Smith's Monthly #21 Page 7

  “Awful little,” Fred said as Stout slid one in front of each man and then put four special Christmas glasses up on the mat over the ice. He’d had the name of each man etched on the glass.

  “You know what they say about small packages,” Jess said, twisting the package first one way, then the other while inspecting it. “But knowing Stout, the size will be a good indication.”

  “You just wait,” Stout said.

  “Great glasses,” David said, noticing them for the first time. “They part of the present?”

  “Part of the evening,” Stout said.

  Stout let each man inspect his own empty glass before he filled it. The names were etched in gold leaf over the logo of the Garden Lounge. Stout had had the glasses done to remember the night. He hoped he would have more than a few glasses left when it was all over.

  Carl was the first to get his present unwrapped. “You were right, Jess. It’s a quarter.” He held it up for everyone to see. “Looks like old Stout here is giving us a clue that we should tip more.”

  Stout laughed as he filled Carl’s glass with ice. “No. It’s a trip, not a tip.”

  Stout finished pouring Carl’s drink and slid it in front of him.

  “Since you unwrapped yours so fast, you get to go first.” Stout nodded at the jukebox. “But there are rules.”

  “There seem to be a lot of rules around here tonight,” Fred said.

  Everyone laughed.

  Stout held up a hand for them to stop. “Trust me. This will be a special night.”

  “So give me the rules,” Carl said.

  Stout leaned on the dishwasher behind the bar so no one could see that he was shaking.

  “On that jukebox is every damn Christmas song I could find. Pick one that reminds you of a major point in your life—some thing or time or event that changed your life. After you punch the button, but before the music starts, tell us what the song reminds you of.”

  Carl shook his head. “You know, Stout. You’ve gone and flipped out.”

  “Sometimes I think so, too,” Stout said. He wasn’t kidding. Sometimes he really did think so.

  “Tonight seems to be ample proof,” David said, holding up the quarter.

  “Just trust me, that is a very special jukebox. Try it and I think you’ll discover what I mean.”

  Carl shrugged, took a large gulp out of his special glass and set it carefully back on the napkin. “What the hell. I’ve played stranger games.”

  “So have I,” Jess said. “I remember once with a girl named Donna. She loved to—”

  David hit him on the shoulder to make him stop as Carl twisted off his stool and moved over to the jukebox to study the songs.

  Stout watched as Carl bent over the machine to read the list. At six-two, two hundred and fifty pounds, Carl was all muscle, with hands that looked like he was going to crush a glass at any moment. A carpenter in the real world outside the walls of the Garden Lounge, his small business sometimes employed four or five workers. Mostly he built houses, although his big project this year had been Doc Harris’s new office. That had taken Carl seven months and helped him on the financial side.

  Carl had never married and no one could get much information about his past out of him. He had no hobbies that anyone knew of, and winter or summer Stout had never seen Carl dressed in anything other than work pants and plaid shirts. He kept his graying black hair cropped short and never wore a hat, no matter how hard it was raining.

  After a moment bent over the jukebox, Carl’s large shoulders slumped, almost as if someone had put a heavy weight square in the middle of his back. With effort he stood, turned around and faced the bar. His face was pale, his dark eyes a little glazed.

  “Found one. Now what?”

  Stout took a deep breath. It was too late to back out now. These were his friends.

  “Put the quarter in and pick the song.”

  Stout’s voice was shaking and David looked at Stout. David could tell something was bothering Stout.

  Stout took a deep breath and went on. “Before the song starts tell us the memory the song brings back.”

  Carl shrugged and dropped the quarter into the slot. The quiet in the Garden seemed to almost ring as he slowly punched the buttons for his song.

  “Anything else?” he asked as the jukebox clicked and the mechanism moved to find the record.

  “Just state what the song reminds you of. And remember, you only have the length of the song—usually about two and a half minutes. Okay?”

  Carl shrugged. “Why?”

  “You’ll know why in a moment. But remember that. It might be important. Now tell us the memory.”

  Carl glanced at the jukebox and then quietly said, “This song reminds me of the night my mother almost died.”

  Stout thought his heart had stopped. This wasn’t what he had planned. Why did Carl have to pick a memory like that? This was Christmas Eve. Most people would have memories of good times. Times they wanted to relive. Damn, it was too late now.

  “Two and a half minutes, Carl,” Stout managed to choke out. “Remember that.”

  Carl glanced over at Stout with a frown as “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” started.

  Then Carl was gone from the bar, physically gone, back into his memory.

  CHAPTER TWO

  About five years later…

  June 9th, 2020

  Central Wilderness Area, Idaho

  RYAN SADDLER SAT on the expansive wooden balcony of the Monumental Lodge, sipping a Diet Coke, and just staring out over the valley below and the sharp-peaked mountains beyond. The valley was so far down the sheer mountainside below the lodge, the tall pines along the stream looked like dark green child’s toys. And the mountain peaks seemed like paintings against the deep blue sky. Most of them had streaks of snow still covering them.

  The lodge sat on the edge of the most primitive area in all of the lower forty-eight states. And the most beautiful, as far as Ryan was concerned.

  The massive balcony seemed to stretch the entire length of the huge lodge, and was covered in tables and chairs so customers could have food out here or just sit and enjoy a drink with the view.

  Right now, he was the only person on the huge deck, which suited him just fine.

  Ryan had on jeans, tennis shoes, and a heavy dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had no doubt the shirt would not be enough for the mountain air very soon, as the sun slowly went behind the distant peaks. He had brought a light tan jacket that hung over the back of the wooden chair at the moment, but he was delaying putting it on, instead just letting himself enjoy the cool bite to the crisp fresh air.

  More than anything, he was enjoying the intense silence. He had no idea it was possible to hear silence, but on the top of this summit, looking out over a hundred miles of steep mountain ranges and deep valleys, silence was very real and very intense.

  He couldn’t believe he was even sitting here on this deck. Until a couple days ago, he didn’t even know this place existed. It was a very long way from his office at the University of California Berkeley and his small apartment on the hill overlooking the city of Berkeley. But when Duster Kendal asked Ryan if he was interested in a very special project, he had said yes without even asking what the project was about.

  Or even where he would have to go to work on it.

  Duster and his wife, Bonnie, were two of the greatest theoretical mathematicians to ever live. Ryan had never met either one, but had heard nothing but incredible things about them for his entire time getting his doctorate in mathematics. In fact, he had published a couple of papers expanding Bonnie and Duster’s theories in a tiny area of the nature of time and space and energy.

  It was just after his second publication that Duster had called.

  Not only had Ryan been excited about meeting Duster and Bonnie, but he hoped to meet Brice Lincoln and Dixie Smith, the two theoretical mathematicians who worked with Bonnie and Duster. They were only a couple years older than R
yan, but had already become legendary in their advances in the nature of space and time.

  Theoretical mathematics at the level Ryan was working was a very small world and he felt lucky now to get to meet the people on the leading edge.

  When Duster had picked Ryan up at the Boise airport and they had headed out of town, Duster had told Ryan that there would be another member of the team. Doctor Talia Marr would be joining them.

  Ryan had only heard of her a few times, since her field of expertise was in the mathematics of sound waves. She was a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He had never met her.

  It seemed Bonnie and Doctor Marr planned on flying into the lodge by helicopter. Ryan wouldn’t have minded that as well, since Duster had brought him up to this eight-thousand-foot summit on one of the scariest, twisted, and narrowest roads imaginable.

  From the Boise airport, with a stop for lunch in Cascade, Idaho, it had taken them almost seven hours of driving.

  Most of the drive, Duster had asked Ryan about his life growing up in Phoenix, his love of music as a member of a band in high school, and his extreme love of mathematics.

  A lot of Ryan’s questions of Duster were deflected by statements like, “When we’re all together we’ll explain that.”

  It seemed that Duster didn’t want to explain something twice, and Ryan didn’t blame him.

  But after seven hours with Duster, Ryan got the feeling he had been riding with a very wise and old man, even though Duster wasn’t more than six or seven years older than Ryan. But Duster just had this air about him and a laugh that seemed to be more amusement at the world than anything.

  Just as Ryan gave up the fight against the chilling air and was putting on his jacket, Duster arrived wearing a long brown oilcloth coat that brushed the ground and a cowboy hat. He looked like a marshal from the old west more than a famous theoretical mathematician. He stood tall and walked with purpose. And the long coat and cowboy hat seemed to really accent that.

  “Bonnie is getting Dr. Marr checked into her room,” Duster said, sitting down and putting his cowboy boots up on a second chair. “They will join us in a minute.”

  “Thanks for showing me this incredible place,” Ryan said, indicating both the massive log lodge behind them and the mountains below them.

  Ryan had been blown away by his room after he had checked in. Not only was it in perfect style of 1900’s furniture and bathroom fixtures, but the bed was a real honest featherbed that when he dropped on it, the bed had seemed to swallow him in the most perfect comfort he could have ever imagined.

  It was as if nothing had been changed at all in this lodge since the day it had been built in 1902.

  Ryan couldn’t imagine how much Duster was paying for the three rooms at this time of the year, but from what Ryan understood, Bonnie and Duster had no issue at all with money. They sure gave enough of it away in endowments and mathematics scholarships.

  “Dr. Saddler, I presume,” a woman’s voice said from the door.

  Ryan jumped to his feet and turned to face the smiling Bonnie Kendal. She had her hand extended and he took it, noting the firm, strong grip. For a mathematician, she clearly worked out a lot.

  She stood about his height at five-eleven and had her long brown hair pulled back and tied. She had on jeans, tennis shoes, a white blouse and a dark jacket that she left unzipped at the moment.

  “Wonderful meeting you,” Ryan said. “And please, call me Ryan.”

  It seemed odd to Ryan for Bonnie or Duster to call him a doctor, since each of them had far more degrees than he could ever dream of attaining.

  “I will, Ryan,” Bonnie said. “If you call me Bonnie.”

  As Ryan sat down, she went around, knocked her husband’s boots off the chair and sat down. “You order us a drink?”

  “Of course,” Duster said, smiling. “Smooth flight?”

  “As smooth as it gets when flying over these mountains,” she said.

  She looked at Ryan. “Enjoy the drive up?”

  “Never been on a road like that before,” Ryan said. “But beside the cramp in my hand from hanging on to the door handle so hard, it was actually enjoyable.”

  “You ought to have seen it before it was paved,” Duster said, laughing.

  “No thanks,” Ryan said. He didn’t even want to pretend to imagine that road not paved.

  “That room is wonderful,” a woman’s deep voice said from behind him and again Ryan scrambled to his feet.

  Duster also stood.

  “Dr. Marr I presume?” Duster asked, extending his hand.

  “Just Talia,” the woman said, shaking Duster’s hand as Ryan tried to catch his breath. The woman was the most attractive woman he had ever seen. How was that possible?

  The woman stood just a couple inches shorter than Ryan and also had on jeans and tennis shoes, plus a white Wisconsin sweatshirt over what looked like a red blouse.

  She had short blonde hair and the brightest green eyes Ryan had ever seen.

  He had no idea Dr. Talia Marr was so good-looking. Stunning, actually.

  “Talia. Call me Duster.”

  “This is Dr. Ryan Saddler,” Duster said.

  Talia turned to shake Ryan’s hand and both of them just sort of froze, staring into each other’s eyes.

  Finally Ryan managed to shake her hand, which felt wonderful and smooth and silky.

  Then somehow in slow motion he was sure, he nodded. “Please just call me Ryan.”

  He was beyond happy that his voice didn’t crack.

  She nodded. “Talia.”

  At that moment, a woman with three drinks on a tray came out of the lodge and broke the moment. Thankfully.

  Somehow, Ryan managed to get seated again before his knees gave out or he fainted dead away from not breathing.

  He had never had a reaction about a woman like that before.

  Ever.

  It must have been the high altitude and clean air.

  CHAPTER THREE

  December 24th, 1995

  Boise, Idaho

  THE URINE AND disinfectant smells of the nursing home washed over Carl like a wave over a child on the beach.

  He grabbed the doorframe and held on, feeling dizzy, confused.

  A moment before he had been standing in front of the jukebox at the Garden Lounge, playing a stupid game that Stout, the owner of the bar, had insisted on playing. Carl had that memory firmly placed in his mind, as well as the memories of the last twenty years.

  Yet he also had fresh memories of driving to the nursing home this Christmas Eve. Memories of wishing he could go back to college, wishing he could do something to put Mother out of her pain and suffering.

  And a very clear, very fresh memory of his decision to help her die with some dignity as she had asked.

  It had been a Sunday afternoon, right after the second stroke. She had not only asked, she had begged him to help her if another stroke took her mind and left her body alive. That had been her worst fear.

  Yet he hadn’t done anything.

  The part of his mind that remembered the Garden Lounge knew that she had suffered three more strokes.

  He had been too afraid.

  He squeezed the doorframe until his hand hurt. Christmas music played softly down the hall. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” the same song he had just punched up on the jukebox at the Garden Lounge.

  How...?

  This made no sense.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath and look around. There was a white-haired nurse sitting behind the counter at the nurse’s station. His mother was in her bed across the small room. Slight, wasted remains of the woman she had once been. She no longer recognized him or anyone else from her life. Most of the time she sat in a wheelchair and just drooled, her head hanging limp.

  The doctors had said she would never recover from the series of strokes. Carl knew from his memory of the Garden Lounge that she would spend the next five years in that bed and chair. He would grow t
o hate this room, hate his own fear, hate his own inability to do something to help her.

  He glanced over at his own hand against the doorframe. It was his hand all right, only young. No scar where the broken window cut it last year. No deep tan from being outside for so long.

  He was somehow in his young body, his old memories combined with his young ones. He felt dizzy with the conflicting memories and thoughts. His mouth was dry.

  He could really use a drink.

  From down the hall the song reached its halfway point and Carl felt panic filling his mind. Stout and that damn jukebox of his had given him a second chance. An opportunity to do what he had always wished he had done. Now he was wasting it by doing what he had done the first time.

  Nothing.

  He took a deep, almost sobbing breath.

  This time would be different.

  He checked the hall and then moved across the room and around to the other side of his mother’s bed. She smelled of urine. The nurses would change her diapers many times in the next five years, and many times he would be forced to help.

  “This is what you wanted, Mom.”

  He swallowed the bile trying to force its way up into his mouth.

  “I’m doing what you asked.”

  He pulled the edge of the pillow up and over her face, pressing it hard against her mouth and nose.

  “I love you, Mom,” he said, softly. “I’ve learned to be strong. I hope you would be proud of me.”

  She struggled, trying to twist her head from side to side. But he held on, wanting to be sick, wanting to let go, wanting to let her breathe, but not wanting her to suffer day after day for five long years.

  Finally the tension in her body eased and her head became heavy in his hands.

  Very heavy.

  He gently stroked her soft hair as he held the pillow in place for another fifteen seconds. Then he eased his mother’s head back into a more comfortable position.

  He stood up straight and took a deep breath, never taking his gaze from the face of his dead mother.