The Wooden Sea Read online

  Behind them the Crane’s View Volunteer Fire Department worked hard to control the flames. Those guys knew what they were doing, but the fire was roaring and it took everything they had.

  The black guy stepped forward smiling and put out his right hand. “I came to see you, Mr. McCabe. My name is Astopel.”

  Warily, I shook with him. The kid stood with arms crossed and a strange, anxious expression on his face. What did it say?

  “You’re only a few inches from the hangman’s shove, Mr. McCabe. That’s what necessitated this visit.”

  As if for dramatic affect, the roof on the house chose that moment to collapse in an explosion of sound, flying sparks, and debris.

  “Is this your calling card?” I pointed at the house and tried to sound cool.

  Junior cringed and mouthed, “Don’t!”

  “Haven’t you seen enough wonders recently to convince you life has changed?” The man barked a short cough and tried repeatedly to clear his throat. “No, that isn’t my calling card, but if you’d like, I could turn you into a wood louse. Or perhaps a spine-tailed swift, the fastest bird on earth. Would you rather suffer from a hideous rare disease for five minutes? Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome? Opitz Disease? How about Alien Hand Syndrome?”

  “I always wanted to be Elvis—”

  Little Frannie threw up his hands in exasperation. “You’re a retard! Do you know who this is?”

  “Apostle.”

  “Astopel, Mr. McCabe, Astopel. My name is not an anagram. I am no apostle.” For the first time his expression changed. He looked amused by his remark. “The fire, by the way, is not my doing. In fact it’s your fault. If you had been quicker about things, this house might have been saved.”

  I waited. He waited. Little Fran looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match. Or two gunfighters about to draw on each other.

  Finally I’d had enough of the standoff. “Look, I’m just from planet Earth, okay? I don’t understand how a TV works, much less the fucking universe. So let’s skip Alien Hand Syndrome and get to the point. Obviously I’ve been missing something here. So call me stupid and let’s get on with it. Tell me what I’m supposed to do. You don’t have to show me more dead pirls. dogs, midnight construction crews... Burn this house down—I don’t give a shit. Just say what you want me to do!”

  He nodded. “I will. I’ll even give you two choices. You can find it forward or backward. I will accept either.”

  “Explain.”

  “Forward means you can continue to search for the answers the way you have been. Obviously that hasn’t worked so far but that doesn’t mean it won’t in time. The only problem is you have no time. One week, to be precise. You have one more week to figure out what is going on in Crane’s View, Mr. McCabe, and how it applies to you.

  “The other possibility is to figure it out backward, I will send you to the last week of your life with only the knowledge you have now. From that vantage point you will have to work backward to again decipher what is happening to your town.”

  “How do I know when that last week would be?”

  “You don’t. That’s the risk of that choice. You might die next week or in forty years. What you discover could be reassuring or depressing. You take your chances.”

  “When you say one more week, does that mean to live or to figure this out? Because if I’m going to die tomorrow anyway—”

  He looked at his watch. I looked at it too and did a double take because it was a white-gold IWC Da Vinci. I know because it is rare, costs a fortune, and was exactly the same watch I wore. Instinctively I looked at my wrist. My watch was gone. I always wore my watch. He was wearing my watch. I was so instantly sure that I didn’t need to ask to see if a long thin scratch ran across the back.

  “That’s my watch.”

  “And a very beautiful one too.” Raising his wrist, he turned it slowly back and forth.

  Fran Junior saw it coming before I even knew it was in me. He shouted, “Don’t!” But it was too late. Nothing stops my anger when it comes. Nothing.

  “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

  But I was already throwing the punch as Astopel admired my watch. Starting up high, I dropped it down just enough to give him the full pop on the temple. Bull’s-eye. He fell where he stood.

  Little Fran froze. Squeezing his eyes shut, he slapped both hands over his ears, as if preparing for a big boom to follow. Because I was watching him, I didn’t see what was going on with Astopel. I’d assumed he was out for a while. Wrong. When I looked down, he was staring at me with the same warm smile we’d begun with.

  “Give me back my watch.”

  “Excellent choice!” Undoing it, he handed it up but he was looking at Little Fran and not me. I took the watch and turned it over to check the back. The scratch was there, but so was a date engraved in thick gold numbers that had never been there before.

  “What’s this?”

  “A reminder, Mr. McCabe. You have one week. One week from the date on that watch. Incidentally, I was planning on returning it to you. But your reaction does make things so much simpler. A quick question—how’s your German?”

  I didn’t remember what day it was so I looked at the watch again. I saw the date and a moment later—my hand. Liver spots. My hand was covered with cantaloupe-colored liver spots. And half of the pinkie on my right hand was missing. The skin was very wrinkled and looked much too big for the bones it covered. A child’s bones in an adult’s hand. Shocked, I lifted the other to see the same—an old man’s hand.

  And the pain! Both hands felt like they were five fingers of fiery ache. I could barely hold onto the watch.

  “You know, Frannie, I asked that dentist why should I pay for an expensive crown when all I use my teeth for these days is eating hamburgers and suckin’ up soup.”

  An old man stood nearby wearing a god-awful golf cap that looked like it fell into a plaid factory and couldn’t escape. The rest of his outfit made things worse. A shiny green short-sleeve shirt about two sizes too big and—help!—plaid pants that not only didn’t match his hat but were at war with it. Large gold glasses magnified his eyes into pool balls and a smile so full of yellow teeth they might as well have been bamboo.

  I gave him the once-over glance and then returned to looking at my hands. I saw something else wrong. My eyes slid down to my shirt and pants, both of which were—red. I was wearing red clothes? But I mean really red—clown-nose, Coca-Cola-sign red– baggy red shirt and pants on top of a pair of brown suede Hush Puppies. Had I changed into an old golfer? Shriveled hands, Hush Puppies, and red pants? Holy shit! It wasn’t bad enough growing hair out of your ears and nose when you got old; apparently you grew serious bad taste too.

  “What do you think, Fran? Think I should get the porcelain or the gold?”

  When I could finally stop gawking at my hands, pants, and this old windbag in his plaid cap, I slowly looked around. We stood in the middle of a wide walking street. Every sign on it was in German. I remembered Astopel’s last question, “How’s your German?” Now I knew why he asked.

  It was a beautiful street, but one glance told you it was not America, much less precious old Crane’s View.

  “What’s your name?” I asked Mr. Plaid. My voice was another shock—it was much higher than I knew, and all the words came out a whine.

  He looked at me strangely. I had to get some kind of hold on reality before I flipped out. Almost without my realizing it, my whole body started to introduce itself. I had to take a fierce piss. Little pains announced themselves all over me. My knees cracked when I moved, my back sang ouch! when I turned to look behind. I discovered I couldn’t turn very fast even if I had wanted to. Although my body felt lighter, there was no energy to move it.

  “Whatsa matter, Fran, had too much of that schnapps at the restaurant last night?”

  “Where are we? Where is this?” I tried moving my head around to take in our surroundings. But something cracked viciously in my neck and p
aralyzed me for a moment.

  “I guess you had too much! Wien, buddy, do you believe it? The old Blue Danube’s just down the way. Remember we walked this street last night to get to the boat?”

  “What boat?”

  He smiled like he thought I was kidding. “Boat around the city. Remember how you said it was so loud? But you spent most of your time at the bar with Susan so I didn’t think you was listening too hard.” He let out a laugh that sounded like a braying donkey. Hee-haw hee-haw.

  “Susan who?”

  “Susan who, the man asks. Well, how about Susan your wife?”

  “Uh-oh. Fucked again.” I looked around again and only then did it slowly begin to seep through my cracks what had happened. Astopel had flung me forward to the last week of my life. Which took place a long way from home. The word Veen came back to me. That’s what Mr. Plaid said. Where the hell was Veen?

  I looked at him again and was about to ask, but the expression on his face shut me up. The guy was angry.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I told you about that language, Fran. I’m not a man who likes hearing profanity from no one. We’ve talked about this before—”

  I stepped in close and grabbed his throat with an aching right hand. “Don’t give me any shit, Droopy. Who are you, where are we, and please answer whatever questions I have right now. Or I’ll knock your teeth so far down your throat you’ll have to stick a toothbrush up your ass to brush “em!”

  Droopy grabbed my hand and gave it some kind of karate twist. Suddenly my arm was up behind my back in a hammerlock and he was breathing old-man breath over my shoulder. “Don’t be a dumbbell, Fran.” He gave rny arm a sharp push up my back and even more pain flooded me. I thought I’d pass out.

  “Please let him go, mister! He gets senile sometimes and doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  I recognized the voice but couldn’t move to see if it really was whom I thought it was.

  Behind me, Droopy said “You know him, young fella?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s my grandfather. Grandpa McCabe.”

  My arm was released but stayed where it was. For a moment it felt’like I’d never be able to unbend the damned thing again. It just sort of stayed up behind my back like a bent chicken wing.

  “You better tell your granddad to behave himself or he’s gonna get into big trouble with that kinda talk.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll keep an eye on him. Thank you, sir!” Frannie Junior’s voice came out sounding like the worst kind of suck-up, sycophantic, brown-nosing ass-kisser. He came from behind and took me gently by the other arm.

  I snatched it away. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He looked at Droopy and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Don’t you remember, Cramps? I came this morning to surprise you.”

  “Yeah? Some surprise.” I tried to march away but my legs felt like hot rubber bands. “I’m old! What the hell am I doing old?”

  “You should be happy! Now you know you’re going to live a long time. That’s what you get for punching Astopel.”

  “The guy stole my watch!”

  “Yeah but you weren’t exactly diplomatic taking it back.”

  I shook my head. “You would’ve done the same thing! What about the guy you hit at the Schiavo house?”

  “That was different.” He crossed his arms to indicate that discussion was finished.

  “My grandson! If I had a grandson like you I’d move to Sumatra.”

  “If you were my grandfather I’d buy you the ticket.”

  “So are you fellas catching up on family business?” Droopy came up and was all smiles again.

  “What’s your name?” I had to start somewhere and knowing who he was might lead to something.

  “August Gould, Gus to my friends; pleased to make your acquaintance. Again. You want to shake hands now and make it official?”

  “Gus Gould.”

  “That’s right, sir.” He was smiling like a carved Halloween pumpkin.

  “Gus, my memory is a sieve today. Tell me exactly where we are and what we’re doing here.”

  “We’re in Vienna, Austria, Fran. This is a two-week tour of Europe and we got one more week to PO. After here we go to Venice, Florence, Rome, Athens, and then home.”

  “Where’s home?” I almost didn’t want to ask for fear he’d say some place like Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

  “Yours is New York. Mine is St. Louis.”

  “Crane’s View, New York?”

  “No, the city. Manhattan.”

  The kid looked at me. “That’s cool. I wouldn’t mind living in the city. But what happened to Crane’s View?”

  I shrugged and turned back to Gus. “And you say my wife’s name is Susan? Not Magda?”

  “Come on, Fran, now you are pulling my leg! You can’t not know who your wife is, for crying out loud. If your memory was that bad she’d have to lead you around on a leash.” He sighed like my little game with him had gone on too long. “Susan Ginnety. That’s her name as far as I know. Although I don’t think I’d be so happy having a wife that didn’t want my last name when we got married.”

  Both the kid and I yelped in disbelief the instant we heard her full name spoken. Susan Ginnety? I had married Susan Ginnety? The kid was so overwhelmed by the news that he jumped away from me, grabbed his head, and did an agony dance right there on the spot.

  “Susan Ginnety?! Eeyow! You married that spaz? First Magda Ostrova out of tenth grade and then Susan Ginnety? What happened to your brain? No, what happened to my brain? You killed it!”

  “Cut it out! I know as much about this as you do. Susan’s already married! She’s—Uh-oh.” I suddenly remembered right before all this happened she and her husband had separated. “We gotta find her. We gotta talk to her. Gus, where is she? Do you know where Susan is now?”

  He glanced at his watch. It was a strange-looking thing. Appeared to be more a black rubber bracelet than a watch. And from what I could see, the numbers on it made no sense, watch-wise. He brought it close to his mouth and said, “Call Susan Ginnety.”

  The kid let fly a low whistle. “That’s a phone?’

  Gus raised his eyebrows but said nothing, obviously waiting for some kind of response from his phone. Suddenly he began talking. “Susan? Hi, it’s Gus Gould. Yeah, I’m keepin’ an eye on him and that grandson of yours. What? Yeah, your grandson. No wait, wait. I got Frannie right here. Says he wants to talk to you about something.” He smiled at me. I frowned. “Well, Fran, go ahead, talk to her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed to my wrist and for the first time I saw/realized I was wearing one of those bracelets; the kid too. Hesitantly I brought it up toward my face but didn’t know how far away I was supposed to keep it when I spoke. From afar it must have looked like I was afraid the bracelet was going to bite me. “Susan?”

  “Hi, Frannie. What’s up?”

  Her voice was crystal-clear, but how the hell was I hearing it? I felt around and inside both ears but nothing was in either. “How am I hearing this? How does this work?”

  Gus announced authoritatively, “Linear matrix tubing.”

  “Say what?”

  “Linear matrix tubing. There’s a deliberated fiber-optic conduit bleached through an open-end ekistics feed—”

  “Forget it! Susan, where are you? We gotta talk right now.”

  “At the cafe, Frannie. Don’t you remember? You and Gus said you wanted to go—”

  “Yeah yeah, forget it. You and I gotta talk immediately.”

  She was silent too long and then sighed like a martyr giving up the ghost. “I hope you’re not going to complain about this trip again. I really don’t want to hear another rant—”

  “I ain’t going to rant, Susan, and what I’ve got to say is not about the trip. I just gotta ask some things.” I could hear my voice going weird and desperate. If it went any higher, pretty soon I would sound like a teakettle whistling.

  “We’r
e at the cafe. But you know that.”

  “No, Suze, I don’t know that. I didn’t even know where I was until about five minutes ago, but I won’t dwell on that one. What cafe?”

  “The Sperl.”

  “The Squirrel? You’re at a cafe called the Squirrel?”

  “Sperl, Frannie, Sperl. Turn your hearing aid up, dear.”

  “All right, I’ll find it. What do you look like now?”

  She chuckled in her trademark way. I’d heard it often enough at our weekly meetings when we discussed the goings-on in Crane’s View. “What do I look like now? Well, like I did this morning, in case you forget. Byyyye!”

  Gus Gould thought that was the funniest thing and again his annoying heehaw laugh broke out of the corral. I’d forgotten he could hear both sides of our conversation. “I’ll point her out to you, Fran.”

  “Yeah, great, thanks. Where is this Cafe Sperl, Squirrel, whatever?”

  “Right near our hotel.” Gus gestured for us to follow him and strode away.

  I looked at the kid. “Our hotel? What hotel? I have no idea what the hell is going on here. What’s wrong with this picture?” I started walking.

  “It didn’t have to be like this. It’s your fault! If you hadn’t been so stupid and hit Astopel—”

  “Change the channel willya, sonny? You already said that nineteen times. If you’re expecting an apology you’re not getting it. Anyway, you still haven’t said what you’re doing here.”

  “I don’t know. One moment I’m living my own life, minding my own fucking business, then whoomp, I’m in yours, and now I’m here.”

  “I don’t believe this. Plus if we’re so far in the future, how come things don’t look different?”

  Which was true. If I was now somewhere between seventy and eighty years old, at least three decades had passed. But from what little I’d seen of the surroundings, the world hadn’t changed much. Stores were stores and cars rolled by on streets, not in the air a la Back to the Future. Most of them looked sleeker and more aerodynamic, but they were still cars.

  Junior interrupted my thoughts. “It was the same for me. When I got to your time I thought what’s so different? Same kind of clothes, a TV’s still a TV—”