The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (53 page)

I didn’t have any time to think about it because B.C. dropped his Happy Meal and came at me. I swung the bat at his head. Lucky for him, he was able to turn a bit at the last second so instead of hitting a homerun I only knocked him flat.

The clang of metal-on-head sounded like a cooking pot dropped on concrete. I knew I hadn’t killed him because he was already dead, but also because he was twitching and frothing up ugly stuff out at the mouth. I stood over him a few seconds to see if he’d get up again. But most of him was on vacation and what wasn’t, was busy jerking around.

So I swung that fine silver bat again, this time through one of the large windows into what I assumed was the Dickey living room. After the first crash of glass, I knocked out some slivers still stuck in the window frame and after a last glance at him just to be sure, I climbed in.

I’ve never been to a jungle. I’ve never been most places but that’s okay because I don’t speak other languages and the idea of a passport makes me nervous. But as soon as I put both feet down inside the Dickey’s house I was hit by a wet tropical heat the likes of which I’d never experienced. Everything around me was like this 3-D green. A green so strong it almost hurt my eyes. When I took a step forward, I was hit in the face by some kind of nasty thick vine that was a whole new scare in itself. When I managed to push that out of the way I tried to get my bearings looking left and right but all I saw was green everything and sounds that screamed and screeched and cawed and pretty much made me deaf. I was in a jungle somehow and as that sunk into my brain I somehow remembered a line from school that just popped up out of nowhere but said it all—the forest primeval.

Mel Shaveetz had said they got to choose a décor when they came back to earth. So of course a caveman would want one exactly like where he had been living. In the forest primeval. The earth a million years ago or fifty thousand or whenever.

Instead of Eric Dickey’s living room, I was back on earth a zillion years ago, standing like a rabbit frozen in its headlights. And there were no walls in this “décor”; it wasn’t limited to a few closed-in rooms like Rick’s Bar. Everywhere I looked was jungle that went out in every direction with no end in sight. This wasn’t a room—this was forever. Right about then the next words came to my mind.

“Jurassic Park.” I said out loud but couldn’t hear very well for all the screeching going on around me.

“Dinosaurs!” Monsters with teeth as big as the baseball bat I still held. Walking houses with serious appetites for anything fleshy. I had to get out of here. In a panic I turned around, planning to go right back through the window into my world. But there was no window. Only trees and vines and green and noise.

Eventually my brain stopped its own screeching in fear. And although I was scared shitless of what might come stomping out of the trees at any minute, I was losing control so fast that there was only one thing left to do—close my eyes. A trick that almost always worked for me when things got so bad I could feel life unraveling. Close my eyes and say, “I am driving my life. I am steering this car. I CONTROL THINGS.”

I started the “I am—” but it was drowned out by the terrible new sound of something very big—and near—coming my way through the jungle. THUMP THUMP THUMP. It was running! As huge as it sounded in the not so far distance, the speed of its footsteps said it was running at me. It was
my
turn to be lunch.

“What are the six questions?”

How did I hear that? The voice had spoken calmly and in no hurry. But I heard it clearly above everything else. What six questions? Who was this? Were they the last words I’d ever hear? WAS IT GOD?

“No, Mr. Gallatin, it’s Beeflow. What are the six questions?”

Thump Thump Thump. I heard bushes crashing, birds crying out like they do when they’re disturbed or attacked. This monster was closer, it was almost here.

“WHAT ARE THE SIX QUESTIONS?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Get me out of here!”

And then the biggest shock of all—I heard him sigh! A disappointed sigh. The sigh of a teacher when you’ve answered a question wrong in class.

“All right, I’ll help you this one time but not again. Name one experience from your past you wish you could repeat. That is the third question.”

“Are you nuts?
Now
? The thing’s coming! Get me out of here.”

“Then answer the question, and quickly.”

“An experience I want to repeat? I don’t know. Jeez, I don’t know. Help me, willya?” My voice sounded like one of the scared birds up in the trees.

“No, help yourself—answer that question.”

And when he said that, an answer came so clear and calm to my mind that I was surprised I hadn’t known it immediately. “I wish I could have sex again for the first time with Rae. That was the best night of my life.”

“Very very good. Now look in your hand.”

I looked, even though the bushes nearby rustled hard which meant whatever monster was coming had arrived. Instead of the silver baseball bat, I held a black metal cylinder about two feet long. The dinosaur burst out at me like a rocket with legs. Its teeth were even bigger than I had thought they’d be. Its open mouth looked ten feet wide. I didn’t even have a chance to raise the cylinder up to do whatever it might do to fight off the thing. Because it
was there.

And then gone.

That’s right—it whizzed right by me. Whatever kind of prehistoric piece of shit it was, the creature ran by and went crashing on into the jungle behind me. It didn’t even stop to have a look or say hello. Not that I was disappointed. I stood there looking after it and then I looked at the black cylinder in my hand, trying to figure out how it played into all of this. No answer came. It was just this metal thing that a while before had been a baseball bat.

I stood there listening while Tyrannosaurus-whatever galloped farther away into the jungle. And then it became quiet around me, or as quiet as a place like that is ever going to be. It took me some more time to de-tox from the scare that was still sending fireballs of adrenaline to all corners of my body. I stood a while longer and then sort of collapsed on the ground in a heap, dropping the cylinder as I did.

I looked at it and wondered what kind of magic had changed it from a baseball bat into this without my ever having felt it. I wondered if it had somehow saved me from being eaten. Or had answering Beeflow’s question been the reason? What were these six questions he was talking about? What was this cylinder lying on the ground a foot away? How was I going to get out of the forest primeval and back to my world?

“Don’t turn around.”

I didn’t but sure was tempted. It was Beeflow again. “Why can’t I look at you?”

“Because I told you before, Mr. Gallatin, I am everything ugly about you. I’m your shit in the toilet, the dark side of your moon, the worst lies you’ve told, the hurt you dropped on others. I am everything bad about you and if you want to look
that
square in the face then go ahead. But I warn you, looking your own evil in the eye is as bad as looking at Medusa. It will wreck you, turn part of you into stone.”

“And you say you’re me?”

“Only in part. I’ve chosen to take on all that’s bad in you for the time being so that you can face challenges other than your own.”

“Are you, uh, human?”

“I was once, but am no longer. Years ago I had a vision and it changed me forever.”

“What kind of vision?”

“You’re looking at it now.”

I happened to be looking at the cylinder next to me. “That thing? The baseball bat?”

“Yes. I was in a flea market in London and on a table amongst other junk was a brass object. I worked as a travel agent but my great hobbies were inventing and the history of tools. So I was well versed in the function of all sorts of machinery, archaic tools, and the like. I was no newcomer to obscure gadgets. But for the life of me I could not understand what purpose this gizmo served. Written on the side of it in thick letters were the words ‘Heidelberg Cylinder.’ I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands but its purpose still baffled me. I was perplexed and fascinated, so I paid three pounds and put it in my pocket.

“When I returned home to America and was able to look through the reference books in my library, I discovered something staggering: The Heidelberg Cylinder had been used in every great modern invention. The cotton gin, the first steam engine, the telephone, internal combustion engine ... You name it and a version of the cylinder was one of the components. It was the essential piece in every one of those innovations. It was the thing that made them all work. I was astonished and then utterly skeptical so I researched further. Different versions of the cylinder were used in the first telegraph, the television, computers. Sometimes it was made of a different metal, or Bakelite, then plastic, carbon ... you get the point. It was the part that made these earth-shaking inventions work Mr. Gallatin, but no one had ever noted the connection. One man-made object made all of these things possible.

“I couldn’t believe that no one had ever made the discovery. And then it hit me—no was
supposed
to make the discovery! The Heidelberg Cylinder is meant to be invented again and again in its different guises and then put into the workings of whatever new different machines we dream up in the future.

“Because do you know what the cylinder really is? The concrete proof of our immortality. The result of the human mind and spirit working as one to solve problems and overcome them. Any problems. Physical proof of the fact we can do anything we want, even live forever if we choose, if we set our minds to it.”

I looked at it and rubbed my mouth. “That thing?”

“Yes, that thing.”

I picked it up, turned it over. It was black and there was nothing written on it. Definitely not any “Heidelberg Cylinder.”

“How come it’s black then and there’s no writing on it?”

“Because once you realize what it is, it changes into something else. Something someone else will need to discover its importance. For me it was the brass object I described. For the person who had it before you it turned into a sixteenth century Persian lock. For you it became a baseball bat.”

“Then what is it now?”

“I don’t know. Probably something from the future.”

Reaching out to pick it up, I stopped when he said that. “But I didn’t discover anything with the baseball bat. Definitely not any of that stuff you were saying about man’s immortality: I just brained the caveman with it.”

“Yes but that’s because I’ve chosen to intervene. There simply isn’t enough time for it to happen in the slow and proper way it should. Mankind is in jeopardy and we must work quickly to avoid a catastrophe. I’ll tell you the end of my story briefly and then you will understand.

“When I grasped the extraordinary importance of the Heidelberg Cylinder, I became obsessed with my search and found it again and again the further I looked. But what was I to do with my discovery? Who should I tell and in what context?”

I had to interrupt. “When did you turn into, uh, what you are?”

“Once we’ve learned about the Cylinder, all of us change eventually.”

That made me stand up. “What do you mean? Change how?”

“It varies from person to person. I can’t say how it will affect you.”

I was getting nervous again. “But what about Brooks and Zin Zan? They’re both normal. They’re weird but they’re normal.”

“For now because both of them are new to the group. But sooner or later they will change and take on new forms. We call it ‘hatching.’ As I said, I can’t tell you what forms either of them will take, but they will definitely metamorphose into something entirely different.”

“Do they know that? Do they know they’re going to change?”

“Of course Mr. Gallatin, and they welcome it.”

“So that means now that I know, I’m going to change too?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want to change! I like my life.”

“I’m afraid we need you more than you need your life. I want to show you something.”

Before I had a chance to protest, everything changed. In an instant, a blink, half a breath, we went from jungle to paradise.

I’d heard it before but now I know it’s true: paradise is what you want it to be. If you imagine angels with wings and harps sitting on gold clouds, that’s what you’ll see. Perfect gardens where lions dance the cha-cha while beautiful women serve you ice cold rum? Then that’s what it will be. I didn’t know my paradise until I saw it. The moment I did, I knew this was it—Nothing could be better.

An outdoor restaurant in the middle of the countryside somewhere. A few metal tables were set up under four big chestnut trees. The wind was blowing, tossing up the corners of the white tablecloths. The sun shone down through the leaves, flickering beautiful yellow, green and white light across everything.

A bunch of people were sitting at one of the tables having the best time laughing, eating and talking. A black guy was sitting at one end of the table playing a Gibson “Hummingbird” guitar softly but really well. A woman nearby kept jumping up from her place, hugging him and then sitting back down again.

The different colors and variety of food spread out for them across the table was amazing. All kinds of meats and salads, vegetables piled high, soups, cakes and pies. The breads alone would have kept you busy for days making sandwiches. Once you saw it you couldn’t take your eyes off this ... plenty. My mouth started watering. I knew it had to be the greatest food that ever was and to taste any bit of it would bring you to tears.

“Hey Bill, why’re you standing over there like you’re hypnotized? Get your ass over here and say hello.” The man who spoke didn’t just look my father, it was him. He’d been dead eleven years.

I didn’t move but just assumed Beeflow was nearby so I asked out loud, “Is it real? Is that really my Dad?”

“Yes. Look around the table. You know everyone there.”

It was true. A girl I’d known and liked who’d died in a water skiing accident, my Uncle Birmy next to my father, others. I did know everyone at that table. Some better than others but I had known them all—when they were alive. When my father called out my name they looked over and smiled like seeing me was the best thing that had happened to them all day. It made me feel good and gave me the damned creeps at the same time.