Winter Oranges (8 page)

“Months? Or years?”

Years.

“Five years in the guesthouse?”

Ben nodded.

Had he been alone all that time? Jason wanted to ask, but the enormity of it stopped him. It was a heavy question. It led into Ben’s past, and although Jason was dying to know more, he was painfully aware of how stilted their communication was.

There had to be a better way to converse.

Once again, Ben moved aside to allow Jason into the dining room. Jason picked up the globe, noting the excitement on Ben’s face. The minute he passed through the doorway into the hallway, Ben disappeared. When Jason reached the living room, Ben flickered back into existence. Jason frowned, suddenly doubting. He stared down at the snow globe, wondering. Could it be some kind of hoax after all? Was the globe somehow creating Ben’s image? But no. If that were the case—if the globe worked like a movie projector—Ben’s image would be thrown across the room to splash into existence against the closest solid object. He wouldn’t be simply standing in the middle of the room.

Ben spun around, trying to take in the entire room in all its pink-flowered glory at once. He stopped on his second turn, his wide eyes staring at Jason’s 52-inch flat-screen television. Ben approached it, his hands held out in front of him as if in awe. He turned to Jason. His lips formed the question,
TV?

“You know about television?”

Ben nodded, bouncing on his toes in excitement. He leaned forward and used his hands to shape a square about knee-high, then stood up to indicate the big screen in front of him.

“Yeah, they’ve gotten bigger.”

Ben began talking again, his hands flying, his eyes bright. He talked and talked, occasionally indicating the television, seemingly telling a story, and Jason moved closer. He found himself transfixed by Ben’s energy. By his fluttering hands. By his full lips. By the utter joy that seemed to pour off of him, almost more tangible than Ben himself. He seemed full of happiness and enthusiasm, and Jason could have used healthy doses of both.

“I wish I could hear you,” he said, interrupting Ben’s flow of words.

Ben stopped, all his wild movements coming to a halt, all of him settling into a sudden stillness, his hands clasped in front of him, looking like a lost little boy. He was a couple of inches shorter than Jason, and he met Jason’s gaze with such solemn sincerity, it took Jason’s breath away. His answer was easy to predict.

Me too.

“The sheriff couldn’t see you.”

Ben shook his head. Said a word that might have been,
Nobody.

Jason hoped he’d read that word wrong. “How many have been able to see you? Before me, I mean?”

Ben held his hand up in a circle. Zero. But then he seemed to reconsider. He held up one finger.

“Only one person besides me?”

Ben frowned, shaking his head, waving his hands in a futile, dismissive gesture, clearly frustrated by his inability to say more.

“Never mind. We’ll figure this out eventually.” Jason pointed to the TV. “You want me to turn it on?”

Ben’s eyes lit up, and he nodded with the same enthusiasm a kid might show if asked whether he wanted to spend the day at Disneyland.

Jason shook his head, laughing. All this worry about a ghost, and all the ghost wanted to do was watch TV.

“Okay.” He picked up the remote and brought the television to life. “What do you want to watch?”

He pulled up the on-screen guide, and Ben’s eyes went wide. Jason began scrolling through the lists, watching in amusement as Ben traced his translucent finger down the screen, reading the options. But by the sixth page of choices, his smile had turned into a scowl.

“You don’t know any of these shows?”

Ben shook his head.

“What show did you have in mind? I can probably find it On Demand or something.”

Ben tilted his head, thinking. Finally, he smiled. He spread his hands in a wide sweeping gesture, then pointed to himself, then held a hand down at knee height.

“Okay. I haven’t played charades in a while, but I can do this. How many words?”

Three fingers.

“All right. Do it again.”

Ben did, and Jason began to guess. The first word was easy. The second took only two tries. The third . . .

“All My . . . All My Short People? All My Small Things? All My . . . Little . . . Little People? Kids? Children?”

Ben bounced, clapping his hands.

“Oh my God, you’re kidding!
All My Children
?”

Ben nodded.

“I don’t even know if it’s still on. A lot of the soaps got cancelled a few years ago.” Ben slumped, and Jason sympathized. It’d happened right at the time when he’d started to consider taking a role on one. “Don’t worry. We have about a hundred and fifty channels to choose from. We’ll find something.”

There were more soaps left on air than he’d realized. Ben settled on the opposite end of the couch—although this time, he floated about half an inch above it, instead of sinking into it—and Jason flipped to
The Young and the Restless
.

His stomach rumbled, and he spent a moment debating the appropriateness of offering Ben some lunch. Common courtesy dictated that he shouldn’t eat in front of his guest. Then again, Ben couldn’t even pick up the television remote. How exactly would he go about eating a ham sandwich?

“Will you be okay here while I go shower and grab something to eat? I’ll leave the TV on.”

Ben hesitated, clearly embarrassed. He asked a question, pointing to the couch to help make himself clear.
You’re coming back?

“I promise.”

Ben smiled, nodding.
I’ll be fine.

“Do you need anything?” Jason asked. He knew it was a silly question—what exactly could he possibly bring Ben?—but he felt he had to ask. “Food or something to drink or . . .”

The look Ben gave him was enough to silence him. Not exactly derision, but something that bordered on exasperation and yet with a hint of sadness. Ben shook his head no.

“Okay. Well, I won’t be long.”

And he wasn’t. He made it back to the couch as
The Young and the Restless
was ending. After that, Ben watched
General Hospital
, and then
Days of Our Lives
. And while Ben watched TV, Jason watched Ben.

He was so animated, every feeling he had easily read upon his young face. He talked a lot, sometimes seemingly at characters on the television, sometimes to Jason, although he was usually too excited for Jason to lip-read more than a word or two. A few times, Jason suspected Ben was trying to explain which characters he remembered, or some piece of backstory. He grew somber during the dramatic sequences, his image sometimes flickering fitfully, and he fidgeted nervously through the intimate scenes, like a little kid with his parents in the room. He loved the commercials too, although the many pharmaceutical ads left him frowning, and one promising to treat erectile dysfunction flustered him so much he winked right out of existence for half a minute.

“When was the last time you got to watch TV?” Jason asked after Ben had reappeared.

Ben tilted his head, thinking, then went through the number routine again, holding up his fingers. One. Nine. Nine. Zero. Another little wobble of his hand and a shrug, indicating it was more an estimate than anything.

A couple of years after Jason had been born. Jason couldn’t help but wonder how it must have been for Ben, being so alone for all those years, with nobody to see him or hear him. No wonder Ben loved television so much.

Jason picked up the globe, pondering. He turned it upside down, glancing sideways at Ben as he shook it, but Ben didn’t seem to feel anything or to notice at all.

Jason studied the snow globe, searching for something that might indicate where it had come from—a company name or city, or maybe a production date. Anything. He found two words engraved into the bottom. Scratches nearly obscured the first two letters, but Jason was able to figure it out based on context:
SHAKE GLOBE
. He also found a small silver turnkey.

The globe was a music box.

Jason turned the key three times and let it go.

No music emerged as the key turned slowly backward. Jason held the base of the globe closer to his ear, straining to hear over the voices from the TV, but he caught only a faint mechanical
click-whirr-click-whir
from inside. Some piece of clockwork still functioned, but not the part that played a tune.

“Dot com again!” Ben suddenly exclaimed, his voice loud and clear. “What in the world does it mean?”

“What?” Jason was too surprised to manage anything more coherent than that.

“What?” Ben echoed.

“I can hear you.”

A look of sheer delight spread quickly across Ben’s expressive face. “Can you really?”

“Yes!”

And in the blink of an eye, Ben disappeared.

“Jesus, where’d you go?” Jason grumbled to the empty room. “We finally start to make progress and you up and leave.”

Three or four seconds later, Ben popped back into view, his mouth already moving, but once again, no sound emerged. Jason glanced down at the globe—at the turnkey on the bottom that had stopped rotating—and understood.

He held a hand up to Ben. “Wait! I think I can only hear you when the music box is going.”

Ben bounced a bit above the couch cushion, his lips forming two words over and over.
Wind it. Wind it. Wind it.

And Jason obliged, turning the key a few turns to test his theory.

“Your name’s Ben?”

“Benjamin Robert Ward. I have a billion questions—”

“
You
have a billion questions? How do you think I feel?”

“Me first!”

“How about we take turns?” Jason suggested.

Ben laughed, and Jason was struck by what a bright sound it was—so full of joy and merriment, hearing it was like throwing back the curtain in a dark room and letting in the daylight. “Fair enough.”

“Okay. But I get to start.” Jason muted the TV, then wound the music box key as far as it would go to give them as much time as possible. “How’d you get in the globe?” he asked as he released it.

“My sister put me there. My turn—”

“No! Tell me the whole thing! Where are you from? How did this happen? How could you be in there all this time and—”

“That’s way more than one question.”

“Start with the first one, then.” Jason glanced at the globe, held upside down in his hand, and the key turning counterclockwise, ticking away the seconds. “Talk fast.”

Ben obliged, letting his answer tumble out in a rush. “My sister put me in the globe after the Battle of Fort Sumter to stop me from joining the Confederate Army. My turn: Who shot J.R.?”

“Wait! What? The
Confederate
Army? And who the hell is J.R.?”

“J.R. Ewing! He got shot in the season finale, and by the time the next season started, the woman who owned the globe had moved me into this curio cabinet in the dining room—which they
never
ate in!—and I never found out who shot him.”

Jason blinked, his mind reeling. “That’s your question? You’ve been stuck in a snow globe since the Civil War, and you’re worried about a plot point on
Dynasty
?”

“
Dallas
.”

“Whatever.”

“I bet it was Dusty. Or maybe Vaughn. Probably not Sue Ellen, but—”

“I’ll google it for you later.” And then, seeing Ben’s confusion at the term, “I’ll look it up. Now back up. Answer my question again, but this time, start at the beginning.”

Ben glanced pointedly at the globe, then waited until Jason had wound it again before he started. “My family owned a small farm in Tennessee. Mostly cotton, but we grew some corn and tobacco too.”

“You were plantation owners?”

“Not even close, although that was my father’s aspiration. When he first started the homestead, before I was born, he assumed he’d have lots of sons to help him get ahead, but it didn’t work out that way. My mother had six children before she died giving birth to the seventh. Only two of us lived: me and my older sister, Sarah. And I was never the son my father wanted. I was sick all the time. And I have asthma. I tried smoking stramonium, but—”