The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (18 page)

“You hear any of this?” Edgar asks Cliff Rhodes as Cliff swirls the olive around the Manhattan.

“I’m afraid so,” Rhodes confesses. “It’s not my habit to listen in on other folks’ conversations but, like I said, I’m a sucker for stories.”

Edgar waves never mind and slaps Rhodes on his shoulder.

“Well,” Jim says, “I tried not to give it any more thought but then, that weekend — I remember: it was a Saturday evening — I saw the guy again, and this time I was sure it was him. No question. He was standing outside the Oak just as I walked across the street, standing right there outside the pub, his coat collar up, hands in pockets, still looking as smart as ever, staring through the big window they have — or used to have — in that pub.

“So, I took the bull by the horns and I called out to him. ‘Hey!’ I shouts to him, waving a hand in the air —” Jim demonstrates. “— like this. And he turns around, sees me and . . .” He shakes his head, checking each face individually. “And then he just kind of fizzles up into wispy smoke, smoke that’s kind of man-shaped and then isn’t, and that’s solid for a few seconds, then less solid and then just see-through smoke. And then there’s only the big window and the sidewalk, people passing by going this way and that, not one of them appearing to have seen him or seen him disappear.”

“What then?” is what Cliff Rhodes decides to say to break Jim’s pause.

“Well, then, I guess I just stood there looking at where the guy had been, looking at the other people, people either walking or standing — outside the Oak was a popular meeting place — and then I looked through the window into the pub. And that’s when I figured out what was going on.”

Sips all round followed that. Then:

“I figured that I was the only one seen him because I was the one expected to put things right.”

Edgar harrumphs and takes a sip of beer, seeming agitated.

“Put things right?” hisses Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat.

“Well, way I figured it, there had to be a reason why I’d seen him and seen him disappear while the other people all around him hadn’t. And that reason was to put him out of his misery.

“See, when I looked through that window, I saw what it was that was making the guy so morose: people drinking. And it came to me that ghosts probably can’t drink.” Jim shrugs. “Maybe he wasn’t fully aware he’d died, only that he couldn’t go into the pubs and have his customary half-pint in every one. The routine had sunk its claws into him and he’d become so fixated with what he did every night that he wasn’t about to let a little thing like death keep him from it. But death was keeping him from drinking.”

Jim swirls the beer around in his glass and watches it make patters of froth around the rim. “And I got to thinking that `someone’, whoever or whatever keeps these things in check, had looked around for a likely candidate to put things straight again.” Jabbing a thumb into his own chest, Jim Legman says, somewhat proudly, “And I figured that person was me.”

“You knew what to do?” Jack says, leaning closer over the table.

Jim shakes his head. “I didn’t
know,”
he says, “but I figured someone had to get it through to him that he was dead and that he should let go . . . go off to re-join his wife.”

At that, Jack Fedogan grimaces, shuffling in his chair and fighting back a sudden urge to blubber. Without his letting anyone else notice, Edgar places a big ham-hock sized hand on Jack’s knee and gives it a squeeze.

Cliff Rhodes, Jim and even Fortesque and the Lorre fella all see the gesture and don’t let on, though Jim sees that Greenblat has seen it, has seen the little guy’s soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and he reconsiders his opinion of the man.

“So, I went in and ordered a pint. Didn’t go to the upstairs room where my regular crowd were, and I didn’t stay more than just a few minutes. I just drank the pint and moved on.

“From there, I did the Hyde Park, the Rose and Crown, the Skyrack, the Drum and Monkey, the Travellers’ Rest, the Lawnswood Arms, the New Inn and, finally, the Tap and Spile . . . plus maybe a couple of others that I’ve forgotten about down the years.”

Now Jack’s grimace isn’t about his missing Phyllis, it’s from thinking about all that beer — eight pints at least and probably well into double figures.

Edgar looks at his friend with newfound respect.

“As you can probably guess, I wasn’t too good at the end of it all . . . but we won’t go into that.” He takes a deep sip and rests his glass back on his coaster, pulling himself tall in the chair — maybe even almost as tall as Cliff Rhodes, sitting across from him, who wasn’t trying hard at all — and he continues with his story.

“I didn’t see the guy again after that, and we were out and about just as frequently as before. The way I figure it,” Jim Leafman says, lifting his glass once more, “is that the guy needed to be freed. He’d gotten himself into some kind of loop, going out every night to drink in the various bars that he drank in with his wife, and then —” Jim waves a hand. “- He went and died. And, as we know, dead men don’t drink too good.”

He is, of course, referring to Front-Page McGuffin and both Jack and Edgar nod knowingly.

“So,” Jim goes on, his voice sounding tired and kind of resigned, “he just stood outside each of the pubs waiting for some kind of release.”

Edgar snorted. “And that release was you going out and getting hammered?”

Jim shrugged. “Well, I didn’t see him again.”

“You ever stop to think that maybe you’d imagined you’d seen him?” Cliff Rhodes ventures.

“Absolutely!” says Edgar, loudly.

“And that maybe he wasn’t there at all,” Rhodes continues. “That he was just either a figment of your imagination or someone who looked a lot like him.”

“It comes down to faith,” Jack offers, sitting back in his chair a mite. “Either you believe in what you saw and what you did, or you don’t. Simple as that.”

“His was a journey of faith,” Horatio Fortesque says. “The Thompson twin, I mean,” he adds. And then, “As was yours,” and he pats Jim Leafman on the arm.

“It’s a nice story,” says Lorre.

“It was a nice story,” Jack agrees.

“But then, all stories about journeys are good.” Edgar considers his glass for a few seconds and, sensing that there’s more to come, the others remain silent. Then:

6 The man on the bus

“Back when I was a youngster we lived in Forest Plains,” Edgar says, his voice slightly wistful and distant.

Jack says, “Forest Plains? Where’s that?”

“I checked the mapbook once and it turns out there are several,” Edgar says. “This one is in Iowa, about an hour west from Cedar Rapids.

“My first job — clerk and then teller at the local branch of First National, long since closed — was in Branton, a small town around 30 miles due north from home. There was a twice-daily bus went from the Plains straight into Branton, stopping on Main Street, about three minutes walk from the bank and then at the railroad depot where it turned right around and went back to the Plains. Same thing happened on an evening.

“In the morning, it left the Plains at seven forty-three and in the evening it left Branton at six eleven — funny how you remember the small details,” Edgar says, shaking his big head slowly. “It arrived in Branton at a little after or a little before eight thirty in the morning and I’d usually be back home around seven at night.

“My dad bought me a car — an old Mercury, 1960 model, canary yellow with tail-fins and a bench seat you could’ve sat a football team on . . . and still had room for the cheerleaders.” Edgar slaps his knee. “Jeez, they just don’t make cars like that anymore.”

“More’s the pity,” Cliff Rhodes says, the words coming out so quietly that Fortesque and Greenblat exchange frowns. But before they ask him to repeat it, Edgar is up and running again.

“But that didn’t happen until I’d gotten through my probation period — one month — so’s the bank could decide whether they wanted to keep me on. They did and I got the car, but for that first month I used to ride the bus. In and out. Every day.

“The trip in was completely different to the trip back home. The light for one thing — morning light is just so clear and the meadows and the distant clumps of trees . . . and the little collections of houses, collections too small even to call them villages: Green, Hammerton, Poppleton, Starbeck —  I remember them all.

“But the evenings, well . . . they were different. The light, as I already said, was just one thing. Then there was the tiredness of the people for another. Folks have just lost their spark after a day at work. I felt that way myself — just a little and I was only nineteen years old. But the other thing was that there were different people on the bus every now and again.”

“Why should that matter?” Fortesque asks.

“Oh, it didn’t matter exactly,” Edgar says, “But the regular commuters, well . . . they get to know each other. There’s a silent acceptance of each of you by the others — what’s the old saying? Misery loves company. You know?

“So the bus in on a morning had, for the most part, the same folks on it as the bus back home at the end of the day. Oh, there were a few folks going to do some shopping in Branton — the Plains isn’t exactly what you might call Fifth Avenue, though there is a mall there now, around four, five miles outside of town — but back then there wasn’t diddly. And there might be a couple of people going to meet a friend or visit someone. But, like I say, most of them were commuting to work and commuting home. But even these occasional users would be on the bus in the morning and the bus in the evening — they just wouldn’t be on it day after day. You know what I’m saying?”

Jim Leafman watches his friend over hands tented at his chin. “Go on,” he says at last, reaching for his beer.

“Well, my first day on the bus going home, there was one passenger who stood out from the rest,” Edgar says, after a big sigh. “A boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He was . . . he was, you know . . .”

“Give us a clue, Ed,” says Jack.

Edgar sniffs, turns his beer around on his coaster. “He was not the brightest button in the box, you know what I mean?” “Special needs,” says Cliff Rhodes.

“Educationally challenged?” offers Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat.

Edgar nods in a Tony Soprano way, takes a drink. “Right, those. You got the picture. So this kid, he’s sitting right at the front of the bus staring at the road ahead and at the countryside on either side. All the way from Branton to Forest Plains. I got the seat right behind him so I was able to watch him all the way. And every time we stop — like to let someone off: nobody gets
on
those evening buses — every time we stop, the kid turns around and makes this noise —
wmmgmmm!”
Edgar says, hunching up his shoulders and making his hands clawlike. “And I swear he’s trying to tell me something . . . something about the fields and the sky, the far-off trees, the trucks on the Interstate below us when we get into the Plains.

He swings those manic arms around, sometimes banging his hand on the bus window, making that noise.” Edgar makes the noise again, and then again. And then he lifts his glass, takes a drink.

“We get to the Plains and everyone gets off,” Edgar says. “Everyone except the kid. I held back because folks had gotten to standing as we got close to town and so there was no room for me to stand up. But when I did stand up and made my way to the open doors, the kid stayed behind. I looked at him and then looked at some of the other passengers and nobody paid him any attention. And you have to remember that this was my first day, right.

“So that was it. Next day exactly the same.”

“What happened to the boy when you got off the bus that first night?” Greenblat asks.

“He stayed on,” says Edgar. “The bus closed its doors and the kid swung right around to look out of the front window and the bus set off again.”

“Back to Branton?”

Edgar gives Jim a single nod. “Back to Branton.”

“No other passengers getting on?”

Edgar shakes his head. “Not that first night. There might be one or two every so often, but most nights, the bus would go back without picking up any new rides.”

“So the next day,” Jack says, glancing around to see how the drinks are going. “What happened then?”

“Same thing,” is what Edgar answers, and there’s a little chuckle in his voice. “I get on at Main Street, kid’s already there at the front looking around at the folks getting on. And again, I sit in the seat behind him.” He shrugs. “From there, the journey home is exactly the same. The same fields, the same sky, the same Interstate. The same stops, the same flailing arms and hands, and the same
wmmgmmm!
every time. When we get to the Plains, we all get off but the kid stays. Bus moves off and heads back to Branton.

“Next day, same thing. And the next. And the one after that. Same thing the following week. And the one after it and the one after that one. And then —”

“And then you pass your probation period,” Cliff Rhodes says, “and your dad buys you the Mercury.”

“Canary yellow,” says Jack.

“Tail fins,” adds Jim Leafinan.

“And the big bench seat,” says Horatio Fortesque, getting into it now After a few seconds silence, the little Peter Lorre-look- alike says, “Cheerleaders,” making the word sound dirty.

And they all laugh.

“And that’s it?” jack asks.

Shaking his head, Edgar says, “Not quite.”

“More drinks!” is what Jack Fedogan announces then.

“And more music.”

“More Brubeck,” Fortesque says. “And —” He passes a twenty dollar note across to Jack. “— This round is on me.”

7 Thick with possibilities

There’s shuffling then, and leg-stretching, and visits to the restroom. But nobody speaks. When the music starts again — Brubeck, Desmond, Wright and Morello getting to grips with Cole Porter’s “I Get A Kick Out Of You” — it’s a relief in that it eats the silence.

Minutes later, the table re-assembles and Jack says, “So, not quite?”

Edgar nods. “Nothing else happened while I had that job. I never took the bus again, and, a little under eight months later, I got my first adviser’s job down in Miami.” Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “Left home and moved to the coast.” He looks across at Jim Leafman and says, “Moved to the Apple in the spring of ‘84 — which is fifteen, sixteen years after the Branton clerk job.”