The Call of Distant Shores (37 page)

Jeremy had never been in the back room of Brown's Barber Shop.
 
He'd seen his father disappear through those doors countless times, but he'd never been allowed past the entrance.
 
Even now, as Terry slipped in ahead of him and flicked on the dim light, he hesitated.
 
It was like violating his father's will beyond the grave.

"We had to move most of the social activities back here as the years passed," Terry said conversationally, pulling open an aged refrigerator and grabbing two long-necks from the frosty interior.
 
"Health inspectors were cracking down, mothers dragging their children in where father's had always done so before, complaining about the cigarette smoke and threatening to close us down.

"Hell," Terry chuckled, plopping into one of the old leather chairs lining the wall of the back room and twisting the top off his beer, "we even had animal rights activists protesting the animals on the walls."

"I don't know how you survived it all," Jeremy said, shaking his head and taking a seat a few feet away.
 
"I don't know how you stayed here at all."

"Well, the staying is in my blood," Terry smiled.
 
"Been a Brown in this shop almost as long as there's been a Cedar Falls.
 
Wouldn't want to be the one to break a streak like that.
 
The rest was easier than it seemed.
 
They opened a new shop in the mall out Whitewall way.
 
It's got a big clown chair for the kids and a play room with Nintendo.
 
That left us to the regulars and the few too lazy to drive that far.
 
It's enough for a living, and that's all a man can rightly ask of life, I think."

Jeremy thought about that for a moment, taking a long pull from the beer bottle.

"I wish I could have thought that way," he said at last.
 
"I wish I'd been happy to come here every week, get a trim and hear the old stories.
 
I wish I could have been more like my father – at least a little.
 
I feel like it's all been lost, and all I have to show for the years is an empty house and dreams I have no one to share with."

"Never married, huh?" Terry turned away for a moment, then took another long drink, draining his bottle and rising for a second, glancing at Jeremy, who shook his head.
 
"I never settled either.
 
Never could find anyone I felt comfortable with, not after Dad passed on.
 
There's been a couple of times I thought I might be on the right track, but ..."
 
He shrugged and opened his second beer.
 
"Some men are meant to be alone."

Jeremy nodded.

"I miss those days, sometimes," he said softly.
 
"I miss the stories.
 
I miss hearing old Mulligan talk about catching that Marlin out there.
 
I knew, even then, that he never set foot on the deck of a fishing boat in his life, but the words were magic.
 
It wasn't the truth, but the story, you know?"

Terry nodded.
 
"I do.
 
Don't get much of that any more.
 
Mulligan passed on about seven years ago, Billy Jensen shortly after that.
 
Mostly they come and talk about those who've died, now, and wait for their own turn."

"There's one story I never heard," Jeremy said suddenly.
 
"I know there's a story, because my father used to let bits and pieces slip.
 
That figurehead on the wall out there, the woman.
 
He said your father brought her back from the war ..."

Terry grew suddenly stiff, and for a moment Jeremy thought the man would chase him out of the shop and lock the doors behind him forever.
 
Tension rippled through the air and tingled along the hairs on Jeremy's arm.
 
His hand shook, and he forced it to steady.

"Some stories are best left to the dead and their memory," Terry muttered, downing his second beer and rising quickly.

"Did I say something wrong?" Jeremy asked quickly, taken aback by the sudden reaction his words had brought.

 
"Not at all," Brown said brusquely, "but it's getting late.
 
I know you need to get settled in.
 
Maybe you could stop in during regular hours for a trim."

Jeremy sat, stunned, staring at the bigger man and trying to figure out whether he was kidding.
 
There was no humor in the barber's slate-gray eyes, so Jeremy rose slowly, downing the beer and handing over the empty bottle.

"Nice to see you again, then," he said, turning.
 
"Nice to be back."

Terry's features trembled, as if he were fighting some inner battle.
 
Maybe he wanted to say something, take something back, but in the end, he held to his silence, only nodding as Jeremy slipped out of that forbidden room and into the shadowed barber shop once again.
 
Jeremy glanced at the wall, and in the darkness, shadow cloaking the carved wood, it seemed a woman stood, watching him.
 
He could have sworn her eyes glittered brightly and that a slender arm reached out – fingers beckoning.

Then Brown was at his side, ushering him toward the door with a firm hand on his back, mumbling something about the good old days.
 
The air was cool, and the streets were deserted.
 
Jeremy stood on the walk outside in confusion, then shrugged and turned to the road, and his car.
 
Might as well get to some memories of his own.

The old home was full of stale air and dim memory.
 
Jeremy had had vague ideas of cleaning up, arranging things and putting them back in order, but he should have known that his father would leave no such satisfaction.
 
Everything was in its place.
 
A very light sheen of dust coated everything, but beneath it the floors gleamed.
 
The glass glittered – even the silver had only the faintest tinge of tarnish.
 
The power was alive and waiting.
 
There was a yellow note, hanging from the knob of the front door, to let him know they'd stopped and cut it on. "Just as his father had asked."

Jeremy's room was much as he'd left it last visit home.
 
He'd been in his senior year of college, and the remnants of that time littered the desk and the walls.
 
His bed was turned down, as if expecting him.
 
Too much.
 
Jeremy closed the door on that particular set of nightmares and moved down the hall.
 
He pushed and the door to his parent's room swung open easily, hinges oiled.
 
No sound.
 
There had never been a sound.
 
Jeremy had listened and listened, but he'd never been able to tell when they came and went.
 
The room beckoned, dark and – inviting.
 
It was a strange, exhilarating invitation, but an invitation nonetheless.
 
For the first time since driving into the tiny, dirt-water town, Jeremy felt as if he were home.

The switch beside the door didn't operate a ceiling fixture as he'd expected.
 
A single, dim light pooled yellow illumination over the floor from the dresser to his right.
 
Rather than cutting the deeper shadows, the lamp's glow accentuated them.
 
The bed was an expansive darkness, flanked by low-slung nightstands of still-darker wood.
 
The windows were hung with heavy drapes of indeterminate color, pulled tight across closed blinds.

Odd shapes hung from the walls, and a huge old mirror glittered across the back of the dresser.
 
Jeremy stared at that mirror.
 
He couldn't make out anything in the silvered surface, but he stood, still and quiet, and watched the reflected glow of the lamp.

His mother had sat there, right in front of that mirror, brushing her long hair for hours.
 
Jeremy had never actually set foot in his parent's room, but he'd watched her from the doorway, when she didn't know he was looking.
 
He wondered if a part of her might be captured there.
 
If he stared long enough, would her face appear?
 
Would he feel the soft stroke of the brush through his hair?
 
And where had his father been when ...

Shaking his head, Jeremy turned from the mirror quickly.
 
Again, too much.

Moving to the bed, he laid his suitcase out and unsnapped it quickly.
 
He needed to get his mind out of the past.
 
There were a lot of things to accomplish, clearing out the house, gathering his parents papers and belongings, the lawyers.
 
All of it loomed over him like the specter of his father, leering and poking, tugging him first one direction, then another, and the last thing he needed in the midst of it all was more illusion and memory.
 
Illusions and memories had haunted him for too many years.

Before he could think of his father's accusing gaze, he opened the drawers of the old dresser and shoved his clothes hurriedly inside.
 
It was nearly comical, the way the finality of the gesture washed through him in a wave of sudden relief.
 
He was in.
 
The dresser was his, not his father's, not a thing he would be punished for violating.
 
The room – the house – everything in it – was his.

With a sigh he pushed the drawer shut and turned, seating himself on the edge of the bed.
 
The woman stared down at him, smoother than he remembered, and darker, her hair seeming to drip from the polished wood surface.

Jeremy grew very still.
 
His heart pulsed, slowing with his breath painfully until it felt as if it might stop altogether.
 
The moment was identical to a hundred acid-tripping moments in his youth, pulsing with the neon-beat of bar-lights and the sultry back-beat of strip clubs, pounding with the rhythms of a thousand songs.
 
Still and silent.

Beside the window, sliding out from the edge of the heavy curtains, was the wooden figurehead from the barber shop.
 
He knew it couldn't be the same one.
 
He had just seen it – had reached out his hand and touched it – but the sensation it was there – that it was real and identical and WATCHING him was undeniable.

Mesmerized, Jeremy rose, stepping forward.
 
He heard the soft echo of Terry's words in his ear. "Some stories are best left to the dead, and their memory," but the words flitted through his mind and away, as if whispered across a great distance.

Jeremy reached out one hand, letting his fingers come to rest on the smooth, polished wood, and his stomach lurched.
 
The scent of hair tonic and musty leather assaulted his senses violently.
 
His vision blurred, then focused.
 
The wall had changed.
 
Lengthened.
 
For just an instant, the floor pitched beneath his feet, and he clutched the wooden carving tightly for support.

"No," he whispered.
     

Everything had shifted, and the pungent scent of tobacco smoke hung in the air.
 
To his left, dim, yellow light flickered, and he could hear the scrape of feet, the groan and squeal of old springs as heavy bodies settled into aged chairs.
 
The shadow-forms of dead, mounted animals surrounded him, glass-eye stares too-high.
 
As if he were shorter.
 
As if he were younger.

As if time had rewound its tape.

A heavy cough, then laughter, deep and guttural.
 
Jeremy's heart lurched.
 
He knew that cough, and that laugh.
 
He pressed into the wall, nearly collapsing, and closed his eyes so tightly that they squeezed shut on the heavy smoke, burning and tingling.
 
He thought about the bed behind him.
 
He thought about the door, still ajar, less than three feet away, and the hallway beyond.
 
He thought about his father's liquor cabinet, and with a sudden shove he pushed away from the wall and spun.

His knee banged into something hard, and he cried out.
 
His eyes opened to shadows, flickering, and a huge, dark shape silhouetted against yellowed light.

"Who is it?"

The words hung in the smoky air, mocking Jeremy's sanity.

Jeremy held his breath, pressing back to the wall.

"That you boy?"

Jeremy tried to remain silent, but it was too much.
 
That voice, a voice he'd been conditioned from birth to obey, was irresistible.

"Dad?"

The world shifted again.
 
Jeremy felt his mind whirl, saw the lights shift and heard heavy footsteps approaching like the beating of primal drums, timed with his heartbeat.
 
He knew he was falling, but somehow he couldn't react to it.
 
Strong arms clasped him under his arms, hands too large, covering his shoulders, fingers gripping and lifting.