The Other Mr. Bax (25 page)

Howard glanced down at Roland’s bloodstained pants.

“It’s a… I don’t even know how to—”

“Do I know you?”

Roland peered into his neighbor’s eyes, finding no hint of empathy—only distrust. “You don’t… your neighbor”—he twisted his head in the direction his house once was. “That’s my…” There were plenty of memories to draw upon: Howard’s crude mannerisms, his stupid jokes, his favorite football team, and TV sitcom. He recalled a barbeque in his back yard, Led Zeppelin blasting from his stereo. But now it seemed he was standing before a stranger, and wished only that he could undo the encounter.

“Did you have an accident?”

“Oh… no, I’m okay. A few scrapes.” Roland lowered his eyes. “Not as bad as it looks, really.” Feigning confusion, he squinted toward his old neighbor and quickly patched together a lie. “Did I… Oh, Jesus, this isn’t East Olberg, is it?” He shook his head—“Hmm”—and rolled his eyes. “I have the wrong house.”

Howard eyed him with suspicion. “Apparently, you do.”

“I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t know how…” Roland threw a glance back over his shoulder. “It’s hard to read these signs at night.” He backed away, knowing full well his pathetic act was blatantly transparent.

The front door shut. He hurried back to the waiting truck, climbed in, and said, “Could you please just go. Let me out anywhere… up the road. I don’t care. Anywhere.”

Anna started the engine, backed out to the road, then continued driving east. “They don’t remember you, huh?” She shook her head. “I really don’t know what to make of you, but crazy is the first thing that comes to mind.” She paused. “Why the hell do I get involved? Gives me the fuckin’ creeps.”

Roland stared out the window to his right, saying nothing.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Anna hit the brakes, steered to the side of the road, and skidded to a stop. Roland braced himself stiff-armed against the dash.

“Who the hell are you? You’re too nice to be crazy, or maybe not. How the fuck would I know? But, Christ, what happened to you? Look at you. Were you always—”

“No! I wasn’t… I’m not. I have a life. I’m…” He shook his hands out before him. “I’m a painter, an artist.” He grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled it away from his chest. “This is not who I am. I have a closet full of clothes. I take showers. I wear deodorant, drive a car, money, credit cards… all that god damned stuff that says you’re normal. I’m telling you, my house was back there… exactly where I said it was.”

“Then
I
must be crazy. In the forty-four years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen a house there. Hell, I remember when there were no houses at all along here. Watched them pop up one by one. Yours did not popped up.”

Roland closed his eyes and drew in a breath. “Maybe I
am
crazy.”

Anna let out a sigh. “Look, crazy or not, I can’t just dump you at the side of the road like a dog.” She put the truck in gear and made a U-turn. “You’re not dressed for this, for one thing.”

“Where are you going?”

“My place. You can have the couch tonight. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

Roland gazed toward the dashboard. On one hand he wanted to decline her offer, feeling nearly as uncomfortable with her as he imagined she was with him. But on the other hand, clean clothes and a good night’s sleep was more than tempting. He knew it would’ve been a different story had he have been left on his own.

“Anna?”

She glanced his way.

“I don’t mind sleeping at your father’s place.”

She turned back toward the road.

He added, “I’ve never hurt anyone, if that’s of any concern.”

“I wouldn’t have let you in my truck if it was. And my dad’s capable of taking care of himself.” She paused. “If you’d rather sleep in that crappy little trailer, it doesn’t matter one bit to me. You’ll still need clothes though, won’t you?”

He laid a hand over the tear in the knee of his pants. “I’ll pay you for them.”

“With what, a credit card?”

“I’ve got cash too. Not much, but—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

They again passed the spot where Roland’s house had been, or so he believed. He twisted around in his seat, peered out the back window, and watched the pine tree fade into the darkness behind them.

T
he building Anna parked before
appeared no different than Roland remembered: a two-story, mars-red structure, with a raised wooden porch; its decking and railing, weathered and unpainted, stretched the full width of the building. As a part of its old-west façade, a parapet, rising eight-feet above the second-floor windows, had a large, decorative crenel cut out along its cap. A streetlight, by the road, thirty-feet from the porch, cast a surreal, yellowish tint across the parking lot.

Anna’s boots drummed across the porch as Roland followed a few steps behind. He waited as she dug into her handbag for a cluster of keys, unlocked the door, then pushed it open. The lights came on, throwing quadrangle shapes across the porch floor.

“So… jeans.” Anna click-clacked across the bare-wood floor to a shelving unit stocked with piles of folded blue denim. “What size?”

“Uh, thirty-three, thirty-four.”

She squatted as she hunted through a stack of jeans, then pulled out a pair near the bottom. “There you go.” She handed them to him.

He let the folds fall out, then held the waist band against his belt buckle. “They look about right.”

“How ‘bout a shirt?” She went to a rack against the wall. “You like flannel?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got some sweat shirts,” she said, “with stuff silk screened on them. Touristy stuff, if you don’t mind that.”

“Flannel’s fine,” he said.

The shirts were all different color combinations of the same plaid pattern. He chose one with a red and black base, and accents of green.

“Wanna T-shirt?” Anna held up a blue shirt with an image of the Grand Canyon across its chest—big bold letters spelling it out. Roland stepped over to the rack of T-shirts, looking for plain, solid colors, but there were none. He chose a shirt with a saguaro cactus on the backside and “PHOENIX
”
printed across the front. “You’ll take a credit card?”

Anna gave him a puzzled look.

Roland dug out his wallet, pulled out a card and handed it to her.

“Bax. That’s your name?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad seems to think you’re from another planet or something.”

“What?”

“Did you tell him that?”

“No.”

“I could have you arrested for trespass, you know.”

“But I’m not. I just want to go home.”

Anna glared at him.

“Well, I didn’t,” he said.

She grabbed the clothes from the counter and marched off toward the back of the store. Roland followed her to a door, which opened to a bleak unfinished stairwell. Their feet produced dull thumps, creaks, and scuffs as they climbed the uncarpeted steps to a landing on the second floor. A single, bare, light bulb dangled from the ceiling by the same wire that provided its power. The smell of dusty wood and the faint oily odor of rancid cooking oil hinted at faraway places and times—perhaps his own childhood, another lifetime, or another reality.

There were two doors on the landing: one, straight ahead; the other, to the right. Anna opened the first, then flipped a switch on the wall as she stepped through. “Not much, but I don’t need much.”

The kitchen ceiling felt too low and confining. A cool, sickly light filtered through off-white sheets of fly-speckled plastic held in place by the same metal tracks that supported the dingy, acoustic tiles. To his left, four-feet from the door, stood an old wooden table with three chairs tucked in around it—it and the chairs brush-painted white. The reflection of a plump, potted jade, positioned near the center of the table, came from the window to the right of it. The floor was covered with embossed linoleum, made to resemble grouted red-clay tile. A small football-shaped patch was cut in before the refrigerator, its pattern, though identical to the linoleum around it, was slightly askew.

Anna laid the clothes on the corner of the table. “You want anything to drink? A beer?”

“No, thank you. You mind if I use your shower?”

“I figured you might want to.” The corners of her lips turned up—the first time Roland had seen anything other than a frown on her face. “At the end of the hall.” She pointed over her shoulder. “Wait a second, I’ll show you.”

She led Roland to a small bathroom at the end of a short hallway. He waited at the door—his new shirt and jeans, folded up in his arms.

“Towels and washcloths.” She pointed to a wall-mounted shelf stacked with folded towels. “There’s soap and shampoo in the shower. You good here?”

He nodded.

“You need anything else, just holler.” Stepping past him, she headed back toward the kitchen.

Roland set his clothes on the toilet seat and closed the door. To the left of the door was a small sink with a mirror mounted above it. Watching as his hand came up to his stubbly chin, he stared at the reflection peering back at him as if he was looking into another world and the person gazing back was not him. Turning away, he emptied the pockets of his tattered jeans, dropped a set of keys on top of his clothes, then stepped into the cramped shower and pulled the plastic, fish-covered curtain shut. He looked at the showerhead, two inches below his chin, and pictured Anna rinsing suds from her turned-up face.

Feeling renewed, he returned to the kitchen. “Do you have something I can cut this tag off with?” He walked in carrying the wad of grimy rags that, minutes before, were his only clothes. “And some place I can toss these?”

“To your left.” Anna pointed to a small trash can. She got up from the table and pulled open a cabinet drawer by the kitchen sink. Small, metal hand-tools clattered and clinked as she rummaged for a pair of scissors. “Here, turn around.” She clipped the tag from his belt loop. “Still want to go back to my dad’s?”

A shower and new clothes—it seemed he once again had a foot in the real world, the world he shared with Joyce. He recalled the bare, miserably-hard ground he awakened upon, earlier that day, but then realized he’d be just as uncomfortable spending the night in Anna’s apartment—though for different reasons. “You don’t mind giving me a lift?”

Anna brought her truck to a stop at the end of the long, dusty lane that served as her father’s driveway. Fred sat in the glow of a fire, about forty-feet away, poking and prodding it with a stick. Anna climbed down from the truck, pushed the door shut with a grating creak and a thud, then went off to join her father. Roland followed, stopping midway as he caught the movement of an airplane or perhaps a satellite high overhead. The sky was filled with stars, impossible numbers, the same as it had always been, the same as it was when, as a young boy, he and his siblings shared a blanket in the backyard, lying on the ground, sending up secret wishes—every single star, almost precisely as they now were.

Anna said something to her father, speaking too softly for Roland to hear. He was nearly certain it had something to do with him, but let it go. With his back to the fire, he watched the stars, finding Taurus low, near the horizon.

“Pull up a chair.” Fred pointed toward the trailer where a folded chair leaned near the door. “Nice duds,” he added.

Roland joined Anna and her father by the fire. No one seemed to have much to say though. Fred shoved his stick into the embers at the base of the fire and twisted it; a flame sprouted from the end. Moments passed, marked only by the snaps and occasional pops from the fire.

Anna cleared her throat. “I’ve gotta work in the morning.” She stood. “Maybe I’ll stop by later tomorrow. Anything you need?”

“I’m about to run out of smokes,” Fred said. “A couple steaks would be nice, while you’re at it.”

“I just brought you enough groceries for a week. There’s some sliced baloney in the fridge. Fry
that
up.”

Fred turned to Roland and winked. “Indian steak.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll get you some smokes.” She stood and started toward her truck.

“Anna,” Roland said.

She stopped and turned.

“Thank you.”

She shrugged, walked away, then climbed into the cab of her truck.

Half-a-minute later, the red, hazy glow of lighted dust dimmed as the truck disappeared down the lane. Roland listened as the low rumble of its engine faded to nothing, leaving behind, once again, the crackle of the fire and an occasional snap. A small glowing ember landed near his foot. The fire held his gaze while his mind wandered to a camping trip he and his brother, Keith, had once shared—a lake in southern Ohio, a cold, clear October night, three years back. He recalled the extravagant fires they’d built—their warmth enveloping their entire campsite.

“You have family? Brothers, sisters?” Fred said.

Roland’s lips parted.

“Bad question?”

“I was just thinking about them.”

Fred’s gaze returned to the pulsating coals of the fire. “They’re here. Your wife too, I believe.”

“What are you doing?”

Fred turned and looked at Roland. “Just listening… to the fire, and the desert.”

“Oh.” Roland listened to the quiet—another pop, another snap—the faint note of a distant train horn. “Here, where?”

“Your family. Yeah, I think they’re looking for you.”

“You mean in Phoenix?”

“No… but maybe. No. Probably not.” Fred turned toward the fire. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Well, I don’t understand. You said...” Roland stared at Fred. “How do you know this?”

“We’re not talking about the same wife.” Fred pried up a piece of burning wood with his stick. “Not the woman I told you about, from the dream.”

“What do you mean it’s not her? I’ve got only one wife.”

He pushed a branch up over the top of another. A noise came from the east—like laughing. It stopped, but then, a few moments later, returned. A barely audible reply came from somewhere to the north of it.
Elf owls
… Roland had heard them before while camping up on the butte with Joyce—the tiny owls would sometimes nest in holes dug into saguaro cactuses. He turned to the east. The distinction between the horizon and the sky was barely discernible there. Another call arrived from the direction he was looking.

Fred peered off past Roland. “East… they’re looking for you in the east.”

“Okay… what makes you think that?”

The old man prodded the embers with his stick, shifting chunks of wood this way and that, coxing the dying fire back to life. “You went to the place where your home was?”

Roland closed his eyes and drew in a breath. “There’s nothing there.” An image of the towering pine tree, black against the stars, came to mind. “I’ve lived there for the past five years. Yeah, in a house. But now there’s nothing there.”

Fred grunted. “Mmm…”

“I went to my neighbor’s house. They didn’t remember me.” His eyes followed a spark drifting up from the fire. “I know that was real… my life… what I remember.” The spark hesitated, then died. “There’s nothing else. That’s all.” He turned toward Fred’s flickering face. “If I live somewhere else, then why am I here? And how is it I know the people there, the Browns, I mean?”

“I don’t know how these things happen, but they do.”

Roland traced back through recent memories, searching for a particular moment. “The noise in the kitchen…” He described the incident, what he could remember everything from the strange noise, to his ending up at Fred’s place. “I know it’s not real, it’s crazy, but it’s what I remember.” He shook his head. “Houses don’t disappear like that. It’s a dream.”

“Houses don’t, no, but people do. The same world, but different people… different lives. We ignore these lost souls when they wander into our world with only their crazy stories. Your house didn’t disappear, it never existed. Though I think you did.”

“Disappeared?” Roland lifted his eyes to the sky, turning the idea over in his mind. “But I’m here.”

“And no longer there.”

“What are you talking about? Like alternate realities?”

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

Roland tried to imagine two worlds, himself in both, two distinct lives swapping places, and slowly pieced together a workable, however unlikely, scenario. “Really.”

“I believe so.”