Hollow World Page 17

  Ellis was struggling to get his physics book past the set of shoulder pads when Ricky showed up and thought it might be fun to bounce him like a basketball. Ellis got in one good punch, but back then he’d only weighed one twenty, and the feeble blow just made Ricky mad. The Dick howled and punched Ellis in the stomach. Blowing his wind out wasn’t going to be enough to sate Ricky after having been hit. That boy had a mean streak. While he liked to pretend he got his nickname from the size of his prick, everyone knew Ricky the Dick was the sort to kick dogs for laughs.

  “Now I’m gonna learn ya why fighting back is a bad idea.” The Dick had told him. “There’s a pecking order to the world, and God put you at the bottom.”

  Ellis expected he’d be waking up in an ambulance, but that’s when Warren showed up. Like a game of Stratego, where a sergeant took a scout but a marshal took everything, the scenario played out; Ellis was the geek; Ricky was a basketball player with big sweaty hands, jabbing elbows, and a love of intimidation, but Warren was an offensive fullback on the football team. The “Eckard Express” they had called him on the field, and Ellis caught just a glimpse of Ricky in his Led Zeppelin T-shirt flying across the hall. He had left a dent in locker 243 before collapsing to the tile with a grunt followed by tears.

  The principal had wanted to suspend Warren and Ricky both. He wasn’t interested in the excuses of two thugs, but Ellis was a straight-A student with no record of trouble. When he spoke on Warren’s behalf, Ricky the Dick received suspension for a month, and Warren only got a talking-to.

  After that, Warren and he became best friends, his only friend for forty-three years. Ellis never was good at making new ones, and those he found had bigger dreams than Detroit could support. Warren, on the other hand, was steadfast, and the two settled together like sediment at the bottom of a lake. They were like Vietnam vets who could only fully relate to other combat vets—Warren understood him.

  “Browning, right? Nice little weapon.” He turned the pistol side-to-side and peered one-eyed along the barrel, aiming down the length of Firestone Lane. “Funny, isn’t it? I told you I didn’t want to see the future, that I’d rather go to the past, but I wasn’t thinking back far enough. The Old West—that, my friend, was the real sweet spot. When every man had a pistol on his hip, and every crime ended in a hanging. You just went out, built a house, and lived your life, and if anyone tried to stop you. Bam! What happens in Tombstone…stays in Tombstone. Now here we are in the future but toting guns, living on a farm, and all on a planet with few people and no rules—except those we make.”

  Ellis could hear Pax’s voice in his head, screaming, You gave him your gun! The man is a murderer!

  He watched Warren play with the pistol, his two missing fingers making it more of a challenge to hold properly.

  Two missing fingers. Same hand, same fingers; coincidence didn’t cover that adequately. There had to be a connection, but this was Warren Eckard in front of him. He’d known the man all his life. He grew up with him, had his first beer with him. They saw the first Star Wars movie at the Americana Theater together. Warren was like his brother—a close, protective older brother who’d always watched out for Ellis.

  Only…he was different too.

  Not just the white hair and beard or the weight loss—there was something in the way he talked. Warren had never been a happy man. He’d spent his entire adult life complaining about how he had gotten screwed. First there had been his mother and teachers who insisted he do better in school, forcing him to quit the football team when his grades had failed to meet expectations, and ruining what he knew was a promising career. Later it had been his bosses, his wives—who had become ex-wives—who never understood his worth. Then there was the government, incompetent and corrupt that destroyed everything. He’d spent years preaching from the pulpit of a bar stool. Many people heard; no one listened. Not even Ellis. He found it hard to heed a voice that dripped of so much self-pity, but all that was gone now. The unfocused grumblings were replaced with a strange optimism that made Ellis wonder if he really knew his old friend anymore.

  But it’s still Warren, isn’t it?

  Ellis watched him holding the gun and had to repress a desire to ask for it back.

  “I was right too. This is the life.” Warren looked over with a sage expression that was another new part of his attire. “It’s hard. Don’t get me wrong. I thought I might die that first winter. Actually ate bugs. Nearly died trying out different berries, until I could tell the good from the bad. That’s the trick of it, learning the good from the bad. Knowing which things you can trust to help keep you alive and those that will sicken and kill you. But My Lord, Ellis, that spring—it was like what all those Bible thumpers used to talk about—a come-to-meeting with God. I felt born again. I crawled out of that grave of dirt and sticks into a new life, a new dawn for old Warren Eckard.”

  Warren checked the pistol’s magazine, slapped it back in, slipped off the safety, and cocked it.

  Ellis felt his heart quicken.

  “I realized there was nothing holding me back anymore. I was free. I could do anything I wanted. No one around to stop me anymore. No laws at all, you know?” He gave Ellis a wicked old-man grin and a wink that shortened Ellis’s breath.

  What kind of laws we talking here, Warren?

  “If I fucked up, it’d be my own fault. I didn’t think anyone else existed, so I felt like Adam. Just me and God walking in Eden, before that bitch, Eve, showed up and ruined everything.” He chuckled and looked at Ellis. “Why you so quiet?”

  “Can I have my gun back?”

  He laughed. “Am I making you nervous?”

  “Well, you don’t have a good track record after taking the safety guard off mechanical devices. Just concerned you might make a matched set of missing digits by shooting yourself in the foot.”

  Warren offered the sort of smile that Ellis couldn’t read: amused, polite, condescending? Then he slipped the safety back on, lowered the hammer, and handed the pistol back before taking another sip of his tea.

  “I’m actually surprised you’re enjoying this so much.” Ellis felt his heart coast as he checked the pistol, assuring himself that the safety was indeed on. “No beer, no ice, no football, no women. Not like you.”

  “I was a man of no account in a world of wealth. Now I’m a king in a land of absence. Everything is before me. You see, it’s like I was a leftover part in a completed picture, but now the world is a blank canvas.”

  “When did you become a philosopher? Four days ago the most eloquent thing coming out of your mouth was the jingle of a beer commercial.”

  “That’s part of it. No TV, no radio, no Internet, and precious few books—with no diversions, a man thinks…a lot. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching, and I realized that I was a poor man, who also didn’t have any money,” he said with an amused look, watching to see if Ellis caught the twist of words.

  He gave a slight smile.

  Warren returned it with a wink. “The world has been erased. We can build whatever we want. We can be the founding fathers of a new civilization. Do it right this time.”

  “There’s already a civilization. Millions of people might disagree with your vision of the future. From what I’ve heard, they consider the surface kinda sacred.”

  “You’ve spent time with them. You know what they’re like. A bunch of children. They won’t fight. We’re like that Spanish guy that landed in Mexico…”

  “Cortés?”

  “Yeah—him. He whipped the whole country of Mexico with just a handful of men.”

  “He defeated the Aztec Empire with five hundred men, advanced technology, and smallpox.”

  “Yeah, whatever. We’re like him. We’re the only two real men left in the world. The rest are—I don’t know, really, but they synthesized aggression out of them. They remind me of my second wife. They’ll scream and pout, but the worst they’ll ever do is call you names and occasionally throw something. We could rule this world with no
thing more than our fists and a hunting knife, and yet we both have guns. That practically makes us gods.”

  Or devils.

  He smirked at the look on Ellis’s face. “Relax. I’m not applying to be the next Hitler, just saying the baldies are content living underground, so there’s no reason we can’t make a town for ourselves right here. Why should they care?”

  “They might.”

  Warren seemed to ponder this, sipping his tea thoughtfully. Inside, there was a banging of pots and pans and the clap of a cupboard.

  Ellis looked down at his gun. Funny that he hadn’t put it away. He always had in the past. He set the pistol in his lap, slid his backpack between his feet, and pulled out his coat.

  “You cold?” Warren asked.

  “No.” The single word sounded ominous, but maybe only to Ellis, because he alone knew what was coming next.

  Ellis pulled the letters out of his coat pocket, where they’d been since 2014. He had considered not mentioning them. What good could come from bringing them up now? Peggy was dead, that whole world gone. For Ellis, however, the hurt was only a few days old, and there was no going forward until he dealt with that wound. His mother had taught him the best way to avoid infection was to pour a solid dose of hydrogen peroxide on deep cuts. It would hurt like hell, but it had to be done before any kind of bandage could be put on—before any healing could take place.

  Ellis didn’t say a word. He just handed over the letters. Warren looked at them, puzzled, shuffling through the small stack. “Oh,” he finally said, understanding filling his eyes. “Damn, these are really old. Peggy kept these, huh?”

  Ellis only glared.

  “What?” Warren asked. Not a trace of guilt, not a hint of remorse.

  “You were fucking my wife.”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “Right after my son died, you were screwing Peggy.”

  Warren was nodding like one of those stupid bobbleheads on a car dashboard.

  “Have you got anything to say?”

  Warren shrugged. “What do you want me to say, Ellis? That was over two thousand years ago.”

  “Not for me. I just found out.”

  Warren nodded with a fair-enough expression. “So, you want me to say I’m sorry. Is that it?” Warren looked over at the pistol, still in Ellis’s lap. “Or are you planning on killing me?”

  Is this how these things happen? The subconscious just takes control? Is that the real reason he sent Pax away? Was he ashamed of what he might do? Pax thought so well of him; he didn’t want to ruin that. Wasn’t it always the same thing in the aftermath of a shooting?

  He was a peaceful man, Officer. Never had a bad word to say about anyone. Don’t know how he could have done it. It just wasn’t like him.

  He looked back at Warren. “I don’t want you to say you’re sorry—I want you to actually be sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay?

  “Goddammit, Warren! You were my friend. My only real friend. You had all kinds of women. I had one.”

  But you weren’t doing anything with her no more, were you, buddy? You and Peggy hadn’t shared so much as a real kiss in months. And I was getting fat and not the looker I once was. So we did it. I had her in your bed on that nice lavender comforter. Used to sneak up there three times a week to rock that headboard against the wall. Glad you didn’t come home from work early. As they say, if the bed’s a-rockin’, don’t come up the stairs. Peggy even kept her high heels on.

  Ellis realized his finger was inside the trigger guard of the gun.

  “You really want the truth?” Warren’s eyes glanced at the gun in Ellis’s lap. “She was mad at you. Hated you. Blamed you for Isley’s death—but you already know that.” Warren rubbed his thumb thoughtfully along the side of his near-empty glass. “I was with her that day. I had stopped by to borrow your ladder just as she was coming home. We went to the garage, and we found Isley together. She screamed, and I held her while she cried.

  “Then a month or two later, when she started writing me letters, I figured it was because we shared this moment, you know? But I think she was just trying to hurt you. It wasn’t like she wanted me. She wanted to get back at you. I didn’t know that beforehand. It was only the one time—but you already know that from the letters.” Warren handed them back to Ellis.

  “We were in the back of her car parked in the corner of a Denny’s parking lot where we went after the bar had closed. Both of us were drunk. Wasn’t my finest hour by a long shot. I guess I thought I was helping her—and I was, just not the way I thought. I figured I was lending comfort to a woman cut off from her husband. Instead, I was providing her with the means to punish you. Course it didn’t turn out that way, because you never found out—until now. Like one of those World War II mines that blows off a kid’s foot fifty years later. She could have told you—don’t know why she didn’t. She’d also said she was going to get a divorce. Didn’t do that either. If you want to know what I think, I honestly believe that even though she wanted to, she just couldn’t stop loving you.”

  Warren swallowed the last of his tea—Ellis just swallowed.

  “Her revenge backfired in the end. After you did your vanishing act, Peggy became convinced you killed yourself because of those letters. I tried to tell her about the time machine, but you can imagine her reaction. When I insisted that’s what happened, she stopped taking my calls. Never got any response to my emails. She moved to Florida about a year later—but I doubt it was just to get away from me. Never remarried.”

  Ellis’s gaze had drifted away from Warren to the fields, but snapped back at the sound of those last two words.

  “How’d she die?”

  Warren raised an eyebrow. “How should I know?”

  “You said she never remarried. If she was still alive when you left, you would have said you don’t know if she ever remarried.”

  “Mr. M.I.T.”

  “So how did she die?”

  Warren sighed. “Car accident.”

  “Anyone else hurt?”

  “She was alone. Hit a cement freeway viaduct.”

  Ellis narrowed his eyes. “Bad weather?”

  “Drunk, I was told.” Warren held his stare for half a minute. “At the funeral, her sister, what’s-her-name—the one in Omaha—Sandy! Sandy mentioned Peggy had begun drinking after you left. They tried to get her help. Tried to get her to AA or something. Didn’t work, I guess.” Warren watched him a second. He must have looked upset, because Warren felt it was necessary to add, “She, ah—she finally forgave you—for Isley and such.”

  “How would you know?”

  “That photo, the one she took of you and Isley at Cedar Point—the one she folded you out of? Sandy said she found it among her things. The fold was bent back, and Peggy had written the words I’m sorry across it with a black Sharpie.”

  Ellis began to sob.

  The kitchen of the Firestone Farm smelled wonderful. Moist air, born of baking bread, bubbling pots on a cast-iron stove, and meat cooking in the oven made Ellis think of childhood Thanksgivings, Christmases, and Easters. Shadowy figures worked in the streams of light entering the windows and screen door. That, too, reminded Ellis of holidays—of years ago when he was very young, and they used to visit his grandmother. Her house was old enough to have a coal chute, and in the basement she had an icebox and a concrete basin with an angled side where a washboard would attach. His grandmother’s place had been wired for electricity but wasn’t native to it, and many of the rooms were left dark.

  The Firestone Farm lacked sound as well as light. The silence was surprising and far more noticeable than Ellis would have expected. For nearly sixty years he’d known the sounds of the inside: air-conditioning fans, the rattle and hum of refrigerators, the buzz of fluorescents, the squawk of television, and the music of radios and stereos. The farm had only the scuffle of bare feet, and the slow tick of a wall clock, which dominated the audio landscape as a metronome setting the room’s
tempo. Unlike the coziness of smells and light, the lack of sound was disturbing—the dead atmosphere of a power outage.

  They had all paused when he entered, turning while holding clay pots of steaming vegetables. They stared with the same looks Ellis had seen on the students at the crime scene. Maybe they had heard him crying. He’d sobbed for some time while Warren politely took his pistol for a walk to the barn, granting him some privacy. By the time he had returned, Ellis had stopped crying and was feeling empty and achy, as if he’d thrown up. They sat for a long while in silence before someone called them in for dinner.

  “Quit your gawking, and get the food on the table,” Warren snapped, coming in behind Ellis. “Have to excuse them. To the baldies we’re like Marilyn Monroe, a unicorn, or maybe even Jesus. Been two years, and I still catch them looking up my skirt. Isn’t that right, Yal?”

  Yal was the one with the apron. Despite each of them wearing the same Amish-style black pants and white button shirt, Ellis could tell them apart because each had their names stitched on their right breasts like old-fashioned gas station attendants. Yal had been the one peeking out the door, who now turned away sheepishly to resume stirring a big blackened kettle.

  “Have a seat,” Warren said, dragging a chair. Then he walked to the butcher’s block and began sharpening a big knife on a strap that hung from the wall. “I slaughtered the fatted lamb for you.” He grinned. “Except that ole cotton ball was ancient, and I butchered her early this morning before I even knew you were coming—but hey, let’s not squabble with details, right?”

  The table was already set with several homemade bowls filled with thick-cut carrots, potatoes, sausage and sauerkraut, and a basket of big fresh rolls. On a plate was a clump of butter, and it took Ellis a moment to recognize it, not having seen butter that didn’t come in a plastic tub or wax wrap. The fist-size glob had finger prints.

  “You’re in for a treat, Ellis,” Warren declared. He covered his hand in a towel and threw open the oven’s door. “This is how a man was meant to eat. Everything’s fresh from the garden, the barn, or the woods.” He hauled out a big pan, holding what looked like a quarter of a lamb, the flesh golden brown. As he set the roast at the head of the table, the others took their seats. Besides himself and Warren, there were five—each with Pax’s face but not quite—too somber, too blank.