I knew, and I couldn’t get by without them knowing.

I was right.  The moment I had changed into my own clothes and walked out there was one on either side of me.

“Would you come down to the precinct, sir?”

I wondered how much of the question was rhetorical and what the outcome would be if I answered yes.

“Am I being charged with something?” I replied, trying to clear my throat so that my words were audible.

“Not at this time, sir,” the other replied.

I went with them.  I had no choice.  I should have realized how it was going to end, but the law is a precarious thing and when an idea enters the heads of the enforcers, they are unstoppable.  All they wanted to know was information about Chuck Harley.  Who he had mentioned, if he had spoken about why he had returned.

I was honest with them, perhaps too honest, and before I had understood the gravity and importance of the circumstances I found I was sleeping in a cell with a bed, and a hand basin and staring at blank walls.  I didn’t think I’d been arrested, I might even have begged the officers to let me stay, for I had nothing to return to but it certainly did not make sense to me when I found myself at my own bail hearing faced with the prospect of imprisonment.  The crime: conspiracy to abduction, and to throw in further nonsense, suspicion of murder.  The city hall was almost entirely empty, as I believe it almost always is for such hearings, a handful of cops and even less press coverage.

Bail was granted on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and what there was being too circumstantial.  Words were being brandished that I had heard on television but never thought to be connected with myself.  I was shocked to find that the bail was posted, but infinitely more surprised that Neil’s wife, Maggie, had posted it.  I walked down the steps and into the foyer.  No one was there except for the officers that passed through and those behind the desk.  One of them, a large woman with a face that was a perfect circle, looked thoughtfully at me before saying, “She’s outside if you want to thank her.”

I nodded and trudged over to the door.  I was unsure I wanted to face Maggie and had to force my feet forward.  With my head lowered I stepped down the path and looked in surprise at the person who was waiting to meet me.  It was not Maggie, which made sense, but as she smiled up at me, I wondered what trouble she had laid before herself.

By: Laurie

I don’t remember walking back, only that the sun had set far beneath the city skyline by the time I reached my dull, cheerless apartment.  There was no moon.  The low, oppressive cloud matched my mood perfectly as I trudged up the stairs and slotted the key into the lock.  I was confused to find that the door swung open on the hinges, and instinctively I stood back.  My heart was pounding in my chest and the constant, rapid vibration made me feel sick.  It was seconds that I stood at the door, trying to decide whether I should walk in or call the cops.  The lights were on inside and something told me that anyone waiting to mug me would not leave the light on to warn me.  I kicked the door completely open and looked at the empty room before me.  Rushing over to the kitchen counter I picked up a large carving knife and felt the pounding in my chest double as I heard a noise from the bathroom.  God knows I didn’t want to use the knife.  I’d never killed anything with fewer than six legs before and, burglar or not, I had no intention of changing that now.  I only meant to look threatening and an equal opponent but now, as the door opened, the intruder screamed, as frightened to see me as I was her.

“God’s sake, Laurie,” Lucy began, her voice trembling and shrill.  I dropped the knife to the floor and rushed over to her, falling over myself to apologize.  She waved me away but did not say anything until we were seated together on the couch, her head on my shoulder and my face in her hair.

“Have you thought about summer at all, Laurie?”

“What about it?” I asked, truly unsure about what she meant and where this conversation might be headed.

In reply she traced the scar on my back through the casual t-shirt I was wearing.  It tingled and I shuddered without knowing why.  Lucy remained oblivious to it but sat patiently awaiting my answer.

“I try not to,” I muttered at last.

“Laurie, I have to talk to you about it.”

There was a note of desperation and fear in her voice that should have made me anxious, but after the events of the day, I felt immune to such things.  I stayed silent.  She took this as her cue to continue, which she did, her words falling on partially deaf ears.

“Do you remember I stayed at that big farmhouse where that officer’s family lived?”

“A-huh,” I said without thinking.

“Well, they rented out rooms there and I stayed in touch with one of the tenants.”

“Lucy,” I began, lifting her chin to look into her eyes.  I wanted to tell her to go, but I couldn’t.  Her big eyes in her round face dared me to refuse her and I lost the battle of wills.  “What was she called, Honey?”

“Sammy,” she replied, and that was when I finally noticed something was wrong.  Her face paled and flushed almost at the same second and without thinking about the consequences I rose to my feet and looked down at her, unsure what I saw before me.  It was as though my Lucy was gone suddenly, consumed by this external shell that was beyond my reach.  My analogy was too accurate, more so than I realised at the time.

“Well, we have stayed in touch and Sammy, knowing the gossip in the house, told me to warn you.”

“Warn me?” I hissed, sitting on the low coffee table.  “Warn me about what?”

“I’m sure it’s not true,” Lucy said.  “Only my father found the letter and he doesn’t think we should see each other anymore.”

I knew I should have seen this coming.  For three months we had hardly seen each other more than two times a week, yet now, as she sat before me, after the events of the day, I felt like my life was falling from me.  Lucy had streaked cheeks, but they were crocodile tears to my eyes.

“What’s it to do with your dad, or your friend?”

“It’s the police, Laurie.  Something to do with Chuck Harley.”

I winced at the man’s name.  I had striven to forget as much as I could about that horrendous day.  Now it was thrown back at me.  My Lucy no longer seemed mine as she uttered the name.  Whatever I knew of Chuck Harley it was not enough to arrest me on.  The man had tried to shoot me!  Lucy rose to her feet and I could sense her eyes on me, but my gaze was locked on a vision of Chuck Harley that my mind’s eye threw at me.  I was meant to look at her, she had planned for me to gaze up at her with begging eyes, but I couldn’t.

“I’ve nothing to worry about, Lucy,” I muttered with little conviction but a chilling numbness.  “It was the police who shot me.  Why does your Pop worry?”

“Just go and stay somewhere they won’t look for you, Laurie, I couldn’t bear to see you behind bars.”

“This is nonsense, Honey,” I began, changing my tone after acknowledging the look on her face.  “How did you find out about this?  Is your penpal an officer?”

“Laurie, I told you there are no secrets in Pamara.  He bunks with the cop’s family.”

“He?” I repeated.  I could tell by her eyes that I had picked up on the wrong part of the conversation.  Her eyelids half closed and her eyes turned heavenward.

“You need a lawyer, Laurie.  Have you got an attorney?”

“No,” came the whispered reply.  It was with confusion that I realised I was more concerned by her prolonged messaging with this man than the prospect of arrest.  “I’m innocent, Lucy,” I corrected myself.  “What can they hope to bring against me?”

“He didn’t say.”  She rose and looked down at the pitiful figure I knew I cut.  “I’m going, Baby.  Don’t run – they’ll just assume you’re more guilty than they already think you are.”

“I won’t run, Honey,” I promised her, standing, too, so I could hold her in to me.  I could feel each breath that she took and hear every beat of her pulse, which was alarmingly calm given the news she’d just given me.

“Well,” she whispered, pulling away from me.  “Goodbye, Laurie.  Take care of yourself.”

“Goodbye?” My numbness was now complete as I looked at her dry eyes.  My stupidity mystified me.  How had I not seen this coming?  My angel, Lucy, had not truly been mine since I ran into Chuck Harley.  I spluttered a laugh, I could not think of anything else to do or say.  Lucy looked at me as though I’d gone mad – and to her eyes I realised that perhaps I had.

“Laurie, I can’t stay with you.  My father-”

“Your father wasn’t the one who accepted my marriage proposal, you did.”  I could feel the numbness clear from me like the night melting into the day.  But my day was anger.  “Lucy, short of anyone dying I have just had the worse day possible.  Now, you top it off by telling me you’re leaving me because your dad might object to something I’m innocent of.”

“It’s not that straightforward.”  Lucy sighed.  “Let go of me, Laurie.”

I released her wrist and waited for her to explain whatever other crucial points she had still to mention, but instead she walked away from me and out of my small apartment.  In movies at this point the music stops in an attempt to make viewers feel the loss through their subconscious link from hearing to thoughts.  I didn’t get that silence, I got the whole crazy day played back through my head, several times faster than it had happened.  I kicked the door closed and waited for the hollow click of the latch catching.  I gave a long, drawn out sigh, not a self-pitying sigh, but one of relief.

Why was I relieved?  It’s impossible to say, for at that moment I did not know myself.  I had lost my angel, Lucy, my family had disowned me for the chaos I caused to their Thanksgiving and the police were apparently after me for a crime I not only did not commit but knew nothing about.  Yet this feeling still remained, this feeling that I had done the right thing at last.  But the more I considered it, the less sense it made until the relief faded and remorse became overbearing.  How wrong had my mother been about Thanksgiving?  It had not only given me nothing, this year it had robbed me.  I felt truly alone now.  There was nowhere to turn now for solace.

Night was all about me.  Shadows crept from blackened corners of my mind and pulled at my heart, trying to conquer it for its own morbid interest.  I felt intrigued by its constant nagging, unsure what it was going to drive me to do next,  would it be to reach for the bottle of blended whiskey that had remained untouched under the sink; would it be the full jar of aspirins in the bathroom cabinet; or the gas hob that had never looked so inviting before.  After all, as Tanya had pointed out, my mother had committed suicide, my role-model in so many ways.

I walked purposefully to the en-suite.

The face that looked back at me from the mirror on the cabinet door looked fearful.  The color was gone from his face to such an extent that his lips were almost blue.  Eyes that spilled tears stared back at me.  I couldn’t feel the streaking drops, nor the fear that made my usually square face seem gaunt.  All I could think about was the dysfunctional remains of my family.  That last day when my mother had taken Becca out, my father’s illness, my brother’s ability to drop family loyalties when it suited him, Lucy’s dismissal of me….

It all built up.

And when I looked up at the mirror it was not my eyes that looked back but the hooded, faded eyes of Chuck Harley and he smiled in a way that made me shudder.  I reached my hand up and watched as he did the same before I pulled open the cabinet, losing the image, and snatched the small tub of aspirin, about half full.  The fear I had seen in my reflection was now beginning to reach me.  I didn’t dare close the cabinet for fear that I might see the old man staring back at me.  I knew, or course, that it was my foolish imagination: Chuck Harley was dead.  To prove it to myself in a moment of brash bravery I flicked the cabinet closed.

Shamefully I almost screamed as I saw the ginger haired officer pulling the trigger on the gun he held pointing straight at my head.  And then I did scream.  It was not a high-pitched scream, nor a loud one, but it was the last thing I heard.

When I rose to my feet I knew there was something odd.  It wasn’t wrong, just different.  The light wasn’t on, sunlight, brilliantly white, filled the small en-suite.  I knew it was night, but I had a careless feeling, like whatever happened was there and happening for a purpose.

“Come on, Laurie,” a woman’s voice said impatiently.  I turned to the doorway, expecting perhaps to see Lucy, but the girl was younger than Lucy and had chestnut colored hair and a thinner face.  She looked less like a cherub and more like an angel.

“Becca?” I whispered, looking doubtfully through the door to what should have been the bedroom beyond.  All I could see was light.  Curiosity overcame me and I reached out to her.  “You’re alive.”

“Of course I am,” she retorted, but as I got closer to her I felt her hands around my neck and her fingers tightened, pushing down on my throat.  All the time she kept repeating, “Come on, Laurie.”

I didn’t feel afraid, nor do I remember feeling any pain at her hands, but instead I walked ever closer to the room beyond her and eventually she stood aside and allowed me into what should have been my bedroom.  I could hear a noise that was beyond my recognition, only that it made me feel young and intrinsically safe again.  I wanted to sing to it but dared not, knowing my voice was not up to such a beautiful sound.

Then there came a pounding, a hammering that was not only out of place but unwelcome, too.  The music went, the light went and worse of all, my kid sister, Becca, went too.

By: Laurie

As a month, November has a lot to offer Americans, and all of it is pinned upon a Thursday late on in that month.  From the earliest age at school and at home the importance of Thanksgiving had been plastered upon me.  I could still see my mother sitting beside me on the couch and explaining that it was fitting Thanksgiving should commence Christmas celebrations, for it was an example of the message of Christmas lived out in our lives.  My mother had been a special person, so solid in everything she did and believed, yet ultimately so fragile.

These thoughts, so far from celebratory, followed me and lingered in my mind as I walked through Cliffside Park.  The trees that occasionally rose from squares in the pavement were almost completely bare, their leafless skeletons an example of why this season was called the fall.  Decorations, some tasteful, some garish, lined the streets, daubing houses, draping from lampposts and some flashing over the road.  No one in the rest of the States did Thanksgiving and Christmas like those in New York City.  Sadly, I had become immune to it.  The festivities that clawed at my senses with flashing lights, blaring music and pungent smells of pumpkin pie and roasting fowl, they did nothing for me.  I walked on to 74th Street.

Hailing a cab here was often an easy affair but with the holidays many drivers were not working so I continued towards the Hudson river that marked the end of New Jersey and the beginning of New York.  My brother lived in Manhattan – where else?  He had made his money at a young age and was now enjoying living off its interest in the best style possible.  His children attended luxury schools allowing him and his wife to live the excitement of the high life.  When the children weren’t bundled into a classroom they had a nanny to look after them.  They saw my brother only a little more often that I did.

I was very much the poor relation at the Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a status I had become used to and even excelled at.  Furthermore, both my father and Neil seemed to equate my lack of status with a lack of intelligence, which had always resulted in me spending every family gathering with the children.

I continued to walk through New York City.  It is eternally surprising what journeys the subconscious lead you on.  I was unsure for a moment, not only where, but when, I was.  Someone began apologizing as I reached out my hand to one of the railings to steady myself.  All the events of that late summer day flooded back to me as I looked across at the man who had accidentally walked into me.  He was still apologizing.  His breath, rank with stale alcohol and tobacco, was warm on my face as he spoke, but I spluttered and waved him away.  He skulked off into the crowd and I pulled myself straight.  There was a sea of yellow on the bridge as the cabs New York is so famous for drove up and down it.  But there were barriers here that prevented me reaching them.  Below me the mighty, slender steel of the Hudson River wound, a murky color, reflecting the murkiness of the sky above.  Nothing seemed responsive in the world, like drone ants continuously going about their chores driven by a separate mind.  Yet there was a sense of foreboding in the skies, the clouds amassing for battle.  I joined the drones and walked into New York.

I lost myself in the grid formation of streets, wandering on towards Manhattan without really thinking about anything but expecting that my feet would eventually bring me to my brother’s door.  By the time I had arrived, the heavens had opened in a hail storm.  I stepped into the elevator and pressed for the ninth floor.  And waited.  Family reunions and events were incomplete without my mother and sister, but for the tradition of the day I went to my brother’s.  My mother would have wanted it, and on the chance that there was a heaven and she was looking down on me, I owed it to Mom.  I rang the bell to the apartment and waited.

The door was answered by a young lady with brown hair that fell straight down to her shoulders, where it stopped abruptly with a perfect line.  An immaculate fringe covered her forehead, directly below which were carefully shaped eyebrows and exceptionally made-up eyes.  It is a wonder to men that women should spend so much time painting and styling themselves, but the high cheeks of little Charlotte before me was an example of what an art it was.

“Uncle Laurie,” she exclaimed and kissed my cheek.  “We’d just about given up on you.”

“I’m getting old now, Charlie,” I replied, smiling.  “And I walked all the way this year.”

At one time I had seen my nieces regularly, but for the last few years I had seen them only at this annual Thanksgiving festival.  It was a regret I had and it was only set to deepen as the year drew to a close.  Charlotte helped me out of my soaked coat and took my frozen hand, leading me over to the living area.  The rest of the family were there except for Neil who, Charlie explained, was busy in the kitchen.  Charlie was a twin, an identical twin and her biological counterpart sat opposite where I stood.  Never could identical twins have looked more different.  Clarissa had the same shaped face as Charlie but there the similarities ended.  She had dyed black hair and a fringe so long it was impossible to see her eyes.  Her lips were painted in a brown lipstick and the fingers that held the book she was reading had black polished nails.  She was what I had always thought of as a geek, but Clarrie had a side to her that I suspected few people, even her father, ever saw.  She did not jump up to meet me, but cleared her books and magazines so I could sit next to her.

Their mother, Maggie, was sitting on a two-seater couch with Lyndsea, their other daughter.  Unlike every other member of Neil’s family, Lyndsea was an anxious person who seemed scared or nervous of everything.  Maggie smiled across at me and began talking whilst Lyndsea clung to her arm.

“So, Laurie,” Maggie began.  “How are you?  What about work?”

I felt like Maggie was forcing herself to be nice to me out of courtesy for the occasion.  She never communicated with me beyond Thanksgiving, but in honesty I would not have wanted her to.  We had little in common except Neil.

“Work’s fine, thanks,” I replied as politely as I could.  “It’s tedious, but it pays the rent.”  Maggie spared me a look that suggested she found the idea of me working unbelievable before I proceeded to change the subject.  “Where’s Dad?”

“Tanya’s gone to fetch him.  They should be here soon.”

A silence followed Maggie’s words as conversation so often did after Tanya’s name was mentioned.  It was not that my father’s second wife was not a good person, it was just that she wasn’t my Mom.  Unless you have been in that position it is impossible to understand.  I had arguments with Neil over it and at first I had argued with my father over it, too, but now it had become impossible.  My mother’s memory was sacred to me, but the only other person who seemed to feel the same was Clarrie, who revered her Grandmother enormously.  Maggie seemed to follow my thoughts and glanced disapprovingly at her twin daughter who I was seated beside.  The door opened and my father entered with Tanya who carried Megan, my half-sister.

Tanya was Maggie’s friend, that was how she had met my father.  By profession she was an undersecretary in one of the legal offices.  Together, she and Maggie looked like two blonde bombshells, covers of magazines, adverts for New York’s equality rights.  I disliked them both and, perhaps worse of all, I distrusted them both.  It is hard for me to describe to you my father.  The image of the man who entered through that door was not who my father was.  I could not see him as the frail figure with a walking stick, whose shoulders hunched forward in a gesture to block out the world that had done him such wrong.  I remembered too clearly how he had been before the Alzheimer’s disease kicked in two years ago.  His mind was broken now, shattered so that all the pieces were there but they had come together in the wrong order so that he would think Megan was my sister Becca, or that Neil was only at high school.  The worse thing was to hear him thinking Tanya was my mother and such confusion was often my cue to leave.

I could feel Clarrie’s eyes on me as all these thoughts ran through my head, while the others in the room rushed to meet the newcomers.  And it was not just the women.  Neil rushed through from the kitchen and ushered my father to his seat at the table.  Had I wanted to talk to my father it would have been impossible and I simply followed the rest of the crowd over to the table that had a name in each place.  The table was set out in alphabetical order so I found myself between Clarrie and Lyndsea.  Neither spoke during the meal and so I returned the silence.

At the end of the meal, Maggie, Tanya and the girls left the table, leaving Neil, me and our father sitting around the table of half empty plates.  This had become a customary part of Thanksgiving day, when the three of us were meant to reminisce about the past and smile about what had happened before.  Instead, I found it a nuisance.  Trying to talk to my father was something that brought me close to tears.  He couldn’t remember the past except through a faded, jaded, misty image and it was so distorted that those things that were really special to me withered in a pitiful way.  Neil was far more tolerant with our father and would laugh along at his ridiculous and fabricated stories.  I couldn’t.

“So, Pops,” Neil began, placing his elbows on the table in a purposeful manner.  “How’s the house?”

“It’s not like your mother would have had it.”

I felt myself visibly wince at the reference to my mother.  Neil frowned at me and I felt that my input in the conversation was now required in a more positive way.

“Do you remember that round the States trip we did, Pops?” I ventured feeling I was letting myself into a huge amount of emotional turmoil, but in what way I couldn’t have imagined.  As my father and brother simultaneously nodded, I continued.  “Well, me and Lucy took that same route in summer.  It’s changed so much, it’s crazy.”

“Caroline?”

I glanced across at Neil as our father spoke our mother’s name.

“She was a pretty girl…”  His voice trailed off as he looked beyond the table into the colorful past, both precious and painful.  Neil stiffened and, seeing that I was making no effort to ease the situation, began talking, changing the subject in a definite way.

“How’s the new home?”

But my father wouldn’t be swayed, and in his state of mind the pointed change of topic had not happened.  Instead he somehow found a link between the two and said flatly, “Caroline would never have left me in such a place.”

I couldn’t help the amused and snide glimmer in my eye, Lord knows I wish now I had, as Tanya walked in, in time to hear Pops’ words.  Her face dropped visibly, the heavy make-up appearing to melt away.

“Be fair, Honey,” she said, her voice little more that a whisper that made me shiver.  “You weren’t like this when she was alive.”

I sat back and listened as the three of them spoke at once.  I was no longer a part of their discussions, a solitary bystander on the chaos I had caused.

“Like what?” my father demanded.

“It’s a great home,” Neil ventured.

“She wasn’t a saint, you know,” Tanya hissed.  “If she hadn’t killed herself and her daughter, you might never have wound up like this.  And I’d bet the selfish bitch would have ditched you the same again.”

“You’ve gone way too far,” I said firmly, rising to my feet.  My father sat silent with tears brimming in his faded eyes while Neil studied the table, more unwilling than unable to talk.  “My mother was not selfish and she would have devoted herself to tending Pops, because she loved him.  Not like you, you money grabbing slut.  It must be a huge disappointment that his savings pay for his home.”

“You’re out of line Laurie,” Neil said firmly.  “It’s Thanksgiving, guys.  Can’t we just pretend to get along?”

“Not with someone who calls Mom a bitch,” I said defiantly and walked from the room and the apartment.

I didn’t get an invite to Thanksgiving again.  Not that I could have accepted even if I’d wanted to, since Thanksgiving day, and shortly every other day, was not to be my own.  None of the family maintained correspondence either, or even talked to me.  Except Clarrie.  She followed me to the door and took my sleeve.

“I remember Grandma,” she said softly.  “And she was far less selfish than Tanya.  Take care, Uncle Laurie.”

I couldn’t find the words I wanted to speak, but it didn’t matter.  Clarrie had shut the door and walked back into the apartment.

By: Laurie

Within another week I had discharged myself from the hospital, feeling that it was unfair on my angel, Lucy, to remain any longer than was vital.  I met several people in the town, but their names faded from my head, although some faces stayed to haunt me, not least the ginger haired, trigger-happy cop who I had to thank for my extended vacation.  Lucy did not seem as eager to leave as I had hoped she would, but as we drove on towards the coast she began to liven up.  It was a longer journey than it should have been as comfort had become harder to achieve.

It was with relief that we finally reached New Jersey, eight days later.  We pulled up outside her house and I sat for a moment, looking up the bank of grass upon which it stood.  Lucy looked across at me, but said nothing, waiting for me to break the uncomfortable silence.  I tried to find something to say to her but words had never been a strong area for me and eventually I whispered,

“I’ll get your bags.”

The trunk was full of Lucy’s things.  Her original luggage had been added to from various different states, most especially California which is viewed with an even proportion of envy and contempt by we Easterners.  We made two runs up to her house before all the bags were there, and I found myself on the penultimate step looking longingly at the house beyond Lucy, who now stood facing me.

“Thank you for returning me safely,” Lucy began, sounding like she was addressing a stranger rather than her fiancé.  “I’ll see you soon, Laurie.”  She kissed my cheek gently before stepping into the house.  The warm, friendly light of the room beyond vanished as she shut the door and I stood, shell-shocked, staring at the PVC door.  She hadn’t invited me in.  She hadn’t even committed to seeing me again only made a casual remark that made me feel like I was dangling by a thread.  My stupefied foolishness was being observed by the house’s inhabitants, for I could see the curtains twitching.

I was in a daze by the time I had descended the fifteen steps down from the house to the road.  I ducked into the car and turned the key in the ignition.  The engine started easily with a gentle purr like a cat.  I hardly heard it.  The feeling of déjà vu is something I had never believed in, a practice associated with an element of the occult.  Now, though, my memory played games with me.  I could smell the heated leather and then blood.  Perhaps it is difficult to explain what blood smells like but without words to describe it blood smells only of panic and horror.  It was that fear of being trapped that returned and, sitting in my car, I could feel the metal bodywork pushing against me and my breathing felt laboured and again and again I heard that gunshot.

I wound the window down with a push of a button and reality hit me with the warm wind.  I was never going to escape that scene in the parking lot, but to what extent I could never imagine.  I moved out into the stream of traffic that was minimal at such an hour.  The nights were beginning to draw in now and the car headlights both dazzled and focused me.  And so, seven weeks after leaving my apartment in Cliffside Park, I found myself pulling up outside the flats and staring blanking into space.  I shifted on the seat trying to get comfortable before realising that it would be much better to go inside and lie down on my own couch.  In comparison to Lucy’s extensive luggage mine was nothing.  I had saved and saved to afford the around the states trip that spending money was an unobtainable luxury.  I trudged over to the elevator, feeling the stairs were too much work for my burning chest.  My fourth floor apartment had been my home for eight years and although I had seen some tough, unfair times in it, it had never seemed so empty and desolate.  Or perhaps it was just me and my mood rubbing off on it.  There were only two rooms, a large living area with a kitchen down one wall, and a bedroom that had an en-suite.  It had served me well as a person who rarely had friends around but had been awkward when my dad stayed.

I dropped my bags and kicked the door closed behind me.  I waited until I heard the latch catch before walking to the sofa and dropping myself down onto it.  Silence surrounded me.  Outside there was an occasional whirr as a truck trawled along the road but inside the building was calm.  It gave me a window in the wall of frantic events to consider what had happened.  But my mind could not take it all in.  Instead I sat, in the dark, and numbly allowed the night to engulf me.  All I could think about was how I should have been back at work last week, I thought, although I couldn’t even be sure what day of the week it was.  The small LED light on the phone was erratically flashing, telling me I had messages on my answer machine but I felt too exhausted even to listen to them and too confused and fragile to deal with any more bad news.  I pulled my feet up onto the couch and closed my eyes.

I dreamed.  I know I dreamed but when I was pulled from sleep I couldn’t recall what my dreams were, only that they had left me in a peculiar limbo, and when I awoke so suddenly I found myself staring at a low coffee table and television in a neutrally painted room.  Sunlight was pouring through the vertical blinds, that were tilted open and there was an odd smell like sweet pickle; the smell places that are left empty for a time so often take on.  The phone, that had clawed me from sleep, still rang but I felt too confused to register it in my weary head.  It stopped ringing as the answer phone automatically picked it up.

It is a scary feeling to wake up in a place and not know where you are, as I had found in my hospital room after being shot.  But it is even worse when this happens, only later to discover that you not only know it, but it is your home.  It was not until I looked at the four pictures that sat on the television that I realised.  One was of Lucy.  She was smiling, grinning so wide it split her face in two.  Her blue eyes, perfectly placed in her round, rosy face followed wherever I moved, laughing playfully all the time.  Another photo was of my brother’s small family.  Neil was eleven years my senior, and as such he had always been a distant figure to me.  A role model in so many ways but also a shadow to live in.  At the young age of twenty-four he had become a father to twin girls and then again when he was thirty-one and little Lyndsea was born.  The other two pictures were of my dad’s two families.  One was us.  Me, Neil and my kid sister, Becca, with our Mum and Dad on a family holiday in Orlando.  I could still remember it being taken by a Canadian woman who was holidaying too.  The other was newer, of the woman my father had married after my mother’s death taken on the day of my half-sister Megan’s birth.  These photos define who I am, and without them being there I might still be on that couch, afraid to move and unsure, not only of where I was but who I was, too.

The room was silent again.  There was noise from the landing outside my apartment, footsteps, a dog barking, someone shouting to someone higher up the building but none of it really touched me.  They came and went and were replaced by several other meaningless sounds as seconds ticked to minutes.  I wasn’t lost in thoughts, I wasn’t even thinking.  My mind was completely clear, like someone on the verge of a trance.  I was hypnotizing myself.  All the fear and pain of the last few weeks were melting and for a second I reached euphoria, a perfect happiness.  Until the phone rang again.  It only rang once, as loud as a horn in the small apartment and it caused me to jump.

Reluctantly, I rose and pressed the dial to play back the messages.  The first one was from my father.  His voice was cracking and sounded far older than his fifty-nine years would credit him.

“You there, Laurence?” the voice asked.  He was the only person in the world who called me by my proper name, yet it never sounded wrong.  “I’ve called three times, already.  Where are you?”

I smiled to myself as the tone sounded to announce the end of the message.  How could I answer him if I wasn’t there?  The smile slipped as I reminded myself that three years ago he would never have made that mistake.  A moment later a second message played.

“Sorry, Laurence.  I’ve just spoken to Neil and he told me you’d gone on vacation.”

I didn’t wait to listen to the rest but walked over to the bedroom.  The rest of the day was spent refamiliarizing myself with my life back in New Jersey.  It is a strange but accurate assessment of the near schizophrenic nature of human beings that we are so similar to a chameleon but that, instead of changing colours, we change our personalities to who is around us and the social position we find ourselves in.  Here, in the edge of the great city of New York, I was a very different person to the go-lucky, naïve soul I had been on my tour.  I was not only a fiancé, I was a brother, an uncle and an often neglectful son.  My apartment in Cliffside Park had been my home for a number of years now, and from here I lived out my dreary existence.

This existence continued on in its weary way as summer collapsed into the fall.  When the leaves in the city parks turn, all the shops become a mass of Holiday gift and sparkle and this year would prove to be no exception.  I did not stop myself from being swept along with the tinsel and glitter of Santa Claus, Rudolf and all the other cast of the commercial Christmas and I did not even stop to consider the other side of Christmas.  My mother had instilled strong Christian values in us but my faith in that had died along with her.

The morning of November 27th seemed very similar to how the morning of the 26th had done.  There was a smell of wood smoke coming from somewhere but I didn’t spare it a second thought as I wandered down to 74th Street.  I was nervous, as my father always made me but I was quietly happy and optimistic.  Today was Thanksgiving.  I’d been invited to Neil’s for a few days to celebrate and wasn’t expected back at work until Monday.  I had cause to smile, so I did.  Only, it was all set to go wrong as fate dealt another blow to me.  And such blows are always worse when you’re not set for them.

By: Laurie

Perhaps that was because I was not dead.  Perhaps such visions are reserved for those who are about to enter heaven, whatever one perceives such a place to be.  Waking from a state of comatose is a peculiar feeling, one that has on occasion been described as similar to being born.  I could not remember being born, nor, I suspected, could those that made such statements, but to me waking out of such a condition was as frightening as being put into it.

The first thing to register to my head, that felt hollow and bruised, was the continuous droning whirr of electric equipment.  For several minutes all I could do was lie still and try to remember what caused such noises.  It was as if my memory had been completely scraped away and I was left trying to re-identify things.  Maybe this was why they say it is like being born.  Only here, images formed in my mind.  I could remember, gradually, the purring sound made by a computer on standby and from that I concurred that electrical equipment surrounded me.

If lying partially conscious with my eyes closed had been confusing, how much more so was it to open my eyes.  At first, a peculiar spinning of light was all I could see.  Shadows, blurred and distorted in my vision, drifted aimlessly across the sea of white light until I felt overcome with a sense of vertigo and I pressed my eyes tightly closed again, anxious to be free of the constant motion.  The light went, but now all I could see was clouds of light floating over a tar colored background and the stomach clenching sickness of instability remained with me.  For a time I remained in this limbo, desperate to open my eyes but fearful that the world would spin only faster, round and round.  The sickness made me tired, too, and it was not until I had fallen asleep and re-awoken that I dared to try and open my eyes again.

Now, someone was in the room with me.  I could hear footfalls as loud as thunder and whoever it was made a murmuring sound as though they were talking, or perhaps singing, to themselves.  It sounded like a woman and for the first time my thoughts flashed to Lucy.  Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and was greeted by the dancing shadows which eventually solidified into shapes.  It was a woman.  She stood over me now and upon seeing my eyes open she simply smiled.  Her smile, whilst trying to fill me with reassurance only made me more uneasy for there was a quality of pity that I could not understand.  The smile was replaced by a neutral expression upon a face that was sombre and long, or maybe it only looked long from the angle I beheld her at.  She looked down at me only once more before leaving me to stare blankly up at the ceiling.

Strangely, what I felt beyond pain or confusion was a selfish disappointment.  To wake up to an empty room where no one had visited to check my progress with no cards or flowers made me feel unloved and unappreciated.  It did not occur to me that I was miles from my home and family and that only Lucy knew I was in Oklahoma.  But where was Lucy?  I was completely alone but for the machinery that ran tubes to my body.

The door opened.  I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it and a man twice my age walked over and sat down on a chair by the bed.  I forced my head to drop so I could see him.  He looked a little familiar, I could recall a brown, rusted truck with his face peeping round.

“Well-a, well-a” he began.  “I was beginning to think you might have gone the same way as old Chuck.”

His light eyes looked across thoughtfully at me as he rubbed a fat index finger backwards and forwards under his nose and over his moustache.  It was a copper ginger, the same as the receding hair on his head.

“Chuck?” I tried to ask, but the word was mute on my lips.

“Chuck Harley,” the man continued, evidently having picked up what I had failed to make audible.  “The old man you were with.  State of Oklahoma’s been after him for twelve years now.  Not be a problem now, though.”

I hardly dared to ask what his last comment meant so my sudden dumbness became a benefit to me.  All I could remember of the old man, who I could vaguely now recall being called Chuck by the voice over the megaphone in the parking lot, was him talking in riddles and his insistence that whatever he was seeking was down by the river.  I could remember the peculiar look on his face, too.  Was it pleading, or a sense of relief in having shared the information?  Whichever one it had been there had been a desperation to impart the information to me.  The man before me casually unwrapped a stick of gum and carefully knotted the wrapper before throwing it beyond my sight to where I assumed there was a bin.

“Ah, indeed,” he continued, taking my inability to talk as an invitation to fill the silence.  “It’s not every day you get the chance to bring down a kidnapper and a murderer.  It sure is a good thing that barman recognised the old man.  I’ve been after him these twelve years.  See I put him away, son, on my first case.  Then when he escaped I’ve been looking for him all that time.  Yer understand, don’t yer?”  Here he paused, looking down at me and his light eyes sparkled.  I returned his expression with one of my own, a blank one, unable to offer more and unsure what I should be offering if I could.  “After twelve years looking for him I couldn’t let him vanish in that posh car of yers.  I had to take that shot.  I’m right sorry yer were there, though.”

And then I realised what had happened.  As he continued to talk, in my mind the whole equation suddenly added up.  It was like one of those little metal puzzles where, having pulled things apart it became a difficulty to rejoin them.  Force was ineffective but his words just made my memory slip back into place..  There had been a gun shot.  I had thought it had come from the old man’s gun but now, as the aging officer beside me explained, he had shot Chuck Harley, but from such a short range and with such a powerful gun the bullet had passed straight through Mr Harley’s chest and into mine.  I was spared none of the detail and learnt that it had killed Chuck instantly as it passed through his heart while I had been lucky that the bullet had been on the right side of my chest.  Luck was not how I saw it.  His words brought back the terrible feel of the man’s corpse on top of me and his and my blood dripping over my body, seeping through my clothes and running into my car.  The memory made me feel unbearably sick and breathing suddenly felt painful.  I can’t describe what happened next only that it was similar to falling in a dream, when you take a run up and simply glide through the air before that frightening feeling that you are falling reaches you, and you try everything to break your fall but the ground looms larger beneath you…

I was lost, then, to an echo of noises and voices, some real, some memories and some that felt like my conscience was talking to me.  Every time I woke up the same officer was there as though he thought that now Chuck Harley was dead there was nothing else for him to do.  Perhaps his conscience was addressing him, too, and he was not only sorry but felt guilty for my current position.  It was a further three days before I began talking again and that was prompted by the arrival to my bedside of someone I desperately wanted to speak to.  My hours of consciousness were becoming increasingly longer now and the pain, though severe when it struck, was not so intense.  My sleep, too, was improving and no longer did I find myself in haunting nightmares, and I could be awoken easily from it.

“I’m sorry I’ve not been before,” someone said, close at hand.  It was a voice like birdsong, fragile and penetrating and I knew at once who the speaker was.

“Lucy?” I ventured, opening my eyes to look across at her.  The sound of my voice was peculiar to my own ears.  It sounded hoarse and strained but at least I had spoken aloud.

“By God!” Lucy exclaimed.  “I thought you were asleep, Laurie.”

Her blue eyes shone as she spoke and I took a time simply to look at her.  She had perfect ringlets falling down the sides of her face that blushed slightly as she realised I was scrutinising her in such a fashion.  Her hair was fair and had been bleached to a beautiful blonde by our excursion which had taken us all the way down to Texas.  We had been passing through Oklahoma on our way back north.  There was a strain upon Lucy’s round face now that confused me.  She tried to straighten her pink painted lips but the creases remained in her brow.

“What is it?” I murmured, awaiting her response as though it was a life sentence.

“What is it?  Laurie, you’ve been in hospital a week now, you’ve got an enormous hole in your back from where some stupid cop shot you -”

It was not a condemnation of character she proceeded to reel off, but one of person.  I felt only more helpless as she continued and tears welled in my eyes.  It was no secret to anyone – least of all myself – that I was a coward at heart, and here Lucy sat telling me all the reasons such an attitude was justified.

“I think you should sue him,” Lucy declared and as I looked at her I wondered what part of the conversation I had missed.  She looked at me as she finished talking and frowned again.  “That’s why he’s been here every day, you know, to try and soften you up.”

Whatever sweet nineteenth century impression my Lucy gave off by her appearance was strongly opposed by her aggressive and compensatory ideals of justice.  At times she would play judge in too many cases and here again I felt her fiery attitude unnecessary and uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to sue anyone,” I sighed, tilting my face away from her.

“That’s -” She stopped as though she thought better of her words.  “Well, you’ll be up again in no time.  I’ll drive us back to New Jersey if you don’t feel up to it.”

“No, I feel just fine to drive,” I snapped across at her.  I regretted it the moment I had done it.  For an instant those soft, round features became dark and stormy in a flash of anger before her eyes ceased to narrow and instead bulged with tears.  They spilled from her eyes without a sound and I turned away, too proud to apologise but too sorry to speak.  I wasn’t sure, in my mind, what gave her the right to cry.  After all, I was the one who had been shot, but I couldn’t forgive myself for being so harsh towards her, despite what events might follow.

“I have been left alone, Laurie,” Lucy whispered between sobs.  “At least here you are cared for.”

Her words were not what I’d wanted to hear from her but they did make my own selfish thoughts occur to me, like a revelation.  An unwelcome revelation.

Feeling only a little righteous, but too much so to apologise, I asked softly, “Where have you been staying, Lucy?”

“In a farm house with a family. “  She adjusted her hair and dabbed her cheeks and eyes with a tissue.  “They rent out their spare rooms anyway.  Their cousin is the police guy who – well,” she fumbled for words, taking on a new tactful side I had never known before.  “Everyone is related to everyone else, here.  You have to be so careful what you say.”

I offered her a meek smile, glad that she seemed to have accepted my encrypted apology.  Poor Lucy was used to me.  She sighed and rose to her feet, sparing a weary smile that spoke far stronger than words in telling me that she knew exactly what I was thinking.  I hated myself for it, but it was not about to change.

“Well, I should go,” Lucy said in her soft voice.  “Get well soon, Laurie, I want to go home.”

“I’ll try,” I promised.  She leant over and kissed my forehead before leaving without another word.

There was no wonder she missed home.  Even I, with my nomadic wander lust, would rather have never left New Jersey than endured what was now pushed on me.  And all I had left was an apartment and a city of memories, Lucy had left behind all the comforts of a rich home pampering.  Her father was a lawyer and the family home reflected his enormous pay package as well as any mirror could reflect the viewer.  Lucy was not used to leaving it rough and, in truth, I’d been amazed when she asked to come with me.  She had come to me at a perfect time, following a tragedy I could not otherwise have conquered.  She had become an angel for me, but angels can have many purposes and not all of them instantly favorable to mankind.