Chapter 25 Daddy's Boy Part One
Miles paced outside James's office, finally bursting through the door impatiently. "Are you ready to go yet?" he demanded.
"Hold your horses, Banzai," James growled in return. "Let me finish this." James turned back to his report on the latest accident at the Orchid site. Writing these reports annoyed the crap out of him. He had to strike just the right tone and divulge just enough information to satisfy the folks at Ann Arbor without giving too much away.
Only a select few knew just how dangerous the place could be – the most recent accident had resulted in a worker losing three fingers when a saw leaped away from him. Dr. Chang had personally gone to investigate and despite James's warnings had authorized the continuation of the work.
"Just be certain the workers are careful," he'd admonished. "What we are doing here is too important to stop."
"Then how about warning them about these magnetic fluctuations?" James had asked.
"No. We don't know for certain that this is what is happening," Chang had replied stubbornly. At James's apparent look of disbelief, Chang looked him firmly in the eye. "You, LaFleur, are part of my circle of trust on this. Very few people on this island have any idea of the real significance of our work. We will keep working and we will keep the workers from Orchid from fraternizing too freely with the rest of the group. Put on a special security detail here to make sure they don't."
"Whatever you say, boss," James had retorted smartly, but he understood where the man was coming from. And he'd seen the strain on his face. The DI brass was all over Chang's ass for results and for answers to questions they didn't even know how to ask. James had been on that island long enough and had seen enough to realize that in the end none of those questions would probably ever get answered.
So he'd followed his orders and made sure the Orchid crew stayed separate from the rest of them.
When the time came to assign his new men to guard it, he considered sending Phil. It would have eased part of the tension around the office to throw the man a bone with a special assignment. Ever since Lamar had gone to Hydra to guard the bears, Phil had been even more of a pain than usual.
But James didn't trust him. Pure and simple.
In the end, he'd relented and sent Phil to Hydra as well. The silence in the office had been a profound relief.
Until Miles started up.
James finished his report and headed out the door, nearly running into his first lieutenant where he hovered.
"You done?" Miles asked testily.
"Finally. Now what's got you in such a twist?" James asked as he checked the monitors one last time before leaving them with the night shift.
"I'm just ready to get home is all," Miles retorted.
"So you should have left already." James dropped his radio onto the rack and started up the stairs to the outside.
"Next time I will. Forget waiting on you. You're too damned slow," Miles groused.
They walked in silence down the path that led to their houses. Dr. Chang and his wife met them on their way from the rec room. The pair were clearly arguing. However, the instant the good doctor spotted them, he turned all politeness.
"Good evening," he said with a nod as Mrs. Chang gave them a weak smile.
"Sure is," James replied, but Miles didn't make eye contact. He just nodded in their direction.
Once the pair had gone past, Miles sneaked a look over his shoulder at them. "They've been fighting for the past three weeks," he complained. "It's making me anxious."
"About what?" James asked curiously.
"I was born in April of 1977. I weighed eight pounds, fifteen ounces. My mom used to hit me with that whenever she needed to make me feel guilty. 'You were such a huge baby,' she'd moan. So I know I was full term," he began.
James looked at him in utter confusion. What the hell was he talking about?
"That means that I was conceived in June, early July at the latest," Miles explained. "But the way they've been fighting, I'll never see the light of day. What if they don't do it? What if something we've done here has changed things and I'm never conceived? Never born?" Miles began to sound panicky.
"Relax, Baby Huey," James tried to console him. "You're here now, aren't you? So the Changs have to make you. Don't worry about it."
Miles stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Sure, I'm here now. But I'm not here yet. You are. You've always been in both places, both times, ever since we got here. So have Jin and Juliet. But not me, man. Right now I only exist here," Miles tapped his chest. Then he pointed back toward the Changs' bungalow. "What happens if they don't go through with it? Will I suddenly cease to exist?"
James just shook his head. "You're making too much of this. Trust me, Miles, you're going to come along just like you're supposed to. Remember what Faraday told us. No changing the past, not even if we wanted to. That means in about ten months, Dr. Chang's going to be wiping your tiny little newborn ass."
"I hope so," Miles replied earnestly.
They walked in thoughtful silence until they got to James's house. Then Miles stopped him once again.
"Can you feel yourself?" he asked quietly. "Do you have some sense that you're out there somewhere else too?"
James stared at him for a long moment. "What do you mean?" he finally asked, though he knew exactly what Miles meant.
"Jin says that he thinks about himself in Korea right now. Sometimes he says he remembers particular days and events more vividly than he ought to. Like he's connected to himself some way. Do you? Do you feel yourself out there at home right now? If you do, then I'll know. I'll know when they make me. I'll feel some connection." Miles sounded downright pitiful in the face of his potential oblivion.
All James knew was that he'd been doing his dead level best not to feel himself. Not to think about himself. Not to notice every day that passed bringing him closer to the July evening when his life as he knew it ended forever.
"No. No, I can't feel myself," he lied. "Maybe Jin's just got a good memory."
"I'll ask Juliet," Miles sighed. "Good night."
James stood on the sidewalk and watched Miles go inside, trying to tell himself that it didn't matter whether he felt himself or not. It didn't matter whether Miles felt himself either. Miles was going to be born, right on schedule. Whatever happened, happened. And Miles had happened.
So had July 8, 1976. That had happened too.
He got home to find a note from Juliet. She was working late. Shit. So he pulled some meat out of the refrigerator and started to fry up some hamburgers for dinner.
He was patting the burgers into shape when Jasper suddenly sprang into his memory.
The grey-headed lady looked at him over her glasses. "You're Warren Ford's boy, aren't you?" she asked with a smile.
"Yes, ma'am," he looked up from the candy rack in the grocery store checkout. His mama was talking to the clerk.
"I knew it. You're the spitting image of your daddy. Same pretty smile." She put a sack of potatoes on the end of the conveyor.
James shook the memory (or was it a vision?) away and pulled some potatoes out of the vegetable bin and began peeling them for homefries.
No frozen French fry could compare – crispy golden on the outside but tender on the inside. He remembered sitting down for supper when he was little in front of a plate of steaming fries, still glistening from the oil. His daddy had loved homemade French fries. And so had he.
"You two are just alike," his mama sighed. "All you want for dinner is fried potatoes."
Somehow, he managed to keep the meat and the fries from burning and set the table, eager for Juliet to come home. The house was too quiet.
In the living room, the clock struck six. It sounded exactly like the big grandfather clock at the house in Jasper. He used to beg his daddy to let him wind it, pulling the weights up by their long gold chains until they hung back at the top of their housing. He'd stand there beside him and pull those chains, but always with his daddy's hand over his.
Suddenly he could smell his aftershave, just like he was right there in the room. English Leather.
Supper was on the table, ready. But he'd lost his appetite. Where was Juliet?
He went out on the front porch and sat down in the swing he'd built. Juliet had been seriously impressed with it when he presented it to her for her last birthday.
"Where on earth did you learn to build a porch swing?" she'd asked.
"There's more to me than meets the eye," he'd replied with a wink. But as he sat down on that swing, he remembered where he'd learned. He'd sat by his daddy's side and watched as he'd drawn the design for the swing he'd built for their back yard in Jasper. He'd passed him nails and helped him hold the wood in place as he'd sawed the boards for it. He'd been the first one in it to try it out, at his daddy's insistence.
He sat on his porch swing in Dharmaville but it was the peach trees of Alabama that surrounded him. He half expected there to be a huge bowl of butterbeans next to him that needed to be shelled. He could feel the hot summer sun shining down on his neck, even though night was falling on the island.
Bits of conversation began to come back to him then, as vivid as it had taken place yesterday rather than thirty years ago.
-0-
"Where have you been?" his daddy asked. Mama had gone out right after school to run an errand and hadn't come back for a long time.
"Just to the store," she replied. She held a grocery sack in her hands and set it on the counter.
Daddy reached in and pulled out a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and two packs of cigarettes. "Four hours is a long time to be gone for this," he commented. "You must have run into somebody to talk to while you were out."
"I did. I saw Jeannette Riley at the store. We visited in the bread aisle for a while," Mama replied.
"I got a call from Bud MacDonald this afternoon. He said he saw you with that Sawyer guy down at the Tastee Cone." Daddy lit a cigarette. Jimmy wished he could go to the Tastee Cone.
"I ran in to get a Coke. Mr. Sawyer was in there too, so I said hello. Just what was Bud implying?" Mama sounded mad.
"Nothing. Just that he saw you two at a table together talking."
"Mr. Sawyer asked me what I thought of gold prices these days. I told him I had no idea about the price of anything." Mama pulled out a cigarette of her own. "You keep me in the dark about money."
Daddy got up then and poured himself a drink out of the bottle he kept over the stove. Jimmy thought its gold label was really pretty, but Daddy wouldn't let him try it.
"Don't start on that again, Mary. The last time I let you have the checkbook, we were broke in two weeks. Tell me what you want or need for the house and I'll make sure you have the money for it." Daddy was using the same voice he used when Jimmy didn't do his homework. If they were going to start yelling at each other, Jimmy decided to go to his room and play with his Spirograph.
"God, Warren!" His mother jabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray in the middle of the kitchen table. "Sometimes I feel like your cat rather than your wife."
"Well, find yourself something to do. Make some extra money of your own. Go down to the bank and see if your uncle needs another teller."
"Maybe I'll see if Mr. Sawyer needs some help in his office. I could answer the phone or type up letters for him." Mama got up from the table and opened the refrigerator.
"No. Not that guy," Daddy said. "I don't trust him."
"Why, Warren?" Mama walked over behind him and began to rub his shoulders and talk into his ear. "He seems like a nice enough guy to me. Maybe I can fix him up with my cousin Eileen. We could go out on a double date."
Daddy reached up and rubbed her hand. "I'm not sure Mr. Sawyer would be interested in Eileen. She's not exactly much to look at."
"But her daddy is loaded," Mama laughed and whispered something in Daddy's ear. He laughed too and kissed her cheek.
"How about some supper, young man?" Mama looked at Jimmy and gave him a big smile. He was glad she was smiling and laughing, not fighting. He liked to see them like this, all happy. It made him feel safe.
-0-
He sat at the kitchen table, a glass of whiskey in his hand when Juliet finally came in, bringing a stack of paper with her. "Phil said you forgot the mail again," she explained as she dropped it on the table. "Mmmm, something smells good."
Sure enough there were at least three of those damned envelopes in the stack. The onslaught of Bicentennial letterhead in the past few months had finally dulled his reaction to them down to annoyance rather than full-on panic. He'd forgotten just how ever-present the Bicentennial had been, but reliving 1976 again reminded him. Even in the multinational environment of the Dharma Initiative, the primary colors of every piece of correspondence were red, white, and blue.
"Do you remember all this from the first time?" he asked Juliet as he waved yet another piece of Bicentennial promotion in the air.
"Not really, James," she answered as she spread mustard on her burger. "I was six."
"Well, I'm about sick and damned tired of the Statue of freaking Liberty on everything," he snapped back at her. "I am fully aware that the year is '76. Can the Spirit just leave me the hell alone?"
"It'll be better after the Fourth, I'm sure," Juliet tried to soothe him.
"It'll be better after the eighth," he growled, then realized he'd said it aloud. There was no way she would miss the reference either – Juliet didn't miss anything.
"What happens on the eighth, James?" she asked and her voice was all smooth and cool like vanilla ice cream, but he knew that beneath that layer of easy sweetness was a sheet of steel.
He sighed. Son of a bitch. He opened his mouth to tell her, but the truth stuck in his throat. "Miles thinks he was conceived on the eighth," was the explanation he offered instead. "All he does is moan about how he doesn't exist yet and worry about whether or not the Changs will quit fighting long enough to make him."
Juliet laughed. He closed his eyes for just a second and let the sound wash over him, then added, "He thinks that after the eighth, he'll be able to feel himself. He'll know he exists. Weird, huh?"
Juliet smiled, then turned thoughtful. "I don't know. Maybe it's not weird," she replied. "Sometimes I get these really vivid flashes of memory from our old house in Miami. Things I had completely forgotten. Maybe it's some kind of connection back to the little girl me that's making me remember."
He nearly choked on his bite of burger.
'You okay?" she asked.
He nodded and took a drink. Then he just breathed for a few seconds. "I think that's happening to me too," he finally stated. "I'm remembering things. Mostly about my daddy."
"James, I'm so sorry. That must be hard," she reached across the table to touch his hand.
"No, it's okay," he assured her. "It's all good things, believe it or not. I had forgotten just how many good times we had."
Somewhere thousands of miles away, maybe he and his daddy were playing catch or reading a book on that swing. Maybe they were cranking away at some homemade ice cream, enjoying the pleasant days before the heat of
summer really set in. He remembered being so happy.
"My mama cheated on him. Then she stole from him." He pushed away his plate. "Juliet, I've spent the past twenty years hating him for killing her, for destroying my life the way he did. But here lately, all I can remember is how much he loved her and how much he loved me."
She put down her fork and looked at him expectantly. He couldn't meet her eyes but stared down at his half-eaten food instead.
"July 8, 1976, my daddy came home drunk and started fighting with my mama. Then he shot her. I was under the bed in my room. Then he came into my room, sat down on my bed, and shot himself in the head. I was right there the whole time. I heard everything." The confession wrung him out, and his hands shook as he tried to take a drink from his glass.
"Now, it's 1976 again. All that's going to happen in just a few days," he whispered. "I have spent my whole life hating him. But right now I can't help but feel sorry for the son of a bitch."
He put his head in his hands and sighed. "Why, Juliet? What kind of man does something like that to his wife and his kid? How can I –" his voice broke. "How can I miss him so bad knowing what he did?"
She got up from her chair and knelt beside him. "It's okay, James," she murmured as she put her arms around him. "It's okay to feel whatever you feel."
He held onto her words and held onto her as conflicting emotions began to churn inside him. Hatred, fear, love, longing, anger, and sadness each fought for their place.
As bad as he felt that moment, topmost in his mind was that the eighth was coming. It was just going to get worse.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am getting ready to start a series on my blog about going from fanfiction to publication. I'd LOVE it if you'd help promote it. I've added an email subscription option to the blog, hoping to do my part in helping developing writers discover just how useful writing fanfiction can be. The first installment goes up Thursday, Jan 17, 2013. It can be found at www dot arleycole dot blogspot dot com. Thanks!