Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (8 page)

With a soft
click
, the door latched behind Doc
and Callie, leaving Eric momentarily alone with Max. The wound on his ankle had
been cleaned, sutured, and bandaged before being rewrapped with sterile gauze
and several layers of athletic tape. Doc had argued ineffectively for a loose
covering that would necessitate Eric staying off of his feet as much as
possible for a week or more, but he had refused. In the end, a concession had
been reached with Eric agreeing to have his ankle checked and rebandaged at
least once a day—more so if it became infected or otherwise compromised.

The wrapping job Callie had done was amazingly more
flexible, and yet more supportive than his own duct tape handiwork. Perhaps it
was the anesthetic skewing his perception, but aside from the stiffness caused
by the compression, his ankle felt good enough to walk—even jog on—without
pain. He made a mental note to watch her more closely the next time it was
done. Another knock on the door brought him back to the present.

He stretched his hand over to Max’s collar, gripping
the thick, fluorescent orange nylon webbing before he answered. “Come on in.”

With a clang and several thumps, the door was jolted
open by Bernice, her arms laden with several foil covered plates, bowls and
bottles. A largish, loosely woven chartreuse knitting bag was slung over one of
her shoulders—its contents bulging the weave into semi-transparency.

“I figured you’d be hungry.”

“Starving . . . let me give you a hand,” Eric said as
he stepped forward, grabbing some of the miraculously balanced plates. The
aroma of fried eggs, herbs, and steamed vegetables surrounded Bernice as she
shifted some of the containers into his hands.

“Sit . . . eat. There’s no tellin’ when you’re gonna
have another chance with the way things have been, and you’re already looking
too skinny.”

The flopping and gurgling in his stomach jumped at the
opportunity to remind him of the last time he had eaten, and he wasted no time
tearing into the meal. One large bowl was filled with what looked like scraps,
scrapings, and miscellaneous leftovers mixed with rice and oatmeal.

Eric picked up the bowl and smiled at Bernice. “And
you brought Max breakfast.” He had the heavy ceramic casserole dish halfway
towards Max’s drooling face before Bernice cut him off.

“Are you saying that my mother’s special friendship
stew recipe is dog food?”

Eric froze—the large bowl now barely a foot from Max.
A rapid fire shift of his eyes traveled between Bernice, Max, and the casserole
dish . . . and then back to Max as he slowly pulled the large bowl away. Both
of Max’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief, and then dropped to narrow, calculating
slits as if to say,
“Yeah, I’m writing this one down. Remember this the next
time you need me, pal.”

Eric sheepishly grimaced at Max, and then set the bowl
on the folding chair. In just the past hour it had served as a resting place,
examination table, and surgery center . . . and now it was transformed into a
severely overcrowded buffet line. Using the oversized spoon that was already in
his hand, he dipped out an overflowing gob of Bernice’s mother’s friendship
stew. It was lukewarm, sticky to the point of being almost tacky, and rather
bland taste-wise. Also included with the first mouthful was a narrow grisly
rind of . . . something. Bacon, maybe? He couldn’t tell for sure.

Bernice still stood there—elbows out, loosely closed
fists resting at her waistline—as he chewed the mysterious rubbery substance.

“You like?” she asked with a tight lipped semi-frown.

“Mmmm . . .s’ good,” Eric mumbled out as he shoveled another
large spoonful of stew into his mouth, trying not to look at the other plates
covered with sunny-side-up eggs, sausage patties, hash browns, and homemade
whole wheat toast. Cold toast by the time he got to it. Always cold toast. That
tiny seed of memory was rapidly watered, fertilized and harvested as a full
blown remembrance of one of Uncle Andy’s often voiced thoughts on how the
universe worked.

They had been at the Big Buffalo diner in Jamestown—Eric
and Michelle’s hometown. Eric was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. He and
Michelle had ridden their bikes down to a creek early that morning to try their
luck on some local, overfished population of trout. Patchy blue skies had
rapidly turned to leaden gray, and the morning’s cool breeze degenerated into a
whipping, shifting frenzy. In other words, it was Eric’s idea of a perfect day
for fishing. Not so much for Michelle though. Both of them had been spared from
the event when Uncle Andy had surprised them with a triple blast of his horn.
They had ended up tossing their bikes in the back of his pickup just as the
first heavy drops splattered on the windshield. A trip to the diner followed.
It was there that he first heard his uncle’s conspiracy theory about toast.

“I’ll have the ‘old timers’ special, eggs over medium,
black coffee and a danish,” his uncle had ordered from the gum chewing, weary
eyed waitress.

“Sausage or bacon?”

“Sausage.”

“Regular or turkey sausage?” she replied on autopilot.

“Real sausage isn’t made from something that has
feathers.”

A quiet moment passed as the tired lady robotically
processed, and then rejected Andy’s response as one not preprogrammed and
listed as acceptable.

“Sorry hun’ . . . what was that? Did you want a
regular or turkey sausage.”

Uncle Andy smiled over top of his menu at us.
“Regular.”

A swift scribble in the rat-eared order pad preceded
the last question. “White or whole wheat?”

“Whole wheat. Cold please.”

“’Scuse?” The waitress peered over the top of her half-size,
bottoms only reading glasses.

“Whole wheat toast please, and make sure it’s cold.”

The gum smacking briefly shifted into overdrive, and
then immediately froze, like a cottontail rabbit suddenly aware of the red fox
peering through the weeds ahead.

“Cold?”

“Have you ever delivered a warm piece of toast?”

“Couple’ hundred times every day, I suppose.”

“No,” Uncle Andy replied, “you haven’t. Nobody has.
It’s impossible.”

Eric remembered exchanging a fleeting look with
Michelle, who was seated next to him in the booth. He remembered her smile, and
her barely suppressed giggle as his uncle proceeded with the joust.

Lowering the order pad slightly, the waitress bobbed
her nose toward Andy and asked, “What do you mean, ‘impossible’?”

“Well, do you know what the ‘R’ value is for a one
quarter inch thick slice of bread?”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t think so,” Andy replied quickly, “and
neither do I, but I know it’s low. As a matter of fact, leastwise from my
experience, toast seems to have one of the lowest insulating values of any
organic substance. And just to complicate things, it’s filled with tiny holes
to let whatever heat it had one time dreamed of holding, escape.”

Michelle’s foot had kicked mine under the table to
make sure I was paying attention to the unfolding spectacle.

The waitress’s blank faced stare was frozen in place as
my uncle continued.

“You can hover over top of any toaster in the world,
and FEEL the heat radiating upwards. And yet, as soon as the ‘sproing’ happens
and the toast shoots topside,” Uncle Andy lifted a hand quickly and held it
there—fingers up—like an old fashion karate chop, “the toast begins its
graduate thesis on the self-induction of personal cryogenic properties.”

Two slow, deliberate, open-mouthed smacks of gum accompanied
the ‘deer in headlights’ look on the server’s face.

“There could be a plate ready and waiting six inches
away from the toaster, and yet, by the time that brown, crispy slice of bread
travels that short arc from the four hundred degree inferno to the plate,” the
karate chop hand snapped down and sideways, “it will have cooled to a maximum
of room temperature minus ten degrees.”

I had elbowed Michelle at that point, both to smother
her laughter while also trying to keep mine in check, but the waitress—apparently
oblivious to the two teenagers seated in front of her—ignored us.

“So . . . . . . do you . . . . . . . . . want . . . .
. . . . .toast?”

Karate hand now parallel to the table’s surface, Uncle
Andy lowered it at a snail’s pace—each millimeter of descent punctuated with
more proof.  “Why, I dare say that even if you managed to somehow place a slice
of warm toast in front of me, the toast gremlins would then kick into overtime
and prevent me from enjoying a single bite while it retained even the least bit
of heat. My phone would ring, the fire alarm would go off, or your coworker
over there with the pink flowery apron would a trip over a puck of turkey
sausage and dump her pitcher of ice water on my plate.” The hand now rested on
the table.

Gum chewing resumed slowly, like the restarting of a
big band era song playing on an ancient, weary phonograph that was too weak to
spin at anything above one quarter speed.

Backing away at first, the waitress kept her
bewildered stare locked on Uncle Andy, breaking it only when her backside
bumped in to a customer seated at the diner’s bar, spilling half of the cup of
coffee he had been lifting at the time. With a mumbled “’Scuse me,” she had
turned and walked into the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later, a different waitress delivered
our food. Uncle Andy’s toast, riding on its own plate and accompanied by
several tiny, sealed paper cups filled with rock hard, almost frozen butter,
was cold.

The second mouthful, similar to the first with the
exception that it contained several of the unidentified, chewy fragments
finally went down. He was lowering the spoon for its third helping of the gruel
when Bernice choked back a snorting laugh.

“Eric, stop eating the dog food.”

Spoon frozen in mid flight, he could see the amusement
of his predicament plastered on Bernice’s face.

“It ain’t going to hurt you, boy. It’s just a mix of
leftovers from breakfast and lunch, with a few other scraps thrown in for good
measure,” she pointed at one of the folding chairs that was leaning against the
wall, “you mind if I sit for a second?”

“Not at all.” Eric stood, taking the casserole dish to
the far corner of the room as he called Max.

Golden, expressive eyes regarded him with suspicion. “
Fool
me once, shame on you . . . fool me twice, shame on me
,” they seemed to
convey.

“Max, c’mere buddy.” After another hesitation, Max’s huge
black paws thumped heavily onto the hardwood floor, and he padded over. Eric
leaned down and scruff’d Max’s neck as he slid the weighty bowl into the corner
with a whispered, “Watch out for the squigglies.”

Returning to the bed, he picked up the plate of eggs
and used the gruel spoon to slide two of them onto a piece of toast. Cold
toast.

Halfway into his second bite, Bernice, in a sudden,
almost friendly voice said, “I nearly forgot.”

Eric froze—folded bread sandwich just about to touch
his lips—and waited. Reaching into the pocket of her quilted apron, Bernice
pulled out a small bottle of Louisiana hot sauce.

“You remembered?” Eric beamed.

“Of course.”