The Other Mr. Bax (2 page)

Mrs. McCutcheon stood near the back entrance of the school, puffing on a cigarette, gazing blankly toward the road bordering the playground to the north. Roland waited until his teacher was engaged in breaking up a dispute over a tether ball game before approaching Joyce’s teacher. Stepping before her, he swallowed, took a deep breath, then stuttered the question that, for days, had been consuming him. The lady regarded him with a kind smile, then gently informed him that Joyce’s family had moved to Indianapolis.

Moved? If it had come from any other source, Roland would have accepted the news with full-on skepticism, but coming from a figure of indisputable authority left him stunned. His throat contracted as he offered the teacher a choked thank you, then turned and disappeared into the bustle of the playground.

For days, he wrestled with this awful fact, trying to imagine the situation from the other way around—he being the one moving. He couldn’t conceive keeping such news to himself, leaving the one he cared most about stranded in uncertainty; it seemed like a betrayal. But more than that, more than anything, he missed her. He instinctively knew to keep his feelings hidden, for no peer or adult, that he was aware of, could possibly understand the magnitude of his love for this girl or the depth of his despair for the loss of her. What could be done about it? The answer, unfortunately, was beyond his nine-year-old experience. Joyce’s silence in regard to her moving would forever puzzle him.

In the years that followed, he struggled to keep the memory of her face vivid. He attempted a number of times to record it with pencil and paper, but lacked the skill to create a satisfactory resemblance. In time the memory faded, leaving him melancholy over the loss of that, as well. He forgot her face, but would never forget the love he had for her, or lose faith in his belief that fate would not, and could not, keep them apart.

R
oland followed a six-foot-wide strip of asphalt
, which had been laid down over an old abandoned stretch of railroad, as he did nearly every day—usually in the evening, with Dana, his wife of fourteen years. They’d walk and talk, though it was mostly Roland doing the talking. He’d spill his thoughts and ideas, his opinions crystallizing with the movement of his feet—stirring the creative juices. Though today, Saturday, the twenty-fifth of September, Dana had gone to her mother’s house to help make pizzas, so Roland walked alone.

To his right was a small backyard orchard where hornets and bees busied themselves feeding off rotting windfalls. A stray gust of wind sent a cloud of leaves fluttering down from the trees. The autumn air carried hints of compost, mildew, burning leaves, and cider. Glancing toward the trees, to his right, Roland drew in a deep breath; the memory of a young girl running off toward the back entrance of a school building skipped along the edge of his mind. She seemed to have arrived on the scent of the wind, on the air’s coolness, its dryness, and then traveled on the light, teased by the colors of the leaves, a particular brightness, the crispness of autumn, the season of love and loss. He scanned the scene before him as if he might catch a glimpse of her, but then stopped—the memory vanished, leaving not so much as a trace of her.

Here was the fall. A cold, dark winter would inevitably follow. Every year, about this time, these memories surfaced. But these weren’t the same leaves he’d kicked through in the autumn of ‘63. And it wasn’t the same wind that then whispered through the branches of maples and elms lining the streets of the small, rural, Hoosier community he grew up in. Perhaps the catalyst for these memories was nothing in particular, but a combination of many things.

Roland’s eyes shifted as he followed the carousel of distant events turning in his mind. A low vibration, like a hum, a moan, left his throat. The memories—most at best were vague, though some were as vivid as the day before: a farmhouse, his grandpa and grandma, the interior of a school bus, swings on a playground, Joyce Rubens—a mix of pain and disappointment, of wanting, and moments of joy. The key events were easy to recall—the big moments, the thrills. But the spaces in between, the ordinary everyday spaces, were hidden—lost among a million insignificant breaths.

An eddy of air shuffled leaves around the smooth asphalt surface of the path. The sound of TV static—they swirled about his feet, skittering like paper butterflies, and then quieted. He targeted a particularly crisp-looking leaf and crushed it beneath his foot. He recalled the farmhouse his parents had rented on Mud Dauber Road, a night in the summer of 1960—he and his big brother, Keith, his sister, Kate, and baby brother, Brian, all lying on a pile of blankets spread out in the grass of the backyard, scanning the crystal-clear, moonless sky in search of a rare satellite or shooting star—those last few days before school.

Accustomed to a life of freedom, Roland was ill-prepared for its sudden denial once the classroom door shut on that first day. He was slower than most, adjusting to the rigid structure, but, like a broken pony, he came to accept it. The girl who sat at the desk directly in front of him unwittingly helped. She was far more interesting than the teacher squawking at the front of the classroom. Her name was Rebecca—the only name he could now recall from his first-grade class. His memory failed to produce even his teacher’s name—only Rebecca, only her first name, no face, only the braid of brown hair that persistently hung down her back.

A rustling came from the bushes to the left of the bike path. A rabbit maybe—though he saw no evidence of one. He recalled the fox he’d recently seen while out with Dana. It had run across the path, about a hundred feet ahead of them—a chicken, its neck broken and bloody, dangling like a rag from its mouth.
A fox with a chicken
…

About a half-mile outside the village of Akron, New York, near a little farm, where chickens and geese roamed a loosely fenced barnyard, and an insomniac rooster crowed around the clock, a languorous old mare could often be seen nibbling the grasses down to the root. The horse resembled one he’d ridden as a young boy on his grandfather’s farm in Michigan—the same docile animal his grandfather would saddle up for all his grandchildren.

Grandpa: the old man at the kitchen table, a cup of steaming coffee between his dark, abused hands, the smell of bacon, his grandmother standing at the stove, farmer-early, the kitchen windows, dark in the pre-dawn, and he, in his pajamas, seated in the chair to his grandfather’s right, being asked, “Got cha a little red-head Hoosier lassie waitin’ for ya at school?”

And Roland’s reply, “Huh?”

He still carried a crisp image in his mind of his grandfather cracking up, then his grandmother piping in with “Grandpa wants to know if you have a girlfriend. But don’t mind him, he’s just being silly.”

Unaware that he was being teased, Roland confessed to having befriended a girl during the recently passed fall semester, clarifying that Joyce’s hair was not red, but rather a light-brown color, to which his grandfather’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

Again, Roland peered into the bushes to his left. He tried to pull up a picture of Joyce, something he’d not been able to do in a long while—so long, he could no longer remember when the image was lost. Only the vaguest generalities remained—more an idea than a memory. It seemed that his childhood vow to never forget her had hardwired an irrational infatuation into the core of his brain. For the most part, he’d neglect it, allowing any number of more immediate concerns to fill the stage. But there were moments, such as this, when he’d indulge—he’d dig around back there, find a glowing ember, and nurse it for the tiny warmth it provided.

Near the head of the trail, at the edge of town, an old railroad trestle, which had been converted into a bridge, crossed the creek that meandered through the village. Four-foot-high guardrails lined the sides to keep the local folks from rolling off into the shallow stream seventeen feet below. Roland leaned over the railing and gazed down toward the lazy water as a pair of mallards floated about unmindful of the humans, and dogs on leashes, that passed them above. A lady on a bicycle, followed by two children on miniature bikes, rumbled over the bridge. He squeezed to the railing as they shyly passed.

The trees lining the creek to the west glowed with the late-afternoon light—translucent gold, red, and lime-green leaves, like fragments of stained glass. A strip of staghorn sumac lined the path to the south, their dark-maroon spears pointing skyward in sharp contrast to the bright-yellows of aspen standing tall in the distance behind them. They filled his mind, then trickled down into his chest, filling it, too, beyond capacity.

He stood there, motionless, waiting as the moment dissolved into normality, then turned back to the creek. The ducks were gone. Continuing toward the village, Roland again thought of Joyce. Their meetings at the swings became a ritual occurrence—an unspoken covenant. A remnant of the anticipation he’d suffer every morning on his way to school was still, thirty-eight years later, accessible. At the age of nine, his sole purpose in life was her. The world revolved around two fifteen-minute recesses—every moment possible given to Joyce, as he absorbed all he could of her.

Walking up Clinton Street, Roland recalled the few half-hearted attempts he’d made to locate Joyce—half-hearted because on a deeper level he’d always suspected he was mistaken about the pact he thought existed between them. She was a military child, accustomed to a life of transience; friends were temporary, and bonds non-existent. And now, thirty-six years later, it didn’t matter; he was no longer a kid; he was married; he had Dana.

He stood on the corner of Clinton and John waiting for a pickup truck to pass. The driver, an old man wearing a red baseball cap, dropped a smoldering cigarette butt on the street as he drove by. Roland glanced up the street to his left. A car was coming, though it was yet a safe distance away. As he stepped into the street, a sharp, grating noise ripped the air, like the scraping of diamonds on glass—an explosion of sound, with a physical presence—a shove. Everything slowed, and quieted, but for a curious moan of strings coming from the trees around him—warm, then cool, warm, cool, back and forth—a see-sawing of two fading notes.

A light-blue sedan slid toward him—the panicked face of a woman behind its windshield. The other car, the one he’d seen the moment before was red.

The blue car came to a stop at Roland’s right, close enough that he could reach out and touch the cool metal of its front fender. The driver’s white knuckles were visible behind the windshield; her fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel, her eyes squeezed shut. A shiver shot up Roland’s spine at the realisation he’d somehow missed this car when checking for traffic.

The driver’s door swung open. The woman stepped out and came around to the front, her right hand extended—steadying herself with contact to the car. She stopped and stared at Roland, her lips moving, her eyes searching.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You’re okay? I didn’t hit you?”

“I’m fine.”

She clasped her hands over her heart and let out a heavy sigh. “Jesus, I thought I’d hit someone.” She shook her head and huffed. “I didn’t see you.” She turned and peered up the street she had just come from.

“I don’t…” Roland replayed the last moments in his mind, but they didn’t add up to the present—this shaken lady and her blue car. “I didn’t see you either.”

Another car pulled up alongside the lady’s car. The driver’s window lowered. “You okay?” The man squinted.

“Yes, I’m…” The lady turned and looked at Roland. “We’re fine, thank you.”

“You sure? You need anything?”

“No… no, thank you. We’re fine.”

The man repeatedly checked his rear-view-mirror as he drove away.

The woman’s chest heaved with another sigh. “I should move my car.”

She returned to her car and pulled it over close to the curb. Roland stepped up to her window. Her fingers were once again wrapped around the wheel. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I looked. I thought…” He turned and looked up the street. “I don’t know how it happened. It was just…”

“It’s okay.” The woman’s eyes drifted off into an empty gaze. “I can’t tell you what a relief that is… this… you being…”

Roland straightened, peeked over his shoulder. “I’d read somewhere that most accidents happen close to home. Mine’s right there”—He pointed toward his house—“on Main, opposite side of the park. The odds should be in my favor now, don’t you think?”

“Be careful… regardless.” She forced a smile.

He stood by the window of her car, feeling strangely incomplete, like something more should be said, or asked, though he didn’t know what. He nodded, then turned to leave. After looking both ways, he hurried across the street and into the park. That feeling…
What is it
? He twisted back around. The blue car was moving away.

It took no more than a five minutes to cross the park, then dart across Main to the driveway alongside his house—going, as was his habit, to the back door. Roland stepped around the shrubs hiding the path to the door and stopped. Two lawn chairs sat in the backyard, and a small tricycle was parked on the back porch; he had no small children, and he’d never seen those chairs before. He then noticed the old gas grill was gone, as were the wind chimes that had hung from the roof of the small, open porch for years. A tricycle. Things were not as they were when he’d left the house an hour earlier. Dave? He thought of his neighbor, the proprietor of the funeral home next door. Dave’s grandchildren would sometimes play in the driveway.

His eyes dropped to the ground near his feet. The walkway was lined with grass. The flowering ground cover that had been there since he’d planted it several years before was gone. The extreme improbability that someone had replaced the flowers with grass in the short time he was gone cut into the logic he struggled to integrate and hold. His heart and breath quickened. He stooped, examining the ground more intently. There were no signs of tampering. He stared at the grass, his mind wanting to force it back into its proper place, but was unable to find a starting point. Pulling open the back door, he called for his wife. “Dana!” Her name felt somehow odd to him, as if it no longer matched the person in his mind. “Dana!” He gasped for breath, his heart galloping, thoughts racing, searching, trying to make sense of the whirlwind of conflicting memories.

Ideas entered his head automatically, as though he was no longer thinking, but rather overhearing the ramblings from someone else’s mind. His knees wobbled. He took a step back, reached for the door jamb, slipped, stumbled against the screen door—
Bam
! The sound of clanging alarms filled his head, but then faded in the distance as he fell deep into a buzzing numbness.