The Metaphysical Ukulele. Sean Carswell

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      With brown paper bags from Trader Joe’s substituting for a fossil hammer, Pat begins digging.

      Many hours later, around midnight, Pat sits in her office chair and scans the room. Heaped in brown grocery bags are the archives of a writer’s life, which, so far, seems to have been dedicated to the accumulation of worldly goods.

      Pat knows what the average mystic has to say about worldly goods: clutter is evil; simplicity is good. But somewhere inside her Pat wonders if this dichotomy itself isn’t a little too much simplicity.

      Regardless, the brown paper bags sit full of snapshots of loved ones, school pennants, stories written by aspiring undergraduates, and a variety of once-meaningful effluvia: a first-place certificate, neatly folded, along with the blue ribbon, for the Vista Junior Talent Contest; a yarn voodoo doll; a turtle-shaped pincushion; a ballerina jewelry box; a Ginny doll missing half a leg; imitations of reproduction Blythe dolls; a toy poodle with its fur darkened from the oil and dirt of a younger Pat’s fingers; a mysterious piece of brick with the single letter P; old issues of Marie Claire and Vogue; entire series of mystery novels dedicated to knitting, antiquing, and psychics; acrylic yarn in colors that went out of style a decade ago; single knitting needles missing their partner. Bag after bag after bag.

      Atop the bag nearest her, Pat glimpses again a letter from the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, the overseers of the Philip K. Dick Award, inviting her to Norwescon in lovely Tacoma, Washington for the award ceremony. Pat and four other finalists would read from their work. One finalist would win. Pat, of course, won. That was a Five of Swords memory.

      Unlike most people, Pat was absent when her life changed irrevocably. The gears that would control the machinations of her future turned in Manhattan while Pat vacationed in Lake City, Florida. It was the holiday season, 1986.

      Pat took a stroll through the woods near her mother’s home. She wore a cape—always a risky fashion choice. The key, Pat knew, was to wear the cape rather than letting the cape wear you. Superheroes: they let the cape wear them. The cape wore Superman so strongly it carried him into the air, forcing him into a perpetual plank pose. Batman tried to use his cape to tuck his love for a Boy Wonder under while Robin’s love for Batman was broadcast in the fluttering red cloth flowing behind him. Pat draped her cape over her shoulders, keeping her warm on a cool Florida morning. Confidence was key. Pat pulled it off while roaming across campus in Baton Rouge, but here in Florida, with her sister picking at every random hair on Pat’s skin, the cape was a more nebulous proposition.

      It followed Pat into the woods.

      The conifers of Northern Florida stretched, long and lean, into the gray sky. A young boy scaled the thin trunk of a nearby pine. Pat sat to watch his progress. He shuttled up the tree with a competence familiar to all primates but the human kind. The tree buckled under the boy’s weight. It bowed, impossibly, to the ground. For a tense second, Pat watched as the tree formed a pine archway and set the boy down on the carpet of needles at the forest floor. The boy climbed off. The tree whipped back into place.

      Snap!

      The boy raced off for another tree. Before he would’ve had time to climb it, Pat heard another snap. A cursory inspection of the forest unearthed a group of boys, all climbing the thin, flexible pines until the trees touched their tops to the forest floor. Pat settled in for the spectacle.

      Through the fog of the waxing day, another figure walked toward Pat. Pat drank him in. Where had he found this gorgeous ensemble? His indigo tuxedo contrasted smartly with a billowing white silk shirt and charcoal brocade jodhpurs. Neat gray suede boots peeked out from beneath the cuffs and long, slender fingers were covered with lambskin gloves.

      Pat had never met this gentleman in a nonfictional world, but she knew him.

      Sammy.

      Sammy sat next to Pat. Pat shivered, though the cool Florida woods were not cold enough to elicit a shiver, though her cape wrapped around to keep her snug. She had the impulse to be nice, to set this conversation on friendly terms despite Sammy’s ominous aura. She said, “I like your suit.”

      The statement dropped like a nickel falling on a hardwood desk, rattling in its understatement.

      “There are laws,” Sammy said.

      Pat felt something like a shot put drop to the bottom of her stomach.

      The group of boys continued to climb on and climb off the pines. Snaps echoed throughout the woods. Pine tops wobbled.

      “There are laws for everything. Thieving, for instance.” He leaned closer, his ice-chip eyes glittering in the faint traces of morning sun.

      “My book.” The words came out before Pat considered them. She wasn’t sure which book she referred to. A few years earlier, her novel Living in Ether had come out. Perhaps she’d leaned a bit too much on the works of Yukio Mishima, but that was an influence, not a theft. And what about Strange Toys, sitting on a desk at Bantam in Manhattan. Too much Angela Carter? Too much Lewis Carroll? Could a writer steal one novel from two people?

      Who was the real thief here, and what were they stealing?

      Sammy said, “Writers steal things. Writers don’t know what to do with them.”

      “Who are you?” Pat asked.

      “You know my name,” Sammy said. “And I have something you need.”

      “Me?”

      “There is danger ahead for your novel. But there is always a way around every law. Each law with the penalty attached, each system connected to another system. Because you have something I want, I’m prepared to…”

      One of the tree-climbers ran toward Pat and Sammy, not as if he were running to them, but as if they didn’t exist, and he could run through the space occupied by them. The boy paused and met Pat’s glance.

      Pat knew what the boy saw, what everyone saw looking into Pat’s face: that expression yearning toward some other world. That expression which seemed to piss people off and make them suspicious. The boy was no exception. He snarled at Pat. His twisted lips stretched the freckles on his face. His blond crew-cut glistened with dew slicked onto him from the pines he climbed. At that moment, he looked like every cocky boy who pursued Pat in high school and turned his failure to capture Pat into a hatred for her.

      The boy said, “Nice cape, lady.”

      More than anything, Pat was surprised that Sammy, with his indigo tux and jodhpurs, got a free pass while Pat’s cape was the object of backwoods scorn. She turned to see Sammy’s reaction, but Sammy was gone.

      The boy, too, scurried off for another flexible pine.

      Pat gathered herself to return to her mother’s. She stood and brushed the needles off her slacks. Tracing the path of a pine needle on its way to the forest floor, Pat saw at her feet a ukulele. The instrument either came from Sammy or came from nowhere. Pat was half-convinced that Sammy had only been metaphysical. Thus, the ukulele would have to be metaphysical.

      It sat on the carpet of pine needles, cute as a pug. Even the grains of dark wood reminded Pat of a pug’s short hairs.

      If the ukulele had had a tail, it would’ve wagged at Pat.

      Pat reached down and rubbed the ukulele’s neck. The СКАЧАТЬ