In Springdale Town Read online

  Something heavy approached, a presence forceful and unavoidable, and a hand landed on his shoulder, where it stayed, pressing with an insistence that caused him to look up, discovering beside him the massive blue-uniformed man who had taken him from the narrow room, and who was now holding his shoulder with a wide and formidable hand. The man beckoned with his other hand, and Shelling rose, leaving sushi and contentment.

  Outside, the man steered him up the street to a dim alley between the Japanese restaurant and the rug shop. Shelling stopped at the black maw of the alley. “What’s this all about? I have rights, you know.”

  He tried to turn, but the man’s fingers clamped onto his shoulders. Shelling refused to move. Let the man push him. Instead, the man slipped his hands under Shelling’s armpits and lifted. Shelling squirmed, trying to break the policeman’s hold. He swung his legs back and forth, kicking at the man, but nothing had an effect. The policeman-jailer kept walking.

  Shelling had appeared in a short-lived television series starring that former professional football player, the one with the state of Texas tattooed on his scalp. The man’s size and intimidating interactions with the rest of the cast had upset the delicate essence of creating the show. Once, for fun, the man had grabbed Shelling from behind, encircling his neck with a chokehold that he didn’t release until Shelling began to pass out. The man had laughed his “huh huh huh” laugh, and what could Shelling do?

  But this new situation was opposite. There was a peacefulness to being carried, as though the act stripped Shelling of responsibility. He felt outside himself, and imagined what it would be like to gaze upon this scene–the dark-uniformed man carrying his burden, some recalcitrant youngster, down the alley. The massive jailer transported Shelling farther than he would have thought possible in this small town. Had they perhaps left the town, penetrated some intersecting region accessible only to this man?

  At some point they must have passed into a building, though Shelling noticed no transition from open alley to closed-in corridor, identical to the corridor he and his jailer had traversed earlier.

  16

  Sammy and I chose opposite directions, but reached the moving panel at the same time. This one opened to a closet with a metal ladder emerging through a hole in the floor. We descended, Sammy first. The cold of the rungs bothered me, and I had to concentrate on not going so fast I trampled Sammy’s fingers. The light in the tube grew dimmer as we descended, though it appeared to follow us, illumining the nearest rungs. Above, everything was dark; I didn’t look down any farther than the next rung and the top of Sammy’s head. My shoulder muscles burned from the effort. Sammy’s breathing rasped, a heavy sound from deep in her throat.

  How much longer would this ladder to nowhere continue? The air down here...thin...insufficient. The walls, the tube, constricted, so hard to squeeze through. Something grabbed my ankles, held them. I tried to kick them free. I would not become trapped, not here, not before seeing one last time the glitter of sun on water, hearing waves caress the shore.

  “Patrick!”

  Who here knew my name? Not the others–they cared for nothing but their own petty squabbles. This dream amber-trapped me, forced its will.

  “Stop moving. Breathe, Patrick, breathe.” I became aware of Sammy’s hands gripping my ankles. I looked down. She had hooked her feet and knees onto the ladder for support. “You were panicking,” she said.

  “I’m okay now.” I must have sounded uncertain because she didn’t release me. She talked, not really saying anything, but the sound of her voice soothed me, and she stroked my calf with her fingers. My breath settled, air sliding in and out of my tender throat.

  She slipped her hands from my ankles and started down. I hesitated, though not for long. Sammy kept talking; obviously she thought I needed help staying calm. Who had put her in charge anyway? A ladder. I could go down a fucking ladder without coddling. I knew how to handle myself pretty well, no matter the circumstances.

  I glanced down at the top of her head. She cared about me, didn’t want me to injure myself. And she had brought me to this place to share an experience before I left town.

  “Looks like we’re nearly there,” she said. “Somewhere, anyway,” she muttered.

  Careful to maintain my desperate grip on the rungs, I leaned out, trying to see what lay beyond her, at the base of the ladder. There was a pinkish surface, difficult to make out in the dim light.

  “Hold up,” she said. “Looks like the ladder ends a few feet from the bottom. I’m going to grab the lowest rung with my hands and drop.” She worked her way down rung by rung, then slid her right foot off, followed by the left.

  “How far?” I asked, but she had already let go.

  She cried, “Wheee!” as she dropped, holding her glasses to her face the way a scuba diver holds the mask. Her feet reached the surface. “It’s spongy foamy–” Her legs and then her body disappeared into the pinkish mass, cutting off the rest of her words.

  I scuttled down the remaining rungs and, not wanting to drop directly over her, pushed off. The stuff met my falling body and pulled me in. It had a thin membrane that made a little “shoup” kind of noise, then I sank into a mass of translucent jelly. Before I could think, I inhaled. The stuff sluiced into my mouth and throat, but instead of choking, I felt refreshed, as though the jelly contained an oxygen-rich mix–a viscous, breathable swimming pool. I folded onto my stomach and swung my arms out toward my head, attempting a slow breaststroke toward, I hoped, Sammy. The vat of jelly disoriented me. Light came from somewhere, maybe the jelly itself. Although I could see through the stuff, I had nothing with which to orient myself. The tube containing the ladder hadn’t been more than three feet across, but I had no way of knowing the size of this jelly tank. I wanted to find a wall and gain comfort from its solidity. I tried a breaststroke, my version of one anyway. I had never been much of a swimmer, but this–no worries about squirting water up my nose or having to match the strokes with my breathing–was kind of nice.

  Stopping, I hung in the stuff and looked around to see if my swimming had brought me to anything recognizable. Off to my right I saw a shape darker than the jelly, and I set off toward it.

  17

  Shelling woke on his back. He had dreamt of an academic conference at a beach resort, where he had spent his time at various lectures, the nature of which he couldn’t remember. There had been something he was expected to do, prevent a group from being trapped or taken prisoner. Odd thing for him to dream. He had never been to an academic conference, hadn’t even played an academic on television. His nose itched; he reached for it, but discovered that he couldn’t move.

  Padded straps restrained his wrists and ankles. His body lay on some kind of pallet. He rolled his head as far as he could in every direction. High on the wall to his left were two windows. A whistling vent stirred the air. The room–he had been here before. His forehead and armpits felt damp. He needed to wipe the sweat from his face but could do nothing.

  A wave hit, helplessness complete. He lay looking up at the plaster ceiling. Dry streambeds scored its surface, flowing around peaks and fissures. A desert, not without life, but the spiders stayed mainly in the corners, building their homes without disturbance. He had known a woman once, an actress, who reminded him of a spider–something about her dark hair and long skinny arms and knobby elbows, the shape of her mouth when she spoke. He always thought she was trying to suck in the world. That show they had been on...a comedy. She{note 17} had played the main character while he appeared in maybe five episodes of the first and only season. Without those giant walnut elbows he would have found her arms alluring. Long arms attracted him–the smooth distance down from shoulder, along bicep, humerus, and tricep.

  The lights in his cell brightened, a flash that overpowered his eyes with white. His pupils retreated, agonized by the unexpected intrusion, and he covered them with his lids. A clang sounded, then a clicking-whirring. He blinked repeatedly, trying to bring the room back in
to focus. His vision cleared enough for him to see the outlines of the windows, and as he concentrated on their shape his pallet moved. The end where his head lay began to rise, a slow, ratchety pull; the whole pallet climbed the wall, lifting him upright.

  “Adjustments, adjustments must be made. No one prepared, and so I must crank and strap, fill and elevate.”

  The speaker was a woman. Her voice soothed him, a musical tone not unlike that of Mindy, the actress he had lived with for six months, the one who had been a folksinger before getting a part in a movie about a folksinger. He had left her eventually, though he couldn’t recall why.

  His rising pallet was becoming uncomfortable as gravity pulled at his body, at the straps binding his wrists. He tensed to hold himself upright. At some point his eyes recovered and he could see the woman. She was directly below him and bent over, fiddling with something at the bottom edge of his pallet, now a few inches above the floor. When she straightened, the top of her curly red hair was about even with his waist. Behind her stood a low platform with a rod extending vertically a couple of feet, on the end of which was some kind of control panel and a joystick.

  She looked up at him, and he thought it was Mindy, but with hair red instead of blonde. Mindy though, she was six feet tall. Funny how he had thought of arms–he had loved to watch the movement of her arm as she strummed her guitar. He closed his eyes. She had written a song for him, “only one sky/sometimes in blue and sometimes gray.”{note 18} Stupid to have left her. With her, here, this empty town wouldn’t seem so bleak.

  When he opened his eyes, the short woman was standing on the platform with her hands resting on the chrome sides of the control panel. She pushed a button with her thumb, and the platform elevated, kept rising until her face leveled with his.

  “Better, better,” she said, and tweaked the joystick forward, then left, to maneuver herself in front of him.

  Close, she didn’t look like Mindy. Her eyes were farther apart, or maybe less rounded, and her nose wasn’t as pointed.

  “And now we can attend to preparations.”

  Her skin was creamy, unblemished by mark or wrinkle, and her eyes were a soft blue-green. Surely this wasn’t the face of a torturer? She lifted the ends of a belt from the sides of the pallet and buckled it over his chest, then pulled it tight.

  Shelling gasped. “What is this? What have I done? Hurts...I won’t be strapped–” He couldn’t take in enough air to form words.

  The woman pulled her platform back a foot or so. “Secured the subject for analysis.” She leaned over the control panel and flipped a cigar-shaped plastic rod from its socket and pointed it at him. Holes covered its rounded tip. With a stubby forefinger, she reached down to push a green button. “Begin recording. How many faces do you have?” She looked at Shelling as though waiting for an answer. “How many?” she asked again.

  He tried to speak, he opened his mouth, intending to offer something, but his outburst had drained him of words.

  “Subject refuses to speak.” She pushed the green button again.

  He moved his head from side to side and mouthed “no no no,” but she wasn’t looking. What crime had he committed? This town, his town, he had thought, but if it were his town, it would not have conspired to keep him alone and helpless, would not have subjected him to the giant policeman and his partner, this crazed midget woman with her straps and platform and buttons.

  18

  With the jelly limiting visibility, I was right over Sammy before I saw her. She hovered a foot or so below, face down. At first I thought she had lost consciousness, but her hands flapped every few seconds, slow, water-treading movements. She appeared to be watching something. I stroked downward. It took a lot of strokes to reach her. Either I moved half an inch at a time or she was way farther down than I had thought.

  She must have sensed my movement, because as I neared her, she looked up. She smiled, turned her body toward me, and extended a hand. I took it and we hovered there, holding hands. She spoke, but the jelly absorbed the sound. I mouthed back. She pointed down. Below lay the town, like a view from an airplane. Everything was there, church, town hall, houses, stores. Paperclip-sized cars moved along Main Street.

  We kicked to propel ourselves lower. A man exited the hardware store and stepped into the street without waiting for a car to pass. The car jerked to a stop, and the man kept going. Farther up the street, several teenagers blocked the sidewalk in front of the record store. When I saw the café where Sammy and I had eaten breakfast, my stomach rumbled. Had that been this morning? It seemed so long ago.

  What a god-like sensation, floating over the town like this, so real I thought I could sweep a hand down and pluck a tree from its bed. Probably a video of the town projected onto the floor, with the jelly giving it a three-dimensional appearance. Releasing Sammy’s hand, I stroked downward, then I reached to touch the floor. My fingers punched in the roof of a pickup truck. I jerked my hand back and looked at Sammy, who had followed me down. Her expression reflected my surprise.

  We stayed at this lower level but kept our hands well away from the street and buildings. Someone emerged from the alley by the rug shop and looked up. It was that fat cop, the one I called Scooter because I couldn’t picture him chasing anyone. He was looking in our direction, or at least at the area where we would be if we were really there instead of floating in a vat of pink jelly.

  Then he raised his right arm and pointed his index finger straight at us. Sammy grabbed my hand and squeezed. My heart started thumping. “There’s no way he can see us,” I said. The jelly swallowed my words, but Sammy knew what I meant.

  Scooter, as though aware he held our attention, slowly rotated his hand toward the alley behind him, and held it taut, like a weathervane in a strong wind. After a minute or so, he turned around, into the mouth of the alley, and disappeared in the direction he had pointed.

  Sammy pulled my arm, then dropped it and stroked toward the alley. I followed. The buildings grew larger as we neared them, rising sides of a brick canyon. We swam through the canyon till we reached a wall that blocked the alley. Sammy touched my hand and pointed up with her other, then kicked her way skyward. We found an open slit of a window. Sammy went straight for it. She tilted her head to the side to make herself flatter and pulled herself in.

  I waited until her feet were all the way through, then tried to copy her, but when I put my head into the window, I couldn’t breathe. Worse than on the ladder, this crack, the world above, its magnitude sagging. I tried to pull out of the crack, but my head was caught. Sammy would have to come back to help push me free. I stopped moving, trying to think. What had she said earlier?

  Closing my eyes, I concentrated on slow, even breath, and pushed myself in. My shoulders somehow flattened enough for me to squeeze through, and I tumbled onto a carpeted floor about two feet below the window. Sammy lay beside me. We had escaped the jelly. Right away the stuff started to dry out, congealing in my hair and face like gelatinous latex. I pulled it from my mouth. Bits of the stuff clung to the back of my throat, but they slowly dissolved. Exhaustion and exhilaration surged through me simultaneously.

  “The town,” I said. “Like we were there. That breathable jelly.” When I got the stuff out of my eyes I turned back to the window, which looked larger from in here. Outside, the sky was a pinkish haze. I grabbed Sammy’s hand. “What about that truck? I couldn’t have–”

  “I don’t know. The whole thing was new for me too.” Her face had a fixed-in-place look, as if she was trying not to be scared, and her fingers curled tight over mine.

  ~

  We worked on peeling ourselves clean. Sammy had cleared most of the stuff from her head and neck. Bits of it dotted her nose, and strands hung from the frame of her glasses. “You look like you’ve dumped a bottle of one of those facial mask things all over yourself,” I said.

  “Would you like a mirror?”

  When I smiled, the stretch and crack of solidifying goo tickled my face. I ran my
tongue over my lips, which tasted sweetish. A strip of the dried jelly stuck to Sammy’s cheek; I reached to brush it off. She held my hand there and leaned toward me. Her lips tasted sweetish too, fruity-tart like a plum jam. She stroked my back, passing her hand from the base of my neck down and up again. I felt her lips on my ear, and everything tingled. She moved her hands to my face and held my cheeks. Her dark eyes...what were they trying to say? We kissed again, slowly, and I understood something I never had with Caroline. We don’t need explanations for every action. Tenderness, warmth for another, don’t have to be linked with anything other than their own existence.

  I forced myself back. “Scooter, that cop,” I said. “He couldn’t have been motioning to us.”

  “Something’s wrong. We’ll have to keep going till we locate him, find out what’s happening.” Sammy raised my right hand and kissed my fingertips. She got up, pulling me with her, but we didn’t hurry. She twined the fingers of her right hand into my hair and rubbed her left across my chest. “Later...later, can I take you home and cook you dinner?” We stood close, and the pressure of her strong thigh against mine reassured me.

  The room had a normal door, with a panel of frosted glass and a metal knob. We went through it into a long hall. Ahead, something appeared to block the corridor.

  Our movements felt out of proportion to the stretched-out passage, so that we walked and walked but appeared to grow no closer to whatever awaited us. As though afraid that speech would slow our progress, we remained silent. My calves began to ache, a dull pain with each step. We held hands, and I found the contact comforting. I knew that together, we would reach...then, with a suddenness that made me pause, the shape loomed close; a few steps farther it became Scooter. He stood motionless beside a wide, rust-colored metal door. His bulk filled the hall. At first, I thought he was asleep standing up, but when we got close enough for me to see into his eyes, I had the impression that his mind had turned inward, to run some deep mental process requiring an intensity of concentration I wouldn’t have thought him capable of mastering.