The Link (56 page)

“You mean that the Indians might have come by sea?” Robert breaks in.

“You said that, not me,” says Norman, gesturing away the very thought.

“Maybe we’ll find out about these things when we reach the site,” Robert says.

“An ambitious maybe,” Norman observes with a smile.

Robert tells them that he’s “seen”, what he expects to find at the site, notably the ruined temple at the top of a hill. Ann accepts this unquestioningly, John less so. Norman only shrugs and looks amused.

“We’ll see,” he says.

He is definitely from Missouri.

Days passing. Driving; gassing up at stations; grocery shopping. Stops at night. Cooking outdoors when they can. Sitting around fires, chatting, the men drinking beer, Ann with a Coke. The group becoming closer, Ann to her Uncle, her father, Norman. John to Robert and Norman. Norman to all of them. A pleasant journey across the country.

Toward a goal that none of them, in their wildest imaginations, could possibly anticipate.

They are crossing Kansas, Robert driving, when Ann, flipping radio channels, comes across a “psychic answering” show. They listen to it with amusement. Then John comes up to them and says, “You know who that is, don’t you.”

“Who?” asks Ann.

“That, my dear niece, is your infamous Great Uncle Jack,” John tells her.

Since it is on their route, John insists they stop to say hello.

“Ann has a right to meet the nut fringe of her family,” he says. “Not just us elite.”

Robert isn’t wild about the idea but can’t come up with any valid objection.

They stop in the small city when they reach it and park across the street from the radio station, send a message in.

Moments later, JACK LEICESTER bursts into the lobby to greet them.

“What a grand surprise!” he says elatedly.

Jack is sixty-seven, his hair dyed brown, his clothes gaudy, his jewelry excess, his manner flamboyant. He is a car salesman version of a psychic and Robert’s wan smile as he shakes his Uncle’s hand shows why he was hesitant about stopping to see him.

“But this is bloody marvelous!” enthuses Jack, his English accent still well evident. “I’m just about to tape my midnight show! You must sit in with me!”

Robert and Ann are trapped into agreement. John demurs as, obviously, does Norman.

As they move into Jack’s office, it is to see a wonderland of tributes to Jack created by Jack—enormous photos on the wall of him hobnobbing with celebrities most of whose tenures on stardom ended in the sixties, letters of ecstatic commendation from local listeners, pseudo-religious paintings and objects manufactured by J.L. Products.

“Inspiring,” mutters John. He just loves this; it is, in one wrapped package, a validation of his every judgement on their family. “I wish I could stay here forever.”

Robert only gives him a look.

He and Ann sit down with Jack. On the cluttered desk is a colorful appointment book calendar with photos of a beaming Jack on front and back. On the cover is the message, in gold script,
Make a date with Spirit! Use your ESP each day of the year! Dr. Jack
.

“Dr. Jack,” says John, straight-faced. “It has a ring.”

“Cynic, cynic,” chortles Jack, not in the least offended. “They never bother me. They know not of what they rant.”

John points at him. “Touché, Doctor Jack,” he says.

Jack does a little bit of everything on his midnight show, he tells them. His noon show is, “of course” mostly for predictions—weather, stocks, politics, personalities. “America is in for a change.” He gives a for instance.

“Shouldn’t wonder,” John observes.

“I have a feeling you’re in trouble, nephew,” Jack replies. “Am I right or wrong?”

“Wrong,” says John, a tightening around his eyes revealing his reaction. “I’m in the pink, Jack.”

“Did I mention health?” asks Jack. He pats John on the shoulder. “Well, I hope so, John,” he says. “I really do.”

The taping takes place. As advertised, a little bit of everything.

After introducing Robert and Ann, Jack spends some time finding lost objects. People phone in. “Dr. Jack, my diamond ring is gone,” a woman says.

“Love, I see it in a drawer with something blue on top of it. Call me back and let me know what happens. Yes, sir.”

“Dr. Jack, I wanted to let you know you said I’d have the money to travel as I wanted to and I have it now because my mother died and left it to me.”

“Passed on, friend, not died,” says Jack. “The Spirit taketh and the Spirit giveth. Yes, Ma’am.”

“Dr. Jack, I’m looking for an earring that’s been missing for a week. It’s jade.

“All right,” says Jack. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let my nephew and his daughter see if they can find it, they’re our visitors tonight. They’re very psychic. Maybe not as much as Dr. Jack but that’s another story.”

Jack looks at them. “Impressions?” he inquires.

They stare at him blankly.

“Concentrate,” he says. “Jade earring. What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Mrs. Anna Clauser, 2015 Maple Drive.”

Jack repeats her name and address. “Anything at all,” he tells Robert and Ann.

Silence. Robert tries to indicate that he and Ann are not able to function under such circumstances.

Then Ann says, “Underneath the dryer.”

Robert looks at her in startlement as Jack says, “Underneath the dryer, love. Ordinarily, I’d ask you to call back but, since my nephew and his daughter are moving on, we’ll leave the line open. While we’re waiting, we’ll have a message from our sponsor.”

He switches off the outgoing signal, points at Robert. “Something coming through,” he says.

“What?” Robert has been looking at Ann. He turns back to his uncle. “Something—?”

The woman’s voice comes through the line, excitedly. “It was there! I found it! The earring! Lord in Heaven!”

“Oh, my God,” mutters John, scowling.

Robert bursts out laughing and kisses Ann on the cheek. “It’s in the family, folks!” says Uncle Jack. “The Leicester Legacy! Thank you, love. Before I take the next call, I have a message for my nephew that I want to check out. Just came through. I don’t know what it means. Maybe he can tell me. Here it is.
He rubs the pearls across his teeth
Does that mean anything to you, Robert?”

Robert smiles embarrassedly. “I don’t—” Then he catches his breath. “Oh,” he says as though he’s just been kicked.

“It does mean something, I can see that,” Uncle Jack says. “Share it with us, Robert.”

Robert falters. “It was… a question I… I asked a….gentleman.”

“Yes?” says Uncle Jack. “This is from The Other Side, you know. You understand that.”

Robert swallows, nods once. “Yes, I….” He draws in a shaking breath. “Yes, he is,” he says, not knowing what to say.

“And the question?” Jack asks.

“Uh… how does a burglar know which pearls are worth stealing?”

“Ah-ha!” cries Jack. “Of course! The good ones are—what, smooth, rough?”

“Slightly rough,” says Robert, slightly dazed.

“There we have it!” says Dr. Jack. “Proof positive!”

When the taping is concluded, John feigns disgust. “Every time I try to laugh at our family, something spoils it,” he says.

“John, my boy,” says Uncle Jack. “The Truth will come out!” He leans over close to Robert. “Even though that pearl thing might have been telepathy,” he whispers.

He looks at Robert intently then, eyes narrowing. “This place you’re going,” he says.

“Yes?” Robert looks newly startled. Uncle Jack has a way about him.

Jack grimaces and shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s not the right one.”

August 14. They drive nineteen miles off the highway to the site of his father’s dig.

Robert looks around in dismay. No hill. No tower. Nothing that looks familiar at all.

“It
is
the wrong place,” he says incredulously. “How could he know?”

“The Leicester Legacy?” says Ann, trying to make a tiny joke of it.

John laughs. Robert tries to smile but it is a crushing disappointment to him. Ann sees this immediately and puts her arms around him. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she apologizes.

“Not your fault, sweetie,” he says, his smile pained. He pats her back. “I just can’t believe it.”

“With all due respect to the ‘Leicester Legacy’,” Norman says, “who says it’s the wrong place? This is where your father was digging. This is where those objects were found.”

Robert nods. “I know,” he says. But what he really knows is that Uncle Jack was correct.

This isn’t the right place.

They make supper and eat, Robert trying to be cheerful but having difficulty doing so. Ann squeezes his hand.

“We’ll find the right place, Dad,” she says.

Norman groans softly.

Later that night, when the others are asleep, Robert leaves the motor home and walks into the desert.

Finally, he stops and sits, his back against a boulder. The desert has a silver cast across it from the moonlight.

After a while, he takes the crystal from his pocket and holds it in his palm. He stares at it. It seems to glimmer in the moonlight.

“Help me, somebody,” he murmurs.

CAMERA HOLDS ON him. Then SUDDEN CUT TO his eyes. It is later. He is standing on the desert sand, rocking back and forth. He looks around.

To see, behind him, connected to him by the silver cord, his sleeping self.

He starts to walk across the desert, his strides lengthening until the land rushes by him with a blur.

Then he is walking normally. The terrain he moves across is rocky now, the entire area spotted with huge boulders. He is in the high desert, a hilly landscape with pine tree stands scattered about, their dark green a sharp contrast to the sandstone cliffs which range in color from yellow to almost red.

He is walking down a hillside when, suddenly, he jumps atop a boulder with the movement of an astronaut leaping on the Moon.

He points at a dry creek bed below. “That’s it!” he shouts. “That’s the place!”

He leaps from the boulder and rushes down to the creek bed. He dances in the moonlight, an eerie figure. “We have to undercut the creek!” he cries. “This is where it is! The link!”

He jerks his head up, waking.

Scrambling to his feet, he rushes to the motor home and bursts in, tearing open cupboard doors, looking for a geological map of the area.

“Hey, tone it down,” mumbles John in back.

Robert finds the map and sits at the table, looking at it, trying to find the place he saw.

It could be any of a hundred places.

As he is staring at the map, Ann sits in the booth across from him. He tells her what happened. “I know I found it,” he says. He smiles with stricken amusement. “But where
is
it?” he says.

They look at each other in silence.

“Don’t dowsers work from maps?” she says.

Another silence. Finally, he sighs. “Well, why not?” he says. “This has been a crazy year. Why go sane now?”

He starts to look for something to make a pendulum with, then realizes that the perfect thing is in his pocket.

He attaches a piece of twine to the crystal.

“Help me, babe,” he says to Ann.

An odd scene, father and daughter holding onto the string, the crystal hovering above the map, all this illuminated by the small light over the booth.