Return from the Apocalypse Page 6

  “I’d like to hit the trail as soon as I can,” Roger says. “I don’t want to burden you any more than I already have.”

  Jodi is frank with her appraisal. “You aren’t going far in your condition. I’ve seen piñatas in better shape than you.” Jodi turns somber. “We’re happy to have you stay in Secret Glen and help you recover, both physically and mentally.”

  “Don’t forget spiritually,” Calluna says.

  “I appreciate that,” Roger says. And I want to contribute, like you mentioned before. What do you need?”

  “I’ll tell you what we don’t need,” Jodi says. “We don’t need some man to go around killing things and lifting heavy weights.” She eyes Roger. “Not that you would be in shape for that anyway.”

  “We don’t need anyone to take care of us,” Calluna says.

  “Quite the opposite,” Roger says.

  Jodi muses. “Hmmm. What can you do?”

  “I can split wood.”

  “So can we,” says Calluna.

  “You could split wood,” says Jodi. “Prior to your current state.”

  “Would it be simpler to tell me what you do need?” Roger suggests as politely as possible.

  Jodi purses her lips and stares at him intently for a few long moments. Roger worries he has insulted his providential caretaker.

  “Give me your hand,” she says, taking it into hers without waiting for approval. Her hands, though rough-skinned, have a fine quality to them, with long fingers and a graceful grasp. “I’ve got it.”

  Roger is acutely aware of Calluna and Chelsey Dee watching.

  “Write us a poem.” Jodi releases his hand and smiles around the table. “Yes, that’ll do.”

  Chapter 11: Vision

  Rivulets of water gleam in the sun as they run from the spring down to the ambiguity of the marsh below. Where the rivulets meet the marsh, a blue tin cup hangs from a forked stick stuck into the ground, waiting to be taken and scooped into the cold-fresh water. A few feet up the slope Roger sits in an Adirondack chair staring at a worn notepad. He rolls the stub of a pencil between his finger and thumb, hoping the right words will somehow find their way to its tip and be transcribed to the pale green lined paper. It is his payment, after all, to compose a poem worthy of the care he has received.

  And the care has been worthy; three days in Secret Glen has faded his bruises and sealed his cuts; Jodi’s oils and tinctures have eased his aches and relaxed his muscles. Yet his mind is not yet healed, and its inability to create is made evident by the empty lines of the notepaper.

  Of course, if Jodi would stop checking in quite so often it would help; every half hour or so she wanders by to check on his progress and make astute observations, whether it be the current temperature, direction of the breeze or a commentary on just how well he is coming along under her expert care. All nice things, of course, but hardly conducive to the creation of a poem intended as payment of such a debt.

  Calluna is more elusive, but she still makes her appearances, like now, weaving through the firmer spots of the marsh, heading back to the glen.

  Roger watches her feet step knowingly on the tufts and exposed roots that wend a walkable route through the muck. Her pace is steady and sure, a hemp sack strapped across her shoulders.

  “Hullo!” Jodi’s voice trumpets from behind Roger, causing his muscles to contract in surprise. “Good haul?” She calls out to Calluna, who is still several yards out.

  “Yes, Jodi.” Calluna answers just loud enough to be heard. A few more steps and a hop over the spring and she is flaunting the assortment of mushrooms brimming in her sack. “Hope you like mushrooms,” she says to Roger.

  “Calluna’s an expert mushroom hunter. Truffle hunter!” Jodi caws. “She knows how to find them.” Jodi presses her palm against the sack. “Meat for the stomach.”

  “Truffle hunter? I prefer mycologist,” Calluna says, narrowing her eyes in partial jest.

  “Putting on airs?” Jodi bellows a laugh. “I’m the one who went to college.”

  “I studied abroad.” A twinkle appears in Calluna’s eye. “At the university of the enlightened flower children.”

  “I went to Florida State,” Jodi says, her chin lifting slightly.

  “Did you finish your degree?” Calluna asks.

  Jodi ignores this question and focuses back on the sack of mushrooms. “I see a nice fat portabella peeking out. That’ll be delicious sliced up and sautéed with those wild leeks I dug up yesterday.” Jodi gives Roger a sly look. “You like the sound of that?”

  Jodi nudges Roger. “How’s that poem coming? I can’t wait to read it. Just think, Calluna, a poem for us that no one else has ever read before.”

  “It’s coming,” Roger says. “I think.”

  “Case of the writer’s block?” Jodi says, with a hint of anxiety.

  “You need to expand your mind.” Calluna chuckles and glances at her bag. “I might have something for that.”

  “Vision quest.” Jodi says matter-of-factly. “We need a vision quest.” She looks toward the tee-pee Roger has yet to enter. “Tonight.”

  “After dinner,” Calluna clarifies.

  “You’ll find the poem, then.”

  “And maybe more.”

  Jodi snaps her head and looks up the slope. “Is that Chickadee?” she says, and then, much louder, “Chickadee! Chickadee-dee-dee!” Jodi turns to Roger. “She’s a sweet girl, my Chickadee.” Jodi calls out, “Chickadee, you get my dandelions?”

  Chickadee did get her dandelions. Just enough, according to Jodi, or at least for now. The last hours of day slip away as Roger wallows in poetic futility. I’m not a poet, he thinks, that’s just a dumb idea I had once. I’m really not much of anything. But still, it’s strange that’s what she wanted. Thoughts of fate and destiny cross Roger’s mind, but he quickly shoots them down. Coincidence.

  Here comes Dixie, panting along his side after a day following Chelsey Dee on her woodland errands. “Am I a coincidence, too?” she seems to ask.

  Yes, but that doesn’t make it unimportant.

  “Chickadee!” Jodi shouts. “Vision quest tonight. Join us, won’t you?

  “Not for me,” says Chelsey.

  “No fun,” says Jodi, still smiling. “How about you, yellow dog?”

  Dixie shakes her head, eyes turning up to Chelsey, as if to say “I’ll stick with her.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  Flames crackle in the midst of the circle, in Jodi’s eyes, on Calluna’s face. The three sit cross-legged around the fire, and Roger can feel the canvas of the tee-pee wall against his neck. Already his mind wants to float up with the twisting smoke and into the starry sky. Jodi sips her dandelion wine, looking through the golden liquid to the fire behind it. Last year’s vintage; Roger aided in the brewing of this year’s batch.

  Calluna takes a small leather satchel and leans over to Roger, placing a handful of dried mushrooms from her dandelion-stained hand to his. Roger has had quite a bit of dandelion wine at the prodding of Jodi— he needed less urging as the night went on. By the time he crawled into the tee-pee he was quite light in the head.

  Calluna chews her handful and nods to Roger to follow suit. They taste terrible, but Roger forces them down.

  Now what.

  “Just look at the flames,” Jodi says.

  She can’t read my mind, can she? No, she is just Jodi talking. Roger stares at the fire. Seconds, minutes pass. He tries to think of a grand poem, but all he can think about is Esther. Instead of her face he sees Vane’s drawing of her. Even that seems so long ago.

  The fire seems brighter, more orange. No, Roger thinks, I just feel tired. Tired and hopeless, but also glad to be here in a strange way. The companionship of Jodi and Calluna has been comforting, even in this short time. Secret Glen was a refuge from the madness of the world surrounding it.

  “Esther,” Jodi says.

  Roger focuses on Jodi’s face. Her eyelashes bat lazily.

  “Esther.”<
br />
  “Why are you saying her name? How do you know?”

  Jodi shrieks with laughter, eyes lit with firelight, “Esther!” She cries out.

  “Stop it.”

  Jodi leans in over the fire, her face drifting into the lazy, steady smoke. “Esther!” And laugher, side-holding laughter. She cannot control herself, laughing harder and harder.

  “Stop it, Jodi!” Roger erupts. “Stop saying her name!”

  “Roger,” Calluna says, “You’re the one saying it.”

  “Over and over,” Jodi says, gasping for breath. “Ha!” And then, “Is that the title of your poem?” Her eyes shine keenly. “Because my name is Jodi.”

  Roger eases back. “I’m saying her name?”

  Calluna is calm. “Let’s focus ourselves.” She glances toward Jodi. “Right?”

  Jodi is already meditating, eyes closed, chin tilted upward, humming softly. And so is Calluna, in harmony, and Roger hears Esther’s name and sees the face of Vane’s drawing, and it animates, becoming Esther’s true face. And there is a boy and he is hiding and Roger knows his face too, from somewhere, a basement in Ashland, a kid in costume jewelry and frosty rags. And the fire is warm and bright, and getting hotter and drier until it is the sun, burning down on a Texas wasteland, and oh, how Roger wants to never go there again. But there is that burning, distorted sun over Esther, and the boy in the desert and there is a shadow and it is a face under a white hat, a white hat seen from the back and it is turning and it is not the White Texan, it is not the White Texan, it is her, it is her and she is determined and cold, and enjoying something in a way that only the dead souls can enjoy and her shadow is over Esther, yes, Esther, and there is her face, pleading, seeing Roger, calling out to him, here I am, here we are, this is me, we are here, I am your wife, still, I am her, and he is your son, your son, your son…

  Roger writhes on the ground, kicking up leaves and biting a stick, Calluna is over him, outside the tee-pee in the night air, speaking to him, calming him. Jodi is there, too, but she is laughing, and she cannot stop.

  Roger convulses and vomits up a slurry of dandelion wine and mushroom bits.

  “Is that what you came up with for my poem?” Jodi asks, in between gasps.

  Chapter 12: The Chieftain

  “We need to stop meeting like this. It’s turning into a cliché.” Roger stares up at Dixie and Chelsey Dee, on his back again in his little lean-to of branches and moss.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Chelsey Dee says.

  “I’m feeling fine. Thanks for asking.” Roger stumbles to his feet, but maybe he is not so fine. A throbbing headache and echoes of nausea suggest otherwise. Inside the cabin Jodi and Calluna are already seated at the table, bright as flowers.

  “Sautéed mushrooms with your eggs?” Jodi’s tongue flicks the side of her mouth, which is arched in a devious smile.

  The breakfast is reviving, along with a healthy mug of Jodi’s herbal tea, and the conversation is light, with several jokes at Roger’s expense.

  Jodi licks her plate clean and pushes back in her chair, arms folded. “Well Roger, I think our work is done.”

  “Yes,” Roger agrees. “Thank you, both.”

  “What now, Roger?” Calluna asks.

  “I need to find my wife. And to do that, I need to find the Pony Express. And not just anyone, but someone who can tell me what happened, one way or another.” Though revived, Roger is feeling grim and determined.

  “We can heal what ails you,” Jodi says. “And take you into yourself,” Calluna adds.

  “But you can’t help me with this.”

  “Matters of the Pony Express are well outside Secret Glen,” Jodi says.

  The silence comes and lingers. Roger wonders if he should stand up and make his exit now, without further ado. If only he knew where he was going. Of course, there was always Chelsey Dee...

  “Back on the trail, you mentioned your father had connections,” Roger says to her. “Can you take me to him? I don’t know where else to begin.”

  “I can.” Chickadee has been sitting on the bunk, Dixie at her feet, listening throughout breakfast. She has not spoken herself, as is the usual. Her face, though never smiling, is even more serious. “But I can’t promise it’ll work out the way you want.”

  Jodi nods, also serious. “Aye.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Roger says.

  “He’s a Roughie chieftain. He didn’t get there by being soft.” Chelsey Dee scratches Dixie’s head absently.

  “Take me to him.”

  Chelsey keeps scratching Dixie as she talks. “Roughies are cutthroat, when they want to be, when we need to be. He’s my father, but like I said, I can’t make any promises as to how it’ll work out for you.”

  “I don’t need promises.”

  Chelsey’s hand rests on Dixie’s shoulder blades. “Alright then.”

  {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  Weeds aggressively grow up through the rutted driveway leading down from the old dirt road that meanders through what was nowhere and still is.

  “He likes to talk,” were Chelsey Dee’s last words to Roger before he passed under the overhead door of the pole barn. “Let him.”

  Although crowded with engines on blocks, tools, and chests containing more tools, the interior is orderly. Her father sits on a shop stool, exhaling smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette tucked casually between two fingers. Tobacco cut with some other herbs, judging by the sweetness of the scent.

  Roger stands quietly, just inside the entrance, as he has been instructed to do. The chieftain takes perfunctory notice of him, but is in no hurry. He takes another long drag from his cigarette and finishes tinkering with something at his desk before finally turning in his seat to face Roger. His gray eyes are appraising but not harsh, much like his daughter’s. Roger is careful not to stare at the tattoo of a Scottish flag visible on his neck between graying locks of shoulder length hair and a long goatee.

  “My daughter says you have something to ask me.” Wisps of smoke float around the chieftain’s face. “Everyone wants something, but not everyone has something to give, at least not something worth wanting.

  “Were you planning to compensate me with a poem? Chelsey Dee told me about that poem you wrote for the two sisters— it didn’t even rhyme. I may be an ignorant Roughie, but I know enough that a poem should rhyme.” The chieftain’s lips upturn in the faintest hint of a sneer. “My skills are in demand. People need what I deliver. I could live in a commune, and do my work for a loaf of bread and a house behind a fence, but out here, I set my own ambitions. People respect me, and I’ve earned my position, keep earning it every day. If I lose my edge, then I lose my place. No one gets something for nothing anymore, not here, not now. Not even in the communes where they’ll regulate your soul for the cost of stale bread and dog meat. You understand that, Roger. You’ve made it this far. The world ain’t so populated anymore, and the ones who’ve left us weren’t exactly elevating the gene pool. So my question for you, Roger, is what will you do for me?”

  The chieftain seems to have no intention of letting Roger reply, as he strokes his goatee and continues talking. “Chelsey told me what you need. That you’re looking for your wife, and you think the Pony Express can point you in the right direction. I have inroads to the Pony Express. And yes, they will listen to me, and aid the person I ask them to aid. I provide them safe passage in this region.”

  The chieftain rubs out the butt of his cigarette. “The question is, what can you do for me, that would be equitable to what I can provide for you?”

  “I don’t imagine there’s much someone like me could provide for you,” Roger says carefully, “but I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  “Whatever it takes.” The chieftain rubs out the butt of his cigarette and flicks it past Roger outside the door. He crosses his flannelled arms and stares directly into Roger’s eyes.

  Roger wants to fix his eyes back, but he can’t. They rove from neck tattoo to deer-hid
e elbow patches, from rows of well-oiled tools to handmade moccasins.

  “Steward Sal,” the chieftain says, with contempt. “I take it you’re familiar with the asshole?”

  “We’re acquainted.”

  “No love lost?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe you might even like what I’d have you do.” The chieftain says the next part casually, as if it is no big deal, “Kill him.”

  “Kill the Steward?”

  “You a parrot? Yeah, kill him. Snuff out. End.”

  Roger is silent.

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “I’m not a murderer.”

  “Don’t think of it as a murder. More of an assassination.”

  “I’m not an assassin either.”

  “I don’t have time to chat with you about this,” the chieftain says. “But I’ll do you a favor and paint you a picture. Lay out some facts, if you will. Steward Sal is a commie asshole. He locked up my cousin Randy Jr. for practically no reason. He’s soured relations between the communes and the Roughies. It’s bad for business— bad for everyone. And he’s a prick who keeps stepping over the line.” The chieftain pauses, and sizes Roger up. “And then there’s what he did to you. You look like an uncooked sausage, and that’s after getting treated by the sisters. Hell, you should be thanking me for this opportunity.”

  “Why me? You could have anyone kill this guy. I’ll do something else, anything.”

  “This is your anything,” the Chieftain says. “And if I killed the son of a bitch, or had one of my men do it, it’d start a war. And we don’t need more wars around here. You’ve got a motive— he tortured you. And you’re an independent actor. You’re not a Roughie or a commie. You’re pretty much a nobody. A nobody with a grudge.”

  The chieftain reaches into the top drawer of his tool cabinet and pulls out a pistol. “A grudge and a gun.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you do it, make sure plenty of people see you. Don’t need no mystery deaths.”