Winter Oranges (11 page)

When Jason wandered downstairs shortly after nine the next morning, he found Ben in the living room, waiting for him. He practically glowed when he spotted Jason. He clapped his hands and bounced on the balls of his feet. Jason wasn’t sure he was ready for conversation, but it would be cruel to deny Ben a chance to speak, so he dutifully wound the music box.

“You’re here!” Ben gushed, as soon as he was able.

“Seems that way.”

“I think I’d hug you if I could.”

“Let’s not get carried away.” Still, it felt good to be wanted, even if it was by a man nobody else could see.

“Can we watch another one of your movies now?”

“Coffee first.”

Twenty minutes later, they settled on the couch—or in Ben’s case,
in
the couch—and Jason hit Play. Ben asked a lot of questions, and Jason told him all about the cast and how the various scenes had been shot. In the end, it took them a little over three hours to finish watching a ninety-minute movie.

“That was wonderful!” Ben said when it was over. “Even better than the last one.”

“It doesn’t take much to beat
Alley of Blood
.”

“Bummer that you had to die so early.”

Jason laughed. “‘Bummer’? You have a pretty modern vocabulary for somebody who hasn’t had a single conversation since the start of the Civil War.”

“It’s not like I haven’t been around people. Just because they couldn’t hear me didn’t mean I wasn’t listening to them.”

“Or to the TV?”

“Exactly.”

“I bet that made your predicament a lot easier.”

“It really did. Of all the inventions I’ve seen over the years, the TV is definitely my favorite. I mean, the radio seemed like a miracle, but television . . .” He shook his head, smiling. “It’s amazing.”

“But you said you hadn’t seen one since about 1990?”

“I think that’s when it was.”

“Okay.” Jason took a moment to wind the globe. “Back up. You talked about being stuck in the curio cabinet. How does that fit in?”

“I saw a lot of TV in the seventies and eighties, up until the curio cabinet. That only lasted a year or two, thank goodness. And then somehow—I never really knew how, because I was inside the globe when it happened—but I ended up with this little old lady in a nursing home. Her name was Edith. She was alone a lot, and she watched TV all the time, which I loved, but then she died. After that, I spent a few years in the spare bedroom at her niece’s house. That was pretty boring. Then I ended up in an antique shop. That wasn’t bad, really. No TV, but there were lots of people in and out all the time. I’d follow the employees around and listen to them talk about their families and their trouble with their husbands. There were affairs and arguments and all kinds of drama.” He laughed. “It was a lot like a soap opera, actually. That was one of the better periods, I guess. Then one day, a new lady came in and bought the globe and stuck it in that room you found me in.”

“Did anything interesting ever happen there?”

Ben shook his head. “Never.”

“So that was a bad time?”

“No. That wasn’t too bad. The worst . . .” He winced, hesitating, and Jason wound the globe again while Ben contemplated his words. “For a while, the globe . . . well, I don’t really know for sure, but in hindsight, it must have been in a box, packed away in an attic or something.”

“So you were stuck in the attic?”

“No. I was stuck in the box.” He shuddered. “I’d try to come out, like this—” he indicated his spectral form, on the couch “—but it was all wrong. Like I could just barely project, but I couldn’t move at all. It was pitch-black, every time, and not a single sound. If I listened hard, sometimes I thought I heard birds or footsteps, but I wasn’t really sure at that point. It felt like a grave.” He shook his head, his eyes focused on some distant point as he remembered. “I imagined so many things. I thought maybe the world had ended, and I was the only one left, stuck forever in that place. And then I thought maybe the globe had been thrown away. Maybe it had been buried in a dump somewhere, and I’d picture piles of earth all around me, and I’d suddenly feel like I couldn’t breathe.” He clutched his chest with one pale hand. “I thought maybe I was in hell. That I’d died, and damnation was going to be an eternity of silence.”

“That sounds horrifying. How in the world did you handle it without . . . well . . .”

“Without going crazy?”

Jason hadn’t wanted to say it out loud, but he nodded.

“I’m not sure I did, to be honest. I think I lost it for a while.”

“You seem perfectly sane to me, especially given the circumstances.”

“I’ve learned through all of this that sanity isn’t something you have, and then you lose it and it’s gone forever. It’s something you can pass in and out of, you know? It’s there and gone, there and gone again. It’s like walking through shadows on a sunny day.”

Jason shivered at the thought. “But you obviously got out of there eventually.”

“Yes, thank goodness. One day, it started snowing, so I knew somebody had moved the globe. And when I projected to the outside, I was in a living room. The curtains were open and the sun was shining—it was August, although I didn’t know that yet—and there was music playing, and kids laughing in the other room. Oh my God, I can’t tell you how relieved I was. It was like I’d been reborn.” His glanced over at Jason, a broad smile brightening his face. “That was the happiest day I’ve ever had in the globe. Until yesterday, that is. Until you.”

Jason squirmed at the frankness of the statement. “I’m sorry I ran away after our first meeting.”

“I don’t care. You came back. That’s the only thing that matters. That room over the garage was okay, but this is definitely better.”

“I’m glad I’m more entertaining than an empty room.”

Ben laughed. “Much more entertaining.
And
you have a TV.” Ben’s smile faded. He stood and went to the window to gaze across the lawn to the garage. “But you see what I mean now, that being there wasn’t too bad. Boring maybe, but at least I knew the world was still turning, and that the globe was safe. I even had a window. There’s nothing worse than not being able to see outside.”

If seeing outside meant that much to him . . .

“Do you want to go out there?”

Ben spun toward him. “What?”

“I could take the globe outside if—”

“Oh my God, yes! I hadn’t even thought of that, but yes! Would you really do that for me?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Ben grew so excited, he popped out of sight for a moment. By the time he appeared again, Jason had donned his shoes and jacket. He tucked a pair of gloves into his pockets.

“You ready?” he asked Ben.

Ben nodded, his face bright and eager, and Jason picked up the globe. Ben vanished again as he passed out of the living room, flickering back into view briefly in the hallway, and then again on the veranda. His face broke into a dazzling smile as they descended the steps to the yard. The sunlight washed through him, making it much harder to see him than it had been inside. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, soaking it in. His lips moved, and Jason realized he hadn’t yet rewound the globe. His fingers were starting to get sore from turning the tiny key so many times.

“You’ll have to repeat that,” he said, after he’d wound it as far as it would go.

“I said, ‘It’s perfect.’” Ben watched as Jason pulled on his gloves, the globe held tight between his knees. “Is it cold?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

Ben shook his head, but his smile didn’t fade. “I wish I could.”

“It’s brisk, that’s for sure, but it could be worse.”

“What month is it?”

“November.”

“Oh, if only it were October! That’s my favorite month. But November isn’t bad. Is it early in the month?”

“It’s the eleventh.”

“On a mild year, they might still be harvesting. Does it smell like apples?”

“What?”

“We lived right next to an orchard, and in the fall, I swear I could smell them all the way to our house. Does it smell like apples? Please tell me it smells like apples!”

It didn’t. Not even close. But Jason said, “Of course it smells like apples, silly. What else would it smell like in November?”

Ben laughed with delight. “I don’t even care that you’re lying. It’s the best lie anybody’s told me in a century and a half!”

It was enough to break Jason’s heart, knowing that there’d been so little cause for joy in Ben’s life. And yet, Ben didn’t seem to feel sorry for himself at all. He acted as if he’d been given the gift of a lifetime. He turned in a slow circle, trying to take everything in, looking more excited than the proverbial kid in a candy store.

Jason tucked the globe under his arm and rubbed his hands together. Maybe Ben couldn’t feel the cold, but he certainly could. It wasn’t quite freezing out, but it was too cold to stand around. “Do you want to walk?” He pointed into the trees on the eastern edge of the clearing. “There’s supposed to be a stream that cuts through the property over that way somewhere. I haven’t really explored much yet.”

“A stream!” Ben said, as if Jason had told him Santa Claus himself might be waiting for them around the bend. “That sounds wonderful!”

They started off across the clearing toward the woods, Jason leading the way, although he didn’t know exactly where he was going. He’d feel silly if they ended up lost on his own land, but if nothing else, they’d find the fence and follow it west, back to the driveway. Ben walked next to him. Watching him, Jason was reminded again of their first meeting in the guest room, and the way Ben’s steps didn’t seem to sync with the distance traveled. It was as if he were walking on one of the moving walkways in the airport, and Jason found it disconcerting. He chose instead to focus on Ben’s face. The boy—and it was hard to think of him as anything but, especially now that he knew Ben was frozen at a mere twenty years of age—continued staring delightedly around the forest as they walked, yet he had an expression of concentration on his face. His lips were moving, and Jason realized he couldn’t hear him. He wound the globe again, listening.

Ben wasn’t talking, per se. At least, not to Jason. He was mumbling to himself. “. . . Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine—”

“Are you counting our steps?”

Ben came to an abrupt stop, his head whipping up in surprise, as if he’d forgotten Jason was there. “Oh.” He glanced around them, at the trees, then up at the sky, as if searching for something. “Oh my God, I was, wasn’t I?”

“Why?”

Ben laughed nervously. “It’s kind of a habit.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss the entire incident. “I’m being stupid.”

He started walking again, and Jason followed him into the evergreens that surrounded the house. Jason paid attention to the globe, making sure the music box was still running in case Ben spoke, but the only sound for several minutes was the crunch of Jason’s feet through the leaves, the chirping of birds, and the occasional angry chatter of an alarmed chipmunk. Although Jason frequently had to push branches aside, or duck his head to avoid ramming into one, Ben simply walked forward, allowing the trees to go right through his spectral form. He was hard to see in the sunlight, but clearer when he was in the shade, reminding Jason of Ben’s comments earlier about passing in and out of sanity. It was unnerving, and Jason found it easier to concentrate on his own slow steps through the forest than to watch Ben.

“I told you about being stuck in the box?” Ben said at last.

It sounded like a question, so Jason answered. “Yes.”

“Well, I couldn’t manifest outside the globe, and there isn’t much to do in my cabin, and I knew I was starting to crack. So I started going for walks.”

“Wait. Your cabin?” He’d known Ben’s existence was somehow tied to the globe, but he hadn’t quite thought of the fact that Ben
lived
there. That he fell asleep each night—presumably, at least—and woke each morning somewhere inside the world of the globe. That seconds and minutes and decades ticked by, and Ben experienced each and every one of them. He felt like a fool for not having considered it sooner. “You live in that cabin? The one in the globe?”

“Yes.”

“But you can go outside? I mean, outside of the cabin, but inside the globe?”

“Right. But it isn’t like this. It’s . . . Well, it’s hard to explain, but it isn’t real. I mean, there’s the ground, and the sky, and trees, but everything’s wrong. There’s snow, but it isn’t cold at all, and it never melts. And there are trees, but they never change. There aren’t any birds or deer or mice or anything. Just tree after tree after tree. But I started to think that maybe, if I looked hard enough, I’d find . . . I don’t know.
Something
. A door, or another house, or maybe a road. Anything.”

“But you didn’t?”

“All I ever found was my cabin, again and again and again. No matter how hard I concentrated on walking straight ahead and never turning, I always ended up back at my cabin. Every day, I’d pick a new direction, and I’d walk. And at some point, I started counting, trying to figure it out.”