Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show (21 page)

“But now, old man, you’re tapped out.” Quincy Umble had finished shaving off Rick’s beard. “Your misery has just about reached its peak. I don’t want you now. Tommy—well, Tommy, trapped up in that dumbwaiter, no way to get free. Capture a ghost, and its capacity for misery is endless, because it cannot die. Absolutely. So I’m going to take your boy with me. I’m going to pull him right out of that chute, and place him in my strongest butterfly-box so he will never get away.”

Rick wailed and struggled, but Quincy Umble just chuckled. He wiped his cold hands on Rick’s smooth, bare face. “Your beard will never grow back now, Rick. Never. Go on. Take a look at yourself.”

Quincy Umble pulled him up to the window so he could see his reflection. There was no strength in Rick to move against him. The face in the window was old, tired. But it was Tommy. Tommy, as if he had aged, and been through years of pain and trial. His eyes were full of failure and alcoholism. His reflection was Tommy, in misery. Rick choked back a scream, and Quincy Umble pushed him away.

“It’d be a shame if you killed yourself just to get away from living a failed life, Rick,” said Quincy Umble. “So don’t. I’m serious. Really. I’m going to leave now, but I’ll be back. In two days. I have to get an early start, you know, so please have your things moved out before nine
A.M.
The demolition equipment will probably be here tomorrow evening—I don’t think I mentioned I was destroying this house, did I? Anyway, just please be out by nine
A.M.
on Friday.

“And say hello to that sweet little boy of yours for me Rick, if you go visit him. I’ll be seeing him soon.”

The door
to the dumbwaiter was still open. Rick sat opposite to it, on the far side of the room. The moon had risen once, and set once, and now it was getting dark again. Rick’s head was buzzing for liquor. But he didn’t leave. What if Quincy Umble came back, with his black eyes and iron hands? What if he looked in the chute?

The motors of big machines pulling into his driveway interrupted his thoughts, made his heart jump. But he didn’t get up. Not even to see Tommy.

What was the point? He was a fool to think Tommy would ever love him. Love the man who had choked him, thrown him, killed him? Good daddies don’t choke their little boys. Good daddies don’t have dreams about men being impaled on sticks, and dark things rising from their misery. Good daddies don’t get addicted to morphine, even if their hands are raw flesh and burn every second of every day so they can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t do anything but be in agony.

The machines outside were as silent as the moonless sky now. Rick didn’t move from his spot on the floor, just sat and stared at the open door of the dumbwaiter. Before the welding accident, there had been good times with Marie and Tommy. The trip to Kansas to see buffalo and antelope. The daily games of catch and tag. If he had known…

Misery. That’s what Quincy Umble had said this was all about. His misery had drawn Tommy to him. Like drawing the tray up the dumbwaiter. Only now, the dumbwaiter was stuck in the middle of the chute, so Tommy couldn’t ever come all the way out…Or maybe, Rick’s misery had drawn him here, and Tommy was too scared to come all the way through. And that’s why the dumbwaiter stuck. And why Quincy Umble could strip him out, maybe, because he was caught in the dumbwaiter and couldn’t get up to Rick, or down to escape.

If Tommy was stuck…why couldn’t Rick pull him out?

Rick crossed the room and gave the draw rope attached to the dumbwaiter a tug. The dumbwaiter wouldn’t budge. He did it again, hard this time—and the dumbwaiter slid up in the chute a little. Rick cried out, but the rope snapped taut suddenly, then dragged downward a couple of inches. No matter how hard he struggled with the rope now, the dumbwaiter wouldn’t budge.

Could he push it down? Maybe with a stick or a long pole…but Rick didn’t have either. He’d have to climb into the chute if he wanted to push it down.

Impossible. He couldn’t fit through the opening. Only to his shoulders. The chute looked wide enough, but the door…If he lifted his arms above his head and edged in, he could do it. Rick ran his hand around the opening. He could get out the same way.

Rick felt his heart thumping hard. What time was it? Rick raced downstairs to the clock on the oven—4:30. Four and a half hours. He could manage that. On the way back up the steps, he took them two at a time.

He forgot to touch the sacred wall places.

Rick took off all his clothes but his shoes and skivvies, and tucked his shoelaces securely back into the shoes. If there were any sharp edges in the chute, he didn’t want clothes snagging on them and slowing him down. Better to scrape himself bloody than to be slow. Almost as an afterthought, he tied a knot in the end of the draw rope to keep it from slipping through the pulley. And that way, he could use the rope to pull himself back up the chute.

“Close eyes. Deep breath. In we go,” he muttered.

He scraped his shoulders and ribs on the opening, but was able to brace his arms against either wall of the chute and pull his waist and legs in. It was a tight fit. Eyes still closed, he pulled on the draw rope until the knot caught on the pulley and it was secure. Then he began to descend.

The chute was close and hot. Rick was soon bathed in sweat, and his bare skin kept slipping and chafing on the walls. But he kept his eyes closed as he worked his way down. This would be his farewell to Tommy. He’d set him free. This was Tommy’s eviction day. No—this was Tommy’s day of
emancipation
. He would be free of Rick, free of Quincy Umble, free of the misery that they had both imposed and wanted to impose on him.

His feet touched something solid. The dumbwaiter. Rick resisted the urge to open his eyes, resisted the trigger that would take him to his son and the wheat field. Instead, he took a breath of the hot, stuffy air, and pushed with all his might down, down, down for Tommy—

“Rick. What the hell are you doing?”

Quincy Umble’s voice caught Rick by surprise. He felt his eyelids trembling, felt them opening, and saw him grinning down.

The world broke apart into thousands of dark butterflies. The sound of their wings swallowed Rick’s cry of dismay.

He was
in the wheat field. The moon was as bright as ever, the wheat just as gold—but the wind was as cold as rain. Tommy lay shivering at his feet.

“I’m waiting for Daddy,” Tommy said. His lips were blue. “Leave me alone. Go away. I’m waiting for my daddy.”

But this time, Rick found he did not go away.

“Tommy, is there someone else here?” Rick asked. “Is Quincy Umble here?”

“He left. You leave, too. I’m waiting for my daddy.”

The wind stopped. Out at the edge of the wheat, Rick saw something moving—not through the wheat, but on top of it. Where its feet touched, the wheat froze in place, seeping blood from the roots. The creature had no features, no fingers or toes, but was all jagged blackness. Arms and legs and a torso of dark shards, and its head was a massive, gaping blackness that devoured the moonlight around it.

Tommy whimpered as it got close. Rick put himself between his son and the creature.

“Little man,” the thing said in Quincy Umble’s voice, “get out of my way.”

It never moved, but suddenly Rick’s hands and arms were covered in a wash of molten metal. Rick screamed and thrust his hands into the ground, but it had already become hard from the creature’s presence. His flesh dropped away from his hands, leaving gobs on the ground as he tried to find something to wipe off the metal.

“I will allow you to wipe your hands on Tommy,” said the creature. “You may be free of the pain that way, and no other.”

Tommy wasn’t moving. His lips gave a sudden twitch—a whisper. Rick knew what he was saying. I’m waiting for my daddy.

Pain—that’s all this was. Just pain. Not misery. And he could live with pain. Rick knelt to the ground and let the metal eat right through to his bone. He cried. He wailed and whimpered and screamed. But he did not move an inch closer to Tommy.

Something formed at the end of the creature’s arm—a stone dagger, a spike, a knife, a black box with a butterfly pattern on it. And last of all, a squat spider coiling and uncoiling its legs. The creature whispered, “Tommy, come to me now.”

Tommy’s lips moved. I’m waiting for my daddy.

“I said, come.”

Tommy screamed. Something black and crawling was eating away at his feet, creeping up to his thighs, a slick darkness that devoured him. Just a moment, then it was gone, leaving the boy whole but whimpering.

“Come to me, Tommy.” The creature gestured, and the black spider on its hand quivered.

I am waiting for my daddy.

The black goop appeared again, moving slower now, creeping up Tommy’s feet, hissing up his ankles. Tommy gurgled and screamed and cried, and writhed on the hard, cold ground.

Rick struggled to speak. “It’s just pain, Tommy.” The metal on his arms flashed hotter suddenly, splashing onto his chest. “Like shots! Remember how your butt hurt after the shots for kindergarten? It’s just pain, Tommy, and pain goes away. It isn’t like losing Grandma, right? It won’t hurt forever, it isn’t misery! Dammit, Quincy Umble, leave him alone, he’s a child!”

The metal on Rick’s arms surged upward, searing through his eyes, filling his nasal cavity, burning through his eardrums. Rick tried to scream, would have screamed, but he choked on hot metal as it poured over his tongue and down his throat, into his lungs.

“Touch your son, Rick Manchester. Touch him, just lay one little finger on his leg, and I will release you. No more pain. No more misery. One touch, Rick.”

He burned and burned and burned, but Rick didn’t move. He endured. And deep in his chest, something burst. Everything that had gone before was nothing, was just a little burn, compared to this. This was Sergeant Davies suffering on the end of a punji stick, Rosas and Timmons eviscerated by shrapnel, and they all looked at him, Private Rick Manchester cowering in the bushes, and he didn’t move to help them. This was Marie screaming for thirty minutes until the ambulance came to take Tommy’s body away while Rick stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at her anguish and Tommy’s broken neck, afraid to move a muscle. This was living every day of eternity with Tommy’s ghost, never able to touch him. This was the failure and shame of his whole life, and it
seared
him more deeply and more horribly than molten metal.

“Touch your boy, Rick.”

Jagged words, softly spoken.

“He is right there, your sweet boy. You can hold him close now, Rick. Let him share your misery.”

But Rick lay still beneath his shame and agony. His misery would never be Tommy’s.

The wheat field shook with a warm wind. Everything spun.

Rick was in the chute. His chest burned madly within him, his heart seizing. The left side of his body was completely numb.

Emancipation.

He lifted one foot and then let it fall hard on the top of the dumbwaiter. Fall, he prayed above the pain in his chest and the misery in his mind. Fall and free my boy.

It fell.

Rick gulped his last breath and closed his eyes.

And opened them.

The world exploded into butterflies. They came from all directions at once as the chute dissolved. On his arms, on his hands, between his legs, under his feet, a wash of every color, every size—they swarmed and floated all over him.

Far away, something dark and jagged squealed and was broken on their wings.

“Daddy. You came.”

A small hand on his neck. A warm little hand, as tender and welcome as sunlight.

Rick took a breath, and the air was full of Tommy-scent. That unique, peculiar boy-smell, like grass and good earth, and sweat. And he felt Tommy’s face on his face, smooth and warm. Eyes brown as honey looked into his eyes, and Rick lifted his hands to stroke Tommy’s hair and touch his cheek.

They settled down in that field of rushing, hushing wheat. The moon set; the wind grew warmer. And they talked. They talked about Rick’s war, and they talked about how Tommy had died. They talked about pain, and misery. They wept together, as fathers and sons should do, and do not often enough. And when the moon rose again, they settled against one another, Tommy’s head on Rick’s chest, Rick’s arm snug around his son’s waist.

And they slept.

And they both dreamed good dreams.

Afterword by Scott M. Roberts

The old man wore a maroon cap with a battleship’s name on it, and a denim jacket in the dead heat of summer. The jacket was pocked with pins proclaiming the validity of this conspiracy or that political stance—often at odds with each other. He was short and scrawny, and the skin on his face was peculiarly loose. He seemed an odd duck to be sitting in a trendy coffee shop just outside the campus of a small southern college—but then, I’m not a big patron of coffee shops, or small colleges, so what do I know?

We struck up a conversation. We talked about the Korean War (he was a veteran; I’d seen a couple of episodes of
M*A*S*H
), bees (I’m an amateur beekeeper; he thought insects would eventually unite to destroy humanity), and science fiction (he, a fan of the genre; me, an aspiring writer). He offered me advice on what to write about; I offered to pay for his coffee.

He mentioned that he was about to be evicted from the apartment he rented from his son. “I’m drunk all the time” was his approximate explanation.

That old man was the seed for “Eviction Notice.”

Stories come from strange places. “Eviction Notice” was germinated in a trendy coffee shop, by talking with an old man. It also came from my understanding of fathers and sons (having been both) and of misery (having once been a teenager). Stephen Vincent Benét’s butterflies from
The Devil and Daniel Webster
make an appearance here, and so do a few late-night memories of the television series
China Beach
(as viewed through a crack in my bedroom door, when my parents were sure I was asleep). Not that I plotted these things into the story—and not that anyone else would ever recognize them on paper.