On the Edge of Twilight: 22 Tales to Follow You Home (14 page)

Supper-Time

“Get in here, Hank. No use turning my hallway into a wind tunnel.”

Henry McMurran limped in with a grunt and shut the door behind him with a tremulous hand, cutting off the frost-flecked breeze and stomping slush from his galoshes.

Simon Farber led the way back to his kitchen, cane tapping the worn linoleum. “One lump or two?” he asked over his shoulder.

“In all my years, have I ever taken sugar?”

“Always a first time.”

“And don’t ask if I want milk, neither.”

Strong coffee met chipped mugs, and the two old widowers creaked down in their chairs at the scarred kitchen table, fixtures in the room as much as the decades-old stove, hand-cut cabinets, and fly-specked overhead light.

Farber observed, simply, “Cold outside.”

“How would you know? You got to go
out
to see what the day’s like, you old recluse. You even know what month it is? What
season?
” Hank grinned, then grimaced. “Damn, this coffee’s hot! Make the devil himself wince.”

“Stop your whining. Mine’s better than yours and you know it. And I don’t go out because there’s no good point.”

Silence followed—the quiet of old friends who, after 75 years, don’t need to talk in order to feel comfortable in one another’s company.

Finally: “I had a dream last night, Simon.”

Farber set down his cup. “I guess you’ll have to tell me all about it, then. You always do.”

McMurran leaned forward, elbows on the table. “This was an odd one. Left me feeling… strange.”

Farber raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“I was here, in Still Creek, but the old Carnegie Library was still standing and Main Street was still dirt. The cars? Model-Ts. And the great old oak tree that stood in the square… remember it? Struck down by lightning in 1951? Yeah, that was there, too.”

The mildly amused gleam in Farber’s faded gray eyes disappeared.

“Hank,” he said softly. “Was it summertime?”

McMurran looked up sharply. “Sure was.
Middle
of summer, I’d guess. Maybe a week shy or a week late of Independence Day.”

“And,” continued Farber, his whisper now just the faintest breath of stale air, “was
I
there, too?”

McMurran took a fast, deep swig of scalding coffee. This time he didn’t even wince. His answer came as if blown into the room on a far-away wind. “Yes.”

“And we were young.”

“Twelve, I guess.”

Farber nodded. “And we went fishing with our split-bamboo rods down at Cobblestone Creek outside town, in the hollow where the water’s deep and the swinging rope used to hang from the willow tree.”

McMurran’s mug dropped from his hand to shatter, unnoticed, on the table. “What else?”

Without hesitating, Farber replied, “Margaret Pendergast was there, and so was Bud Collins, and his little brother Jake… Oh, and—”

“Johnny Saxon,” McMurran finished. “Jesus, Simon, what’s
happening
?”

Farber flashed an odd smile. “I haven’t the foggiest idea, you nutty old coot. But I
like
it. Now clean up your damn mess.”

* * *

That night, with the wind howling through the eaves and snow falling thick and heavy on every rooftop, road, and lawn across town, Simon Farber lay beneath crisp, clean sheets and his favorite old quilt and tried to sleep.

Across the street, he knew, Hank McMurran was already unconscious, probably in his overstuffed chair by the fireplace. The man could fall asleep during an earthquake, nod off in a flood. Anticipation didn’t faze him and neither did novelty. Only death scared him, and so he avoided beds, icons of hospitals and illness, diminishment and frailty.

And Farber himself? The only thing that scared him was the world outside his house—the looming, teeming world that had struck down his wife with a car four years before, then continued spinning, as constant and oblivious as ever, toward other destructions.

He sighed, and his thoughts shifted back to the dream.

Would it come again?

Farber moved slightly. Arthritis shot pain through his knee and into his hip, where it remained, pulsing to the beat of his heart.

I want to run
, he thought,
but that’s a luxury I haven’t had in forty years
.

The thought a mantra in his mind, he rolled over, settled, finally closed his eyes…

…and awoke in a field of tall grass, warm sun blazing overhead, the sound of bumblebees and cicadas a constant, rhythmic drone.

He sat up, looked down at his body, then leapt to his feet.

He ran.

Dandelions exploded beneath his sneakers. Milkweed pods broke against his legs. “Hey!” he cried, spreading his arms. “Hey, I’m a bird, I’m an
airplane!
  Hey!
”

“You’re a nut.”

He turned.

“Hank!
Look
at you!”

“Look at
you!
”

“I… It’s… I’d
forgotten what I looked like!
It was like a movie, like another person, like something in a
book.
”

“What?”

“My childhood.”

Hank smiled, his two front teeth still ridged nubs. “We were here yesterday.”

Simon’s mouth worked for a moment before he could speak. “I didn’t
know
then,” he said finally.

“Know what?”

“That it wasn’t only in my mind.”

  Hank nodded. “You remember this place?”

“Blaze Field, past the fishing hole on the other side of the creek!” Simon motioned with a lean, tanned arm. “Town’s that way!”

And Still Creek was just as it had always been—before the mines closed, the sinkholes opened, the strip malls shut the shops, and half the town moved away. The Model-Ts, the good brick buildings with lead-glass windows, the plank sidewalks, and Quigley’s wooden-floored drug store…

And it was there that they found Margaret Pendergast sitting on a tall stool at the counter, sharing a root beer float with Johnny Saxon.

“No one here to help us, guys,” said Johnny. “So we helped ourselves. C’mon, have a malt!”

Simon scratched his head. “Yeah, where is everyone, anyway? It’s a ghost town! Just us and the empty streets.”

At that moment Bud Collins stumbled in. He looked eagerly at the other children, then his face fell. “I can’t find my brother,” he said, slumping into a booth. “I thought he might be with you.”

They clustered around him. “Maybe Jake’s not asleep yet,” said Margaret.

Bud shook his head. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“What, Bud?”

“He died yesterday afternoon. Cancer. Had it for years. And I thought, you know, that maybe he’d still be
here
.”

Silence. No one could think of anything to say. Then Bud got up, went behind the counter where Mr. Quigley used to serve ice cream and malts, and made himself a banana split; the icebox was frosted and fully stocked.

“I’m sorry,” Hank said at last. “He was a great fella.”

Bud nodded. “It’s strange… I
feel
him near, but I can’t find him.” He took a bite of ice cream and banana, then another, until the whole thing was gone. At last he smiled. “Well, Jake never liked too much mourning and maudlin talk, so I’m done. Wanna go swimming in the quarry?”

They did.

* * *

Every night for the next two months, Simon joined his friends in the young town, in an old time, but they never saw Jake. While awake, it was winter and he felt it in his bones. Asleep? Summer. Every evening as his wispy hair touched the cool, white pillow, he anticipated it. And every night he played in the empty town of his youth with his four old/young friends in the blazing sun of an early-July day.

“Strange,” Hank said in Simon’s kitchen one icy morning in mid-February.

“Hmm?”

Hank eyed his coffee disdainfully. “This is awful. Strange, I said. We always wake up when it’s getting on toward evening in our dream, right? Just as the fireflies are coming out?”

Simon nodded.

“Well, last night, as the sun began to set and the dream began to fade, I
swear
I heard a voice calling my name.”

“A voice?”

“Yep. And what’s more, I
knew
it.”

“Who was it?”

“I’ll give you a hint. When it came, we were five doors down from my old house.”

Simon paused, thought, then said, “But Hank, we were
in
your folks’ house earlier. No one there! Just like everywhere else. Food in the pantry, lemon pie on the windowsill, toys in your room, but no people.”

“Doesn’t matter. It was my mother. I haven’t heard her voice in sixty years, but I’d know it anywhere.”

“What did she say?”

Hank cleared his throat. “She was calling me home for supper.”

“I don’t understand.” Simon sighed. “An empty town, phantom voices…”

“Simon.”

He looked up. Hank’s face was set, like he had something he wanted to say. Then it relaxed. “Gimme some more of that rotten coffee, huh?”

* * *

They were catching the first fireflies in the growing dark with Margaret, Johnny, and Bud when it happened. Hank snapped his head up, eyes wide, and dropped the Mason jar. Two-dozen glowing pinpricks rose up in the air around them and flooded the sky.

“You hear it?” Hank demanded.

Everyone stopped. Margaret shook her head.

“None of you? Clear as a bell!”

Hank started for home.

“We’ll wake up soon,” said Simon, trotting along beside him. “We always do before full dark. You won’t make it.”

“Yes, I will.”

“But—”

“Simon,” Hank said, his young face very serious, “there’s something for you under your welcome
mat. I put it there before I went to sleep.”

“But Hank, I don’t—”

And then the world began to spin, time shifted, one season intruded upon another, and Simon woke to another dark, winter morning in his still, quiet house.

He breathed deeply, cocooned in his quilt, then remembered, limped downstairs, opened the front door, hissed as the cold air hit his face and legs, and stuck his hand under the mat.

The note was short. It read:

No more bad coffee, Simon. Heart’s been aching for a week, and worse tonight.

These last few months have been a gift. Why, or from whom, doesn’t matter. And we both know the same gift means different things to different people. For me, it was the chance to get ready for what I knew was coming. For you, it’s something else entirely. I’m sure of it.  

Ain’t that grand?

I’ll be waiting to play Kick-the-Can when the time comes. Always was better at it than you.

Call Blake’s Funeral Home if you get this.

The breath woofed from his lungs. Numb hands dialed 911.

* * *

“I’m sorry, Simon.”

They sat beneath the old oak tree in Still Creek Square. Margaret placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Johnny blew his nose. Bud remained silent, brooding. 

“He said he’d be here,” Simon said. “He said he’d be waiting to play.”

But he wasn’t. And in the days that followed, Simon Farber turned further in upon himself, by day a quiet old figure in his cold winter house, by night a boy who thought more and played less in the warm summer sun.

“I wonder,” Bud said some weeks later, light reflecting off their favorite fishing hole in a shimmering veil, “why we’re always here by
day
? Never night. Night was my favorite time during the summer.” He laughed. “Still
is.
And it was Jake’s, too.”

Simon nodded. A trout nibbled his line but didn’t bite. “I guess we all felt that way.” Off in the distance, Johnny was teaching Margaret how to throw a football.

Bud, always the quiet one, continued, mouth a rare fount of words: “Remember? We’d go in for supper, eat as fast as we could, then meet by the baseball diamond at the end of the street. Half a dozen, ten, a dozen of us! You and me and Jake and Johnny and Hank and Bill and Travis and Davy… even the Moeller twins! And if we didn’t want to play, we’d race downtown and all the stores would still be open, the street lamps blazing, and Preston’s barber pole all lit up, and we’d go to Quigley’s for a malt and some penny candy then rush off to the State for the late-night feature. The whole town would be alive—young couples courting, old folks on porches, dogs in the park, little children chalk-drawing on sidewalks. Or sometimes, if we didn’t have money, we’d eat homemade ice cream and head outside for a game of—”

“Kick the Can,” Simon finished. He looked up at Bud and smiled. “That was always Hank’s idea… his favorite. It was a game for the evening, when our dads could join us if they were feeling young and we could see the glint of tin in the dark. Always late in the day. Always…” He paused.

“Always after supper,” he finished slowly.

Bud nodded. “Jake heard someone calling, too. The day before he died. Just like Hank. Know what I think? We’re the last living people from the town of our childhood. And you know what else?”

Simon looked at him closely. Suddenly, surprisingly, he thought he did. Bud didn’t even need to say it.

Hours later, in the early evening half-light, he stood before his old home—long demolished but now whole again, wrap-around porch freshly painted, wicker swing creaking softly in a warm wind—and waited.

Nothing. No voice. No feminine hand and summer-green sleeve pushing the screen door open to venture out into the heat. No familiar but long-lost face to look first up the street, then down, before calling, calling, calling so that wherever he was, he’d hear, then come…

“A bit longer, I guess,” he said softly. “Sometime soon. But for now…”

He looked up at the sky. “Fifteen minutes of daylight left. Still enough for a little fun.”