The Chair (29 page)

“But we can still be together.”

“I don’t know. You get converted and things would get weird.”

“I’m not getting converted. But I can’t ignore what is happening to me.”

Corin got out of the car, went around the passenger side, and opened Tori’s door. She stared at him for five seconds before getting out. “Just think about what I said, okay?”

He would and did. The play might have been good. Corin didn’t know. He spent the hour and a half inside the cramped junior high theater trying to make a final decision.

When Corin got home that night, he e-mailed Nicole and did something he’d never asked anyone to do for him.

Dear Nicole,

Part of me is determined to call Shasta in the morning. Another part says it would ruin any chance of seeing our relationship healed. I could use wisdom. Could you talk to God about this for me? I’m making my decision one way or another in the morning.

He stopped typing and once again played through the scenarios Tori and Tesser had planted in his mind. The image of Tesser’s eyes filling with tears won out and Corin turned back to his keyboard.

Actually, I just made the decision. I promise you tomorrow morning I’ll pick up the phone and call him.

Corin.

He hesitated, then depressed the key on his laptop and sent his e-mail down the cyber corridors into Nicole’s in-box.

Now he was committed.

C
orin stared at his cell phone and played mind games with himself. Ten o’clock. Still two hours of morning left. He’d committed to himself and Nicole he’d call Shata in the morning. He could wait another hour and fifty-nine minutes before calling. Sixty seconds before noon was still morning, right?

No, he had to call soon. The store needed to be open by noon and he didn’t want to race through town to get there on time. He’d been so certain last night. And now resistance had risen like the Green Goblin to fight what he knew needed to be done.

He set his cell phone down, eased over to his basement door, and slowly opened it. The stairs popped with creaks and moans as he descended into the basement. He opened the locked room that contained the chair, inched over to it, squatted down, and tapped the wood as if he were a concert pianist warming up.

“Will you heal him?”

There was no answer. No warmth, no glow to give him courage.

It didn’t matter. Corin turned and clomped back up the stairs, sat at his kitchen table, and spun his phone in a circle. “God, I could use some help with this call.”

Make the call.

The idea filled his mind along with a sliver of peace. He could do this.

How long had it been since he’d actually spoken to Shasta? Three years? Or was it four?

Corin spun his cell phone again on his oak table and dug his fingers into the knot at the base of his neck. How would he start the conversation? “Hey, it’s me, the person you hate most in the entire world.”

Corin picked up his cell phone and walked back to the door to the basement.

As he eased back down the stairs into the basement, he changed the settings on his phone to block his caller ID. If Shasta didn’t know who was calling, maybe he would take it. But if he knew it was Corin, there was even less chance. Shasta would let it go to voice mail and Robin would call the store or Corin’s phone and express her regret once again.

Corin entered the vault, sat cross-legged next to the chair, and sucked in a breath, then held it as long as he could before letting it out in a rush.

It was time.

He punched in his brother’s number and waited for voice mail to kick in.

“Hello?”

Corin puffed out a surprised cough.

“Hello?”

“Shasta. It’s Corin.” His heart hammered like the bass drum at a rock concert.

For fifteen seconds the only sound was Shasta’s labored breathing.

“Why did you call me?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’d rather not. I’m not ready to talk yet.”

“It’s been ten years, Shasta.”

Another thirty seconds of breathing.

“You shouldn’t have called. I appreciate what you do for Sawyer; you’ve been a good uncle to him. But there’s no point in our talking about anything till I’m ready. Today is not that day.”

“This is important. We have to talk now. Two minutes, Shasta, two.”

“No, we don’t have to talk. Good-bye—”

“Do you want to be healed?” Corin blurted out before thinking. It was the worst thing he could say. And the best.

Again, only breathing.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Corin didn’t know. Maybe he was insane. Maybe the chair wouldn’t work on Shasta. Maybe? Likely. Maybe Tori was right and nothing but pain would come of this. Maybe all he was doing was resurrecting the horror of that day that changed both their lives when it should stay locked away in the basement of both their hearts forever.

“Because I have to.” Corin stood and glanced at a picture he’d brought down a few days earlier and propped up at the back of the room. He and Shasta on their dirt bikes, arms raised in victory.

C’mon, God, I need some kind of victory right now.

“I have to go.” Shasta took two long breaths. “I wish I could pretend the past doesn’t exist. But I can’t. I don’t need to dwell on it and neither do you. So don’t call me again. It’s the best for both of us, don’t you think?”

He had time to say one more thing. And since Corin was already over the edge, he might as well see if the parachute would open. He ran his finger along the back of the chair and a current of warmth ran up his arm.

“I think I’ve found a way for you to be healed.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“It’s something you need to try.”

“Have you wiped the days after you did this to me out of your memory? I’ve tried everything. Even drinking special concoctions of foul-tasting herbs four times a day for a month.” Shasta let out a disgusted laugh. “Everything.”

“A few weeks ago I was given a—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Do you remember Avena? A. C.? He was healed. He sat in this ancient chair I was given and two day later an old shoulder injury that’s bothered him for years vanished.”

Corin could still hear Shasta’s breathing so he plowed ahead.

“And this kid who came into my store and almost keeled over from an asthma attack sat in this chair, and the next day he’s completely cured.”

Shasta stayed silent, sighed through the phone, and then finally spoke. “I don’t care what worked for A. C. I don’t care if this kid thinks the chair healed him. I don’t need you stirring up hope where there is none and never can be. I don’t need you pretending you can fix my life like you’ve been trying to do for the past ten years through gifts and e-mails saying you’re thinking of me and expressing an interest in my son. You already changed my life once. That’s not enough for you? ”

“When this woman showed up in my store three weeks ago with the chair and told me the next month of my life would be heaven or hell and that I would be given hope for restoration, I thought she was loco. But I’ve seen a slice of heaven and, yeah, these healings have given me hope.”

“So I sit in this magical chair and suddenly I can move something below my neck?”

“I don’t know.” Corin gripped the leg of the chair. “I hope that will happen.”

The electrical whirl of Shasta’s chair echoed through the phone. Probably his brother turning to look out the picture window in his den, staring at a playground he hadn’t stepped into in ten years.

“Have you sat in it?”

Corin hesitated. “Yes.”

“Were you healed?”

“Yes.”

Shasta took in a deep breath. “What part of you was healed?”

“My claustrophobia.”

“I see.” Shasta paused again. “And your feelings about being underwater?”

Corin stared at the chair. He knew where his brother was going and didn’t know how to respond. If he lied and said his deepest fear was healed, his brother would see through it like a window. If he told the truth—that his fear of the water was as deep as ever—he’d be handing his brother a verbal baseball bat.

“No, not that.” Corin wiped the moisture from his forehead.

“What about your right knee? Still stiff in the mornings?”

“Yes.”

“So nothing physical was healed, and not your major malady, just a small neurosis in your mind.”

“Shasta, you—”

Shasta laughed sarcastically. “But you’re sure this chair will work for me, why? Because I’m a cripple and am more worthy to be healed?”

“If I hadn’t seen the healings with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have called. If it hadn’t healed me. There’s power in this chair. Isn’t it worth trying?”

“No, it’s not. Hope is better left dead. Each time it’s resurrected, its subsequent death is a little harder to take. So I’ve killed it for good. Or I’ve tried. But you and I know, and the whole human race knows, you can’t kill hope entirely because there’s always one little bubble willing to rise with the slightest encouragement. And that would happen if I let you put me in that chair. I would hope once more, I would let it sweep me into your little shop, and I would sit in your ancient artifact and nothing would happen.”

Corin let go of the chair. “I had to ask, Shasta.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did.” Corin climbed the stairs up from the basement one at a time, resting for a second or two on each step. “Do you remember when Dad taught us to fly those stunt kites the summer of 1985? And we started having dogfights in the sky? Do you remember what he called us? Snoopy and the Red Baron. You were Snoopy; I was always the Red Baron. I was the bad guy.” Corin walked across his living room and stared out at the same gray sky his brother was probably looking at.

“No, Corin. You weren’t the bad guy then and you aren’t now. I know you didn’t mean to shoot my plane down.”

What? He slumped onto his couch. Was Shasta saying he didn’t hold what Corin had done against him? “If . . . then why won’t—?”

“Because when the night goes silent and I fall asleep and enter the world of dreams, I do fly, and I dream of the adventures you and I used to have, and I can’t live with those memories filling my mind.” His brother’s voice trembled and he stopped talking for thirty seconds.

“And every morning when my eyes flutter open, I remember I will never get in the cockpit again. And do you know who I see sitting in the seat behind the cockpit?”

“No.”

Shasta sniffed. “I see my son. I see Robin. I see other friends who I will never be able to take into the sky. I see the longing on their faces to watch me do more than sit in a chair, a longing they try so hard to conceal from me but can’t entirely. They pretend it’s okay that I can’t throw a baseball or stake a tent or take a stroll through gold and red leaves scattered in the park.

“I sit on that tarmac in my wheelchair almost every night and fight through the despair almost every morning.” Shasta coughed, from emotion or something caught in his throat, Corin couldn’t tell. “And do you know who I miss sitting in the cockpit with most of all?”

Shasta sucked in three heaving breaths. “Do you know who I dream about at night the most often?”

Corin knew.

“We were free together. We were free.” Shasta didn’t try to hide his emotion any longer, and the sound of his tears filled Corin’s phone. “I have to fight the dreams every night, brother. I can’t do it in real life as well.”

Corin glanced around the room as if he could find something that would tell him how to react, what to say next, but there was nothing to save him. “Shasta, I—”

“Good-bye, Corin. Don’t call me again.”

Corin watched the display on his cell phone hibernate into darkness.

He slipped his phone into his jeans, then picked up the chair and moved it to the hidden bunker he’d constructed, which sat in the woods behind his home. Corin spent the rest of the day at his store trying to push his way through the haze of disappointment and trying to figure out what to do next.

He drove home that evening wanting only one thing. A night without having to think about anything other than if
The Avengers
movie next summer would be any good. But a nagging voice inside said he was about to be given a lot more to consider.