Cast a Pale Shadow(7)

When he had carried them home and stowed them away, his tiny refrigerator and pantry bulged with his lunacy, making him shudder each time he looked for an egg to boil for breakfast or a can of baked beans to open for dinner. He knew he should throw it all out but he didn't. He couldn't.

On Thanksgiving morning, he rose at five from the bed where he had tossed and turned and sweated through the night and began working. He cubed a loaf of white bread, crumbled a pan of dry cornbread and mixed them in the sink -- he had no bowl big enough -- with a half dozen eggs, melted butter, chopped onions and celery, salt, pepper, sage, mushrooms, a pound of cooked pork sausage, squishing the glop between his fingers until it felt right and stuffing the whole mess into the cavity of the twenty-four pound turkey.

While that began roasting in a pan he had borrowed from a neighbor, he peeled and boiled five pounds of potatoes for mashing, made cranberry sauce from fresh berries, orange peel, port wine and currant jelly, and creamed two cans of peas and pearl onions. Two pies, pumpkin and apple, he had bought from the bakery, sat atop the refrigerator. The brown sugar had hardened to a rock so he beat chunks off with a hammer to melt with butter for the candied yams.

The aroma of all the various dishes now mingled and forced their way into his pores, pushing him toward the brink. He had to get away from it.

He threw a coat over his flannel shirt and jeans and walked into the overcast November afternoon. He thought if he walked long enough through the deserted streets, he might lose his way and the smell of his madness might never taunt him again.

Weary from insomnia -- how many nights had he now lain awake fearing a surrender to the darkness? -- and his frenetic activity of the morning -- cooking a meal for a family that was fifteen years dead -- he fought the familiar squeezing in his heart and the thundering return of his nearly chronic headache.

But each throb from the back of his head nagged at him again and again, "No mincemeat. You forgot mincemeat," in his father's voice.

Reaching the park on Spruce and Franklin, he leaned back against the rough granite base of the Veteran's Memorial, pinched his ears shut with his thumbs and covered his face.

But in the darkness he created he saw them: Jill and Danny and Valerie and his mother, waiting, cowering in the rubble of that other Thanksgiving dinner, waiting for Duncan Brewer's tirade to stop, waiting for him to run out of dishes to smash against the wall, waiting for it all to end.

No! Cole skinned his hands back through his hair and away from his eyes and tried to blot out the vision with the rhythmic striking of his head against the monument. Succeeding at last, he slumped to the ground, gulping throat-searing air, expecting his heart to give out, praying it would.

"Are you all right, Sonny?" a voice filtered to him after a long while.

"Yes. I'm afraid so," he mumbled and forced his way to his feet.

The old woman frowned at him and offered him a silver flask. "Be thankful you're alive, if nothing else. There'll be long, cold years ahead when you're not."

Cole took a swig of the scorching liquid, then rasped his gratitude.

"Got a smoke?"

"Probably," he nodded and patted at his pockets until he located a pack of Marlboros and matches. Remnants of Nicholas. He was not surprised when he saw her threadbare gloves close over the pack and absently drop them in her own pocket when she had finished lighting up.

"Thanks, Sonny. Just what I needed. What's yer name?"

He had to think for a minute. "Uh, Baker. Cole Baker." It was his name this year. Here, so close to his old hometown, where someone might remember the other, even after all these years.

"Well, if yer hungry, Cole Baker, they're giving away turkey and all the fixin's at the Prince of Peace Mission. Two blocks down. But no hard spirits to wash it all down. They get cantankerous about that."

"Thanks, but I -- well, maybe I will," he said, getting a sudden inspiration.

"Sure, why not? It's free. Tell 'em Gertie sent you. They'll treat you fine." Gertie passed him the flask again to fortify him for the road, then patted him on the arm as he handed it back. "And cheer up, Cole Baker. Yer too good lookin' to be so down in the mouth on a holiday. When you scrape bottom, the only way to go is up, I always say."

"Or out," he suggested. "There's always out."

"Yeah, that too, I guess," she agreed as she ambled away. "Yup, I hadn't thought of that. Up or out, either way."

With new purpose, Cole wound the streets back to his flat, steeled himself for the turkey dinner's assault on his senses, and set about his task. The meat thermometer had reached fresh poultry and despite the neglected basting, the fowl was a rich, golden brown, fit for a Good Housekeeping cover.

He told himself it was the steam that brought tears to his eyes as he wrapped the bird in foil and bath towels and loaded it and the other products of his frenzied labor into the trunk of his car. He drove the entire meal to the Mission. They were grateful for it, and more grateful when he rolled up his sleeves and spent the rest of his afternoon and evening ladling out gravy and washing dishes.

He slept that night, too exhausted to dream, and for that he was grateful.

It had been his mistake entirely to stay so close to his father. The state hospital where they had moved him after the grant money ran out loomed over Cole's week like a beckoning shadow.

He had quickly found a job taking baby pictures at a local department store. He had a knack for cajoling smiles from even the most obstreperous toddler. Workdays, his life was not unpleasant, except for the headaches that blurred his vision so badly sometimes he could not focus the camera.

But on Sundays, every Sunday, he made the duty visit to Duncan and sat silent to his silence or, alternately, conversed in his one-sided way about inconsequential matters, politics, and sports. Cole mused about whether his words clattered through his father's muddled mind like echoes down a canyon, or if they were more like water balloons bursting against a brick wall.

He wondered too if he, himself, ever passed any of his lost, blank days like this, rock-like, impenetrable. The unsettling image would send him rushing home to sort through the proof that he didn't: the photographs of fresh-faced but unfamiliar girls in his portfolio, some candid, some posed, sometimes scrawled with brief love notes to Nicky from Cynthia or Laura or Beth. Their smiles both comforted and disturbed him. He half-wished he could remember them but felt an odd sort of relief that he could not.

Where were they now, all those girls, and all their love? If he knew that answer, if anyone knew that answer, would he be locked in the room next to Duncan?

When Cole woke on the day after Thanksgiving he knew he had to flee the lingering odors of his frenetic cooking. By eight, he had dressed and grabbed a couple doughnuts and a coffee to go at the shop on the corner and had set out with his cameras for Lake Michigan. He drove right into the storm.

Just outside of Holland, his car hit a patch of ice and slid off the road into a gully. If it hadn't been for the scabbed-over cut and bruised lump on his forehead, he would have blamed his lost hours on his madness. He woke disoriented and so numbed with cold that he knew if he did not get warmed soon he was in danger of freezing to death.

The door on his side was jammed, so he had to push his way out of the other side, sinking in a slushy puddle to his knees. He had been too long away from Michigan winters to remember to stock the back seat with blankets and a change of warm clothes. Or maybe he should blame Nicholas for that oversight. It was his car.

Cursing his other self, he threw his camera gear into the trunk and struggled out of the gully to the road. It was silent and white for as far in both directions as he could see. The driving snow at his back, he trudged in what he thought was the way toward Holland, trying to calculate how many miles he had covered before the accident.

Step after step, he pushed on for nearly an hour, though the reasons why he should bother were fast sliding away through the ice that clotted his brain. His third fall jogged the last of them free from their hold on him, and he did not get up. The snow made a blanket over everything and soon it would cover him as well, a nice, warm blanket he could sleep under forever. Dying wasn't so bad. Somehow he knew it wouldn't be.

Then Nicholas took over.





Nicholas



Nicholas heard the bus lumber around the corner and his shoulders sagged in disappointment. She would be gone soon and he wouldn't see her again for two days. It was unfair that the bus would come early on a Friday, robbing him of the few golden moments of his life these days. He watched her rise from the bench and straighten her skirt and pull up one drooping knee sock.

"Goodbye, Sweetheart," he whispered to her in his mind, "Take care." Replacing the cameras in the window display case he had been idly dusting since the time drew near for her daily arrival at the stop, he limped closer to the door so he could see her step up into the bus.

"Damn! Trissa, hold that bus!" he heard someone shriek. The girl he'd been watching turned her head sharply, nodded, and waved in his direction. His breath caught for an instant until he realized it was not him she greeted but a girl darting across the sidewalk from the drugstore next door. The girl clutched two packs of cigarettes in one hand and her wallet in the other while her dangling purse hung open, spilling some of its contents in her dash to catch the bus.