Lithium, Chptr 8 – Xperience Fiction

Lithium, Chptr 8 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

The engine could’ve been a cage trapping a hypnotist who wielded RPMs like the swings of a pocket watch. The sun shone off the windshield, shooting off fine scratches in a starburst. Andy shuffled cards around in between yawns. They were a nearing a hundred miles west of Albany, and at the rate they were going, on the highway he chose for the trip, it left them close to six hours’ worth of driving, plus stops.

The minivan was ten years old, the only one he could get and afford the payments, of which he paid the last he could the month prior. The dealership would send a repo company eventually, and Mel had no idea how far they’d actually go for a six-year-old minivan. Theoretically, he had enough money to pay his car loan and insurance for one more month, but it would deplete them, and he didn’t know what expenses lay ahead.

“Did you see the farm?” Andy said. “Pictures? Is it on YouTube?”

“No, why would it be on YouTube?”

Andy splayed his hands forward in a sign of plenty. “Everything’s on YouTube,” he said. “How do you know it’s really a farm?”

“I trust the guy that told me about it. I know him.”

“The farmer?”

“No, the guy that knows the farmer.”

“I don’t know,” Andy said. “That sounds pretty shaky…”

He looked over to see Mel, not in fear, but donning his wiseass face.

“It could be a… zombie farm. They could chain us up and pull little pieces of our brains out to feed them, and we’ll get dumber and dumber, so we won’t even know it’s happening.”

“You know how to kill zombies, right?” Mel said.

“Everybody knows how to kill zombies.”

“Well, I’m sure it won’t be zombies.”

Andy flicked one of his cards at the dashboard. “It could be aliens that need water. Humans are mostly water.”

“Will they drink our blood?”

“Vampire aliens…” Andy pondered it. “Alien vampires.”

“Is there a difference?” Mel asked.

“Well, vampire aliens got turned when they landed on earth,” he said. “And alien vampires were always vampires, cause they were vampires when they were in space.”

“So which one would you rather go up against?”

Andy scratched his chin. “I think… vampire aliens. Cause garlic might work better on them.”

“I see.”

They drove on, passing one horse towns and two horse towns with general stores that by their very nature had everything one needed if one planned on staying a while. They passed a giant teepee that Mel recognized from his childhood as a souvenir shop. It was all he could do to keep from turning in there, and he really wished that Andy would’ve snoozed when they passed it. But he had to admit that arguing against stopping for souvenirs they didn’t need was the closest to normal he’d experienced in the past few days.

“I wish I could’ve brought my video games,” Andy said when they were long past the teepee.

“I know, but you wouldn’t be able to play them.”

“I’d be able to play them someday,” he said. “You got to bring your paintings.”

“I couldn’t let Larry junk them.” Mel said. “It was different.”

“But Larry got to junk all my video games.”

Andy’s video game console cost just shy of a thousand dollars and was very new. Larry would have been a fool to junk it, but Mel didn’t think making that point would help.

“You can buy that console and those games anytime,” he said. “A painting, once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can’t replace it.”

“You can. You have a photographic memory.”

Mel let the air out of himself. “Okay, you got me there. You know I am selling them, so we’ll have money. I could’ve burned them for all I care about them,”

Andy was quiet for a moment.

“Then why do you paint them?” He asked.

“I don’t know, I mean, you like baseball, right?”

“I do.”

“Well, you usually don’t come away with anything. Why play if you’re not playing for a medal?”

“I like playing ‘cause it’s fun,” he said. “But I always hear you groaning in the painting room when you had the door shut and you didn’t think I can hear you.”

Mel laughed. “It’s a labor of love then. Fun and frustrating. That’s pretty much all of life too.”

It would be hours before they were anywhere near Frewsburg. As much as Andy joked, Mel could tell he was nervous, maybe even scared. He was a smart kid that kept his mouth shut because his brain flew a million miles an hour in a chess game against the living world. He always knew what to do, even when he deferred to Mel. He was the hero in sidekick’s clothing.

They pulled over at a gas station to go to the bathroom. Mel walked in for the bathroom key.

“Gotta’ buy something,” the clerk said. “If you want to use the bathroom, gotta buy something.”

Mel wasn’t put out, but if he landed on the other side of having money, it would be a real bad situation. He made a mental note to always keep two dollars squirreled away in case he had to buy something.

He and Andy finished their business and hopped back in the minivan. They pulled out and started to ease onto Route 20 when Mel heard tires squealing and the rev of an engine. It came fast. Mel’s heart put out bass, but he soon realized the car wasn’t going to hit him. But it did smack a power pole, which sent it on a three-hundred-sixty spin and a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree tilt that put the car up on its roof. Mel couldn’t register what he just saw immediately, but Andy, true to form, was on the ball.

“Dad, look, it’s on fire,” he said.

Mel watched as a man squiggled loose from the driver’s side window and a woman struggled to get out of the passenger window. He watched this from ten yards away, as Mel was out the door before he put it together that he was running toward a burning car.

***

Mel swallowed his Adam’s apple and approached the car, ready to turn tail if the fire got worse. He didn’t know if cars exploded like in the movies, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He might have left it alone if Andy wasn’t watching him. He had to raise Andy to be somewhere between doing what’s right and doing what’s safe, and the line was a tightrope.

He hunched down and glanced in the passenger window. A woman was inside motionless.

“Son of a bitch.” Mel rushed over and tried the door, which would only give so far. He’d have to break the window to try to get her out, and he’d need a tool. Then he remembered something he bought in manic spending during his home preparedness phase. He ran to his car.

“Andy, there’s a tool in the glovebox, orange. Grab it now.”

“Okay.” Andy opened the glovebox and reached for the door. “Is everyone okay?”

“We’ll see.” Mel grabbed the tool and ran back over. The fire was getting bigger, but it was moot now because there was someone inside.

As Mel smashed the window and cut the safety belt, he was terrified. He was waiting for one insurmountable obstacle so he could back off and say he tried his best, but unless that obstacle presented itself, he knew he couldn’t live with the guilt of not doing what he could.

He was pulling her out before he even realized he was at that stage of the rescue, She wasn’t big, but she was dead weight. He didn’t even know if she was alive, or if his moving her was breaking her. His back was starting to twinge when he felt the load get slightly lighter. He looked to see Andy helping to lift her legs. He was so proud of his boy.

The driver had blond frizzy hair, a face possessed of more than an ounce of baby fat, a bulbous nose but thin lips, deep set laugh lines and forehead wrinkles, and the beginnings of a receding hairline. He had a hoop earring and a quarter sleeve tattoo on his left arm. And he was dressed in a red plaid flannel shirt and camouflage cargo shorts.

“Can you give me a ride to my cousin’s house?” He said. “It’s just down the road.”

What?

“You just wrecked your car; it’s on fire right now,” Mel said. “You can’t just go. We gotta call the cops.”

“Oh, don’t do that. Shit.” he looked around, and it was then that Mel realized that the look of shock on his face wasn’t shock.

“Are you drunk?”

The man wavered just enough for Mel to know the answer to his own question. The man shrugged, and, to Mel’s astonishment, started running toward the side of the road, where he disappeared into the woods on the side of the gas station.

Mel looked back at the car and it was fully engulfed. He could hear sirens in the distance. He just hoped one of them was an ambulance.

One, in fact, was an ambulance, and by the time they got there, the woman was at least able to move around, but she didn’t seem to be talking much, just mumbles. The cop interviewed Mel and Andy after they came back from the gas station with two cans of soda – on the house.

“So you saw the driver get out,” Officer Perkins said. “And he ran which way?”

Mel pointed, and the officer wrote it down in his pad.

“He wanted a ride to his cousin’s house.”

“So you talked to him?”

“Just that. Then he took off,” Mel said.

“So you got a good look at him. Can you describe him?”

“Sure, but if you have an extra second, I can sketch him out for you.”

Officer Perkins flipped a page in his pad.

“Sure, I’m game.” He handed Mel the pad and pen, and Mel got to work.

“So you’re an artist?”

“Yup. Painting, usually.” He finished up a full sketch, with shading, in just over two minutes. He handed the pad back to the officer, whose eyes opened wide when he saw it.

“Wow, have you ever thought of being a sketch artist?”

“Wouldn’t work out,” Mel said. “I can only do it when I see something. Other people’s memories I’m not so good with.”

Officer Perkins flipped the page back to the previous one.

“Let me just get your name and address in case we have to contact you, or in someone wants to recognize what you did.”

“I don’t need any of that.”

“Still, let’s get your address, just in case.”

Mel felt squirmy. “We’re actually between homes right now.”

“So you’re moving?”

“Well, not exactly,” Mel said. “I mean, we have a moving ‘from’, but there’s not really a moving ‘to’.”

“Are you two homeless?”

Mel cringed because it sounded so harsh coming from a cop’s mouth, even a friendly cop. Maybe because Mel couldn’t lie to him.

“We are.” Mel said. “At least for right now.”

“Do you have somewhere to go temporarily, where we can reach you?”

“We’re going to a farm,” Andy said.

“That true?”

“We are,” Mel said. “There’s work, and a place to stay for now. But we haven’t met the owner yet. I’m not sure he knows we’re coming.”

“Well, how about you give me that address, and if you have a phone still, or their phone number if you have it. You gave me a good description, and the EMTs think she’s got a concussion. If she takes a turn, we might need to call you back here to testify.”

“We’d put you up in a motel, of course. Get you and the boy money for food.” he added, trying to be comforting, but it sounded pitiful.

They sat in the parking lot as the EMTs packed the woman up, the fire department came to put out the car and two tow trucks righted it to carry it away. Then the road was clear enough for them to leave, but it was nearing dark. They made as much time as they could and they decided to pull the car over at an overlook on Seneca Lake. At least their morning rise would be serene.

“That was intense,” Andy said.

“That it was.”

“You’re a hero.”

Mel sighed. “I could’ve got killed,” he said. “I can’t afford any more heroics.”

***

Mel had mastered almost every trick of painting before he was Andy’s age. The days he wasn’t faking sick to make his mom happy were spent in the public library half a mile from their house, going through books of anatomy and perspective and shadow. He was there so much that the librarian ordered magazines where he saw what he really needed, brushes, types of paint and canvass techniques. He could remember everything he could see but trying to wield the tools; it was the biggest challenge he would ever conquer.

But the ripple of a body of water kissed by the wind was something Mel felt could never be truly captured. As he stared out over Seneca Lake, the subtle scattering of nascent sunlight over the water was alive in a way a bird perched on a branch never could be. Water, he would come to believe, was what proved portals to other worlds existed.

The first painting of his that his father stole was his earliest attempt to capture water.

The lake was quiet, but it should’ve been, seeing as how the sun had just come up. He leaned back and cracked his back. Sleeping in the back row seats in the minivan was an acquired taste. During his long campaign against Debra, he’d taken to going out and sleeping in the car rather than taking the couch and risking a three-a.m. wrath. At least the minivan could be locked from the inside.

The door shut behind him, and he turned to see Andy walking down to the shore, rubbing his eyes and stumbling haphazardly down the smooth, wide stones that peppered the path from the parking area.

“How’d you sleep, bud?”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m hungry. Can we go for breakfast at that diner we drove by last night?”

“I’m thinking we should crack open the pastries we bought at the store instead.” Mel turned back to the lake. “We have about four hours to drive to get to Frewsburg, and if we stop for breakfast, we won’t have time to stop for lunch. Roger said they take a break at the farm between noon and one. Figure we should try to get there then.”

Mel compromised, and they stayed at the lake to eat their pastries on the shore. It wasn’t much of a compromise.

“Wish we had fishing poles,” Andy said.

“Do you know how to fish?”

“You put a worm on a hook and dip it in the water. I’ve seen it in movies.”

“You have to cast the line to get the good spots,” Mel said. “Not easy.”

“I’ll just get the easy fish, then.”

The took off after breakfast, continuing on Route 20. They did have to get on I-90 briefly on the outskirts of Buffalo. Mel was very tempted to take I-90 all the way down, but he was still mindful of tolls. He also knew that if they flew down there on the interstate, they’d have to wait around the town for longer than they’d want to.

They kept driving, talking about fishing, though neither of them knew much about the sport. Andy wasn’t much of a talker unless he was nervous, then his imagination let loose a barrage of mutations he gleefully superimposed on reality. Vampire aliens, zombies, birds that used to be dinosaurs. The last one, admittedly, was true. It was bittersweet for Mel because he welcomed his child’s creative thoughts, but he hated the stress of their origin.

Frewsburg consisted of Route 62 that was wrapped in the name ‘Main Street’ and dotted in a completely mixed fashion with homes and businesses. They had a post office, which was a plus, and a small bowling alley. Mel spied one tavern at the head of a field with signage for a festival of some sort. Mel wondered if the town existed solely for the festival, and disappeared after, like a mirage. Stupid thought: the field was empty and the town was still there.

There was a burger joint and a diner, so they had a choice. The burger joint had fresh paint, gleaming plastic signage and a well-manicured set of flowerpots. The diner resembled the overall town, dull neon, chipped sandwich boards housed in a building wearing away at the edges. That one looked cheaper, and they pulled up to the space in front of it.

Andy ran for the door; Mel reached for his wallet as a show that he could afford to eat there, a nervous habit he developed when he went out to eat with Debra.

Surprisingly, the diner had a crowd. More flannel than a small outlet store. More denim, too. Baseball caps with nylon mesh over the backs, sporting jaunty, snarky sayings, many about either guns or fish. They looked up when Mel and Andy walked in, and without any acknowledgment dropped back into their fare.

They grabbed two stools at the counter and ordered hamburgers. They continued their cosmic time-traveling fish conversation until their order came up.

“So, where are y’all from?” The owner asked as he set down their plates. Mel thought he was the owner, there being no one in a waitress outfit, and likely no revenue for one.

“We’re from a city near Albany,” Mel said.

“What are you doing way out here?”

“Actually, we’re going to a farm. It’s near here.”

“Burle Givens’s farm?”

“Yeah, you’ve heard of it?”

The man let a breath out through his nose. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard of it. We’ve all heard of it.”

Mel looked around to find some of the ‘all’ looking back at him.

“Is there something wrong with the farm? Or with Burle?”

“The farm produces,” the man said. “Burle’s okay enough…”

He got a call from the kitchen and went back. After a few moments, Mel finished his burger. Andy had long since finished his. They waited to pay, and Mell looked around again. Fewer eyes looking back, but not zero.

The owner came back out, and Mel went up to pay. He rang up the order and Mel pulled out his debit card.

“Cash only.”

Mel reached into the inside pocket of his shirt, where he kept the money Bernie had given him for his painting. Lucky, that. He handed a twenty to cover a fifteen-dollar bill.

“Since you’re gonna’ be up there, let me give you some advice,” the owner said. “I know you might be tempted to come down here, do business, maybe the post office, or the market off Ivy Street. And we won’t give you any trouble for doing your business supposing you’re polite when you do it. But this isn’t a good place to loiter about or be intoxicated. And it’s an even worse place to panhandle.”

“Okay, noted.” Mel said.

The owner put his hand on Mel’s shoulder, clamping down just hard enough to push his point into Mel’s shoulder blade.

“We’ll all like you more the less we see you.”

 

 

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