Jeremy Stone Read online

Maybe once you have doubt about something, someone from the other place,

  they go away

  and you’re left

  alone

  with no one

  to talk to

  but people

  who are living.

  (I didn’t want that.)

  Damn.

  (My brain is latching onto something now. I feel a kind of panic. I’m forgetting how to breathe.)

  Oh fuck.

  Paper Clip.

  What did he say?

  Suicide for Amateurs

  No, not me.

  I’m thinking about Jenson Hayes.

  I’m hoping my computer doesn’t work so I don’t have to do this.

  But it’s on, the wireless is working.

  I Google Jenson Hayes

  and get a shitload of hits.

  Thank God.

  But

  the first Jenson Hayes is a champion long-distance cyclist,

  another a lawyer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

  one is a Grand Prix race driver,

  another is an architect in Pocatello, Idaho.

  (I feel the panic rising like a lump in my throat.

  Be cool, Stoney. There’s always someone, many people,

  with the same name. It’s a small planet with a lot of

  people and not enough names to go around.)

  I type in Jenson Hayes Suicide

  and get a whack of stuff

  but nothing about Caitlan’s Jenson.

  I type in his name again

  and the name of our town

  (and hesitate—there has to be something; it must have been in the papers, in the news).

  My finger hovers.

  (Old Man, where are you? I know you hate computers but could you hang with me on this one?)

  Fuck.

  Click.

  More stuff:

  Jensons and suicide,

  Hayes and suicide,

  but nothing I can find

  (as I scroll down

  twenty pages of

  web listings)

  about the Jenson Hayes

  I know.

  The World According to Jeremy Stone

  I want to call Caitlan and ask some questions.

  I want all this to make sense.

  I want to ask Thomas Heaney some more questions about Jenson. (Of course, he was lying.)

  I want to find some of my old childhood friends. (Yes, I’m sure I had real friends. I wasn’t always lonely.)

  I want more answers from my mom about Jimmy. Maybe she can’t remember ’cause of the drugs.

  I want something.

  Something. (I smash my fist into the keyboard.)

  And then

  Hold your horses,

  Old Man says. Just

  hold your horses.

  Where were you? I demand. Why couldn’t I find you?

  There’s no easy answer to that.

  Don’t give me that bullshit. (I’ve never ever said anything like this to my grandfather before.)

  Well, if you must know, I was away. Kind of a retreat.

  I’d been advised I was too attached to my past,

  to the people I love. That includes you.

  But I need you.

  I know, Stoney.

  So don’t worry. I’m not

  going anywhere.

  I could see there was something different about him but couldn’t quite place it.

  Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was me. Something different about me.

  I was full

  of doubt.

  Jenson, I said. What about Jenson? I’m not sure there ever was a Jenson.

  Well, that’s true and not true.

  You’re using doublespeak.

  I know what you mean.

  It’s just that sometimes you have to hold two

  opposing ideas in your head

  at the same time.

  Bullshit.

  I know. Maybe it’s like your mother’s

  cigarette smoke. You can see it, you can smell it

  but you can’t reach out and grab it.

  Maybe it’s like that.

  I sat silently. I’d always, always trusted anything Old Man had ever told me.

  But it was you who introduced me to Jenson.

  And I spoke with him.

  Did you just put him in my mind? Did you make him up?

  No.

  Did I create him like some kind of hallucination?

  No, Jeremy.

  Caitlan invented

  Jenson Hayes.

  But you helped me buy into her … what?

  Illusion?

  I did what I had to do.

  You did this to help her?

  In some ways, yes.

  And to help you, too.

  But Jenson seemed as real as anyone.

  As real as Thomas Heaney.

  As real as Caitlan.

  As real as Jimmy?

  Yes.

  Jimmy was all yours. Not mine.

  But they both seemed as real as …

  As me?

  Yes.

  Old Man looked very old now, older than I’d ever seen him.

  You’re gonna have a hard time sleeping tonight.

  So I’ll stay in that chair there while you sleep.

  And this will all make sense in the morning?

  Old Man tried to straighten his back but went right back to being hunched over.

  Like someone had put a heavy load on his shoulders.

  No, he answered. Probably not.

  Crazy Horse

  I don’t know if I was actually asleep

  or whether Old Man did something

  but I was not in my room. I was

  on top of a hill surrounded by brown

  dry hills beneath a bright sun.

  And Old Man was walking towards me.

  He looked a lot younger.

  This is better, he said. We’ll start here.

  Let me tell you about Crazy Horse.

  He was born near here and was a warrior and great leader.

  Like Geronimo?

  Yes.

  See that bird.

  A red-tailed hawk flew toward us and then away.

  Let’s go, Old Man said. Crazy Horse followed a red-tailed hawk one day and he had many visions.

  We started walking south.

  Following the bird, Crazy Horse went into the spirit world where he could see that the spirit world was the real world and the physical world was just like a place made up of shadows of the spirit world.

  In that spirit world, Crazy Horse was told that he could move freely between the two worlds if he needed to do so and that when he was going into battle, he could slip out of the physical world and see what was going on behind it all to understand what was really going on. That way he would not get injured and he would be safe.

  He was told that he needed to be the protector of his people and that he’d have help from the spirits of his ancestors. He was to keep an eye out for a white owl that would be around to help protect him.

  Later, he was also given a black stone from a man named Horn Chips, a medicine man, and he put that stone behind his horse’s ear to protect the horse and make man and animal become one in battle.

  But he was killed, right?

  Not before he had been in many battles and become a great warrior. We all have to give our bodies back to the earth eventually. He did what he needed to do and then he moved on.

  It was about then that I thought I was going to wake up.

  But I opened my eyes and realized

  I h
ad not been asleep.

  It had been some kind of trance, maybe.

  Old Man, the older Old Man, was sitting there

  beside my bed in the dim light of morning.

  I’m not saying you should be engaging in battles like Crazy Horse or Geronimo. That time is past.

  Today, it’s kinda complicated being a warrior. It’s not about fighting your enemies anymore.

  It’s about conquering your fears, conquering yourself, and protecting what needs to be protected.

  Protect who from what?

  He laughed. It varies, he said.

  Sometimes it means learning to help someone protect themselves from what is within.

  The Bird

  The bird outside my window

  was not a red-tailed hawk

  or a white owl.

  It was a small

  brown

  sparrow

  with a

  very

  ambitious

  song.

  Saturday: Caitlan Day

  Think of it as a quest, I told her.

  She looked sullen, a little crazy, pale

  but she still had those

  beautiful Indian eyes.

  There is a petroglyph not far from here, I said.

  A what?

  A drawing in stone. Put there by ancient peoples.

  Jeremy, you’ve been playing

  too many video games.

  I don’t play video games.

  Then what is this?

  A quest.

  We are searching for something.

  I don’t know. I don’t feel good.

  I know. But trust me.

  I held her hand.

  She looked scared.

  I felt the scars on her hands,

  an unhealed cut deep in the palm of one hand.

  Jeremy, what about Jenson?

  We’ll talk about Jenson.

  We took a bus

  that went almost all the way

  to my old community.

  When we got off

  Old Man was there

  sitting on a bench

  reading a newspaper.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  He smiled at us.

  You know him? Caitlan asked.

  Yep. That’s my grandfather.

  Caitlan understood.

  I wasn’t sure how we would find the trail to the petroglyph, I said. (This was true. I was waiting for guidance. But here it was.)

  He’ll show us the way.

  Old Man smiled some more.

  I could tell he wasn’t going to speak, though.

  I saw the doubt

  in Caitlan’s eyes.

  It’s okay, I said. I think he’s here to help us find Jenson. (Don’t know for sure why I said that, but I did.)

  We hiked through some dense bush on a trail that didn’t seem much like a trail. It had been overgrown with alders and maple saplings. And then we came to a bare ridge of rock that led higher up the hill until there were no trees at all. Just a bare ridge of bedrock running north and south.

  I was breathing hard.

  Caitlan was breathing hard.

  Old Man had kept walking faster and faster, getting farther and farther ahead of us.

  And then he was far away and we couldn’t see him.

  Maybe he was gone.

  I heard a sparrow singing.

  And then I looked down.

  It was faint, hard to make out at first, worn down by a thousand years of weather, covered with lichen.

  But I’d been there before as a boy

  with my grandfather

  when he was alive.

  I brushed away some lichen and moss.

  I see it, she said.

  A star.

  North, south, east, and west.

  What does it mean?

  I’m not sure, I said.

  But it was put here a long time ago

  because this is a sacred place

  of spirits.

  Caitlan traced the lines

  in the rocks with her finger.

  And that’s when we heard someone

  walking our way.

  What the Sparrow Saw

  The sparrow was still singing.

  I saw him now on the prickly limb

  of a low, scrubby pine tree.

  He flew off to the south

  when Jenson walked by.

  Caitlan swallowed hard.

  Jenson?

  I don’t know if I should be here, he said

  But I followed you.

  I was wide-eyed but said nothing.

  I pretended I was not afraid.

  I thought of Geronimo coaxing the sun to come up later,

  Crazy Horse understanding the real world behind the shadow world of the living.

  I silently said, Holy Fuck, Old Man, you are really messing with us now.

  Old Man only said, “Shush” inside my head.

  Jenson Speaks

  I wanted to sort this all out in my head and make sense of what was going on but realized it was way beyond my control or my full understanding or any of that shit.

  Sit back and let things roll.

  Caitlan walked right up to Jenson

  and I expected him to vanish like Old Man had.

  I thought it was all some kind of trick,

  some kind of weird dream

  but it wasn’t like that.

  Caitlan turned to me. Jeremy, she said,

  would you mind leaving us here

  alone for a bit?

  I looked at Jenson, tried to fathom who he was, what he was, what his intentions were, tried to figure out if Caitlan was in danger, if we were both complete psychos, if it had really been Old Man leading us, and worst of all, wondering how could Jenson be here if he never existed in the first place?

  Shush, Old Man told me.

  I nodded, walked north in the direction Old Man had gone, followed the ridge of granite into the bush on what I knew was once a well-travelled path of my ancestors, expecting any minute to see a hawk or an owl, but there was nothing.

  Only black flies and a few mosquitoes that attacked me

  because they knew a truly confused boy

  was no warrior but just easy prey

  and a good source

  of blood.

  I sat down on an outcropping of rock

  and looked down at the valley below—

  my old community.

  I saw the house I had been born in,

  thought of my childhood,

  my family,

  and how

  so much had changed,

  how much I had lost,

  thought maybe I was

  in some kind of stupor again

  like the night before,

  wondered why Old Man

  wasn’t there

  to comfort me,

  to tell me it was all

  going to be okay.

  I waited for a sign,

  some signal,

  some voice inside my head,

  some image in the sky

  but I got nothing.

  I felt small

  and insignificant

  and left behind.

  I lost my courage and slipped into a dark place

  where I was all

  alone.

  And then I heard hurried footsteps

  and shallow, fast breathing.

  Jeremy.

  I stood up and Caitlan fell into me, wrapped her arms around me.

  She was crying.

  Jenson explained everything,

&nb
sp; she said.

  I’m sorry. I didn’t mean

  to put you through all this.

  To drag you in.

  You okay?

  Not yet, she said.

  But I will be

  soon.

  I wanted to ask about what happened

  back there at the petroglyph.

  I wanted to know the whole story.

  But my grandfather’s gentle, invisible hand

  was over my mouth

  and he was shushing me again

  and assuring me

  that words

  didn’t always

  work.

  Language

  I stopped speaking again after that.

  Like Old Man had said,

  words don’t always work .

  So, Mr. Silence, what is it this time?

  my mom asked.

  Everything, I wanted to say,

  Everything and nothing.

  Guess everyone has a right

  to clam up sometimes.

  Maybe we should go see that shrink again?

  I shook my head, no.

  How about Jack the sideburned psychic?

  Sure, I nodded, why not.

  When we got to the office an hour later

  JTSBP took one look at me and said, Oh boy, this kid has been through the wringer.

  Maybe he got into some bad drugs,

  my mom offered.

  I shook my head no but Jack jumped in and said, This one has been traveling through dimensions.

  What kind of dementia? my mom asked.

  Dimensions, Jack repeated. Other realms.

  He was looking in my eyes

  and seemed to be reading my thoughts.

  Sometimes people go silent like this, he explained. Can’t quite put all the pieces together and they are waiting for everything to make sense again. Is that right?

  I nodded.

  Jack closed his eyes. Now I see the old man, he said, just like the other time. But he’s kinda faint. I see two other shapes of something but they’re very fuzzy. All I can tell is that they are young, but I can barely make them out. Do you know who they might be?

  I didn’t want to go there yet.

  No, I said out loud. I don’t.

  Jack opened his eyes. You found your voice, he said. So you had some encounters … out there. (He spread his hands outward in the air.) And it threw you for a bit. Now you are starting to come back.

  I guess you could say that, I said.

  My mom was crying now.

  Jack said, What do you want to happen next?