Borderlands Read online

  Coats, that's what the crate had contained; the word, in fact, was stenciled on the side. Greatcoats, dress coats, army issues, fancy leather affairs with epaulets and brass buttons. They lay scattered across the deck, some of them dropping into the warm blue water. I even think I saw my old woolen coat from Oban disappear beneath the waves. None of this made sense. The weather was hot in this part of the world, preternaturally hot at the moment, the climate muggy even at its best; these garments were as out of place here as a pair of snowshoes. Now, of course, as I set this down and read it over, the whole thing is comically clear; I must have been blind not to see it. But at the time my friend's last words, and the contents of the crate that had killed him, were sufficiently enigmatic that I spent most of the voyage pondering them. It was a shorter voyage than anyone expected. The ship, the Jane Guy, traveled south, then eastward, then south again. We kept clear of Japanese waters—there was still a war going on—but in those days nowhere was truly safe. Passengers took turns on deck, searching the horizon for a sign of danger. As I stood my watch one moonless night, preoccupied by thoughts of God and death, the ship gave a lurch, and somewhere metal echoed upon metal. Later a survivor would theorize about Japanese torpedoes, but it seemed to me that a piece of the ocean floor had simply risen up and speared us. However, there was no time for speculation. We were sinking.

  Boats were lowered over the side, passengers and crew having scrambled aboard, and those of us who could lay our hands on oars paddled madly away from the ship. My boat lost the others in the darkness. We heard the sound of distant screams and a great rushing of water, but when the sun rose we found ourselves alone. Several of us unfurled the single sail, but the canvas hung limp; there was no wind. The sun's gaze was as blank and pitiless as poets have warned. There were thirteen of us in the boat–we joked about it, of course–and it wasn't many days before the other twelve were dead. Half-starving and delirious, I shoved their bodies over the side to thwart temptation, and looked forward to dying myself. I felt like Ishmael or the Ancient Mariner; I couldn't understand why I'd been spared. That I had been immediately became clear, for no sooner did the last body hit the water than a sudden wind sprang up and filled the sail. The boat began to move. I can see God's hand in that wind now, and in the calm that preceded it as well. It is not a kindly hand; I wish now I'd had the courage to jump over the side and defy it. But all I could do at the time was lie back, mumble a prayer of thanks, and let the boat carry me where it would. I no longer questioned the plans He had for me, though I must have lapsed into a sun-dazzled reverie of some soil: boyhood memories, faces, questions, words. But suddenly those thoughts were interrupted by a rhythmic thumping.

  Beats of a drum were echoing across the water, above the pounding of surf. I raised my head. Before me, in the distance, lay an island: coconut palms, thatched huts, and a row of natives waiting for my boat to wash ashore. They reminded me, as the boat drew nearer, of the black-faced sheep of my childhood–only sheep had never worn bones in their noses, nor gazed at me so hungrily. I can see even now, as in a fever dream, the group of them come toward me, dragging my boat onto the beach. In the background women are tending a fire; the glowing coals remind me of my boyhood. The largest of the men lifts me from the boat. He ties my hands; he anoints my face; he drags me forward…

  And heats a pot that's large enough to be my coffin. Wearily I whisper a final prayer…. Till at that moment, borne before a huge unnatural gust of wind, a sailing ship appears on the horizon. The cartoon natives run away, and I am saved. The ship meets a steamer which returns me to Scotland; I set foot once more on my native soil. Still dazed and emaciated, a grey stick figure in cast-off Navy clothes, I sink to my knees and praise God for his goodness; I consider myself blessed. Later, as my weary legs carry me toward the house where I was born, I believe I finally see the pattern He's imposed on my life: a madman's full circle, clear around the globe.

  The heath now stirs around me in the autumn wind. I have returned, like a piece of ancient driftwood, to the spot where I began–though not, in fact, to my parents' doorstep. Their cottage now stands empty like the others, roof rotten and fallen in, a picturesque ruin. Instead, I'm now living in a tiny bungalow just down the hill from it, on a small plot of what was once my parents' farm. The land is subdivided now, along with the land of our neighbors, and a company down in London is busy populating it with vacation homes. Tourists, hikers, and holidaymakers now roam the hills where once I tended my father's flocks. The old "puffers" have been replaced by diesel-powered vessels that take Americans to Jura and Islay, and the deserted forts, those still in decent repair, have now become museums. In one of them, devoted to local history and antiquities, I recently had the novel experience–novel but eerily disorienting–of finding a shelf of my own childhood books on display in a room labeled "Typical Crofter's Cottage, Early 20th Century." I felt a queer burst of homesickness, seeing them there in that reconstructed room; they looked as clean and well cared for as if my mother were still alive to dust them. Among them were the bound Youth's Companions that circumstance had robbed me of the chance to read. I removed one and sadly flipped through it. It fell open, as if by design, to a page entitled "Rainy Day Puzzles and Pastimes," below which my eye was caught by a familiar question: "How do you change a Dog into a Cat?" Heart pounding, I read on: "By changing one letter at a time. This age-old game is called a 'Word Ladder, 'for each change must make a new word. You can turn Dog into Cog, and Cog into Cot, and Cot into Cat—just three steps. Or you can do it in four, from Dog to Hog, to Hag, to Hat, to Cat. Or in five, from Dog to Bog, to Bag, to Bar, to Car, to Cat. In fact, the ladder may stretch as long as you like. The possibilities are endless!" And, by God, they are–though at first I didn't understand; it's taken me this long to work it through. And now, at last, it's all laid out here in this memoir, the secret itinerary of my own career from "Birth" to "Firth," to "Forth," and on to "Forts" and all for His amusement. All those deaths! The men of the Jane Guy, my father and mother, my friend Mr. Nath, the girl in Fort Augustus…Was it really for this that she had to die? To move me one rung down, from "Forts" to "Ports"? Couldn't He have spared her? Couldn't He have set me on a different course? I might have gone instead from "Forts" to "Forks," "Folks," "Folds," "Golds," "Gelds," "Melds," "Meads," "Meats," "Heats," and "Heath"…Or in an even more roundabout journey, from the "Posts" I once held, to "Poses," "Roses," "Ropes," "Rapes," "Races," "Faces," "Facts," "Fasts," "Fests," "lbsts," "Tents," "Dents," "Depts.," and "Depth" (assuming the old cheat would allow Himself the use of an abbreviation near the end). But in my case He seems simply to have plumped for the easiest and most direct route–except, I now realize, for a single false step. The holy man must have noticed it at once. "Pests!" he'd cried. Not "Bugs!" but "Pests! "–a chapter that, in someone else's life, might well have followed "Posts." Those creatures, had they been permitted to remain, would likely have led me on an alternate route to "Tests," "Bests," "Beats," and "Heats," arriving precisely where I am today. Instead, God must have changed His mind–and erased that swarm of pests from the game so hurriedly that my friend saw what it meant. Perhaps, in the end, He simply found it easier to move from "Posts" to "Costs," and to drag in that dreadful crate of coats…. Well, I always knew I was destined for something; I just never thought it would be this. Saint John had it right, I see that now: In the Beginning Was the Word. Unfortunately for me, the word was "Birth," and it was all downhill from there. Below me now lies one more rung–the bottom rung, the one that follows "Heath." I'd rather cling to this one for a while, but I know that, like any true gamesman, God's going to have the last word.

  MUSCAE VOLITANTES

  By Chet Williamson

  Writers, like actors, can get typecast. They can become known for doing something well, and usually to the exclusion of all the other things they do well. Chet Williamson is one of those writers who's been quietly, but with great efficiency, establishing himself as a very fine writer. Best known for his crisp, o
riginal characters, he is also a fine stylist. His stories have appeared in all the usual magazines and anthologies in addition to some markets most of us just dream about: Playboy and The New Yorker. Yeah, like I said, Chet is the Real.

  He lives in the Amish country of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, with a precocious, intelligent, good-looking son named Colin, and wife Laurie, who probably has the warmest, greatest smile this side of Mary Tyler Moore. He looks like a college professor who should be smoking a pipe (he doesn't), and when you meet him, you keep wondering how such a nice, amiable guy like Chet can write such twisted stuff.

  When Randy Fralich's lover called him at home, Randy had not yet decided to kill him, though the thought momentarily crossed his mind.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Randy asked. "You never call me at home!"

  "I'm sorry," Alan said, "but if I didn't call you tonight, that meant I couldn't talk to you until Monday."

  "What's wrong with Monday?" Randy whispered, listening with his free ear for the sound of Cathy's soft footfall in the carpeted hallway outside their bedroom.

  "It's too important," Alan said, and Randy thought that he detected a flutter in Alan's usually unruffled manner.

  Randy sighed. "This isn't like you, Alan. We have certain arrangements that we made and we promised to stick to."

  "Randy, please. . ." Alan's voice was pleading. This was a weak Alan, an Alan that Randy didn't know and didn't have the faintest idea of how to deal with. It had been Alan's strength that had drawn Randy to him that first evening, and now it was suddenly gone, leaving only a tinny voice that made Randy feel sick.

  "What is wrong with—"

  "I've got to see you, I've just got to."

  "No. Not this weekend."

  "Please. Tonight, please."

  "Tonight? Are you crazy? Cathy will know something's wrong."

  "Fuck Cathy." Another surprise. Alan never swore. He didn't have to. "Now are you coming over or aren't you?"

  Randy snatched off his glasses and began to bite the stems.

  "Stop chewing your goddamned glasses!" Alan ordered, his voice strong again.

  "How did you. . . ?"

  "That clicking. I know you all too well, Randy. Now are you coming?"

  "No."

  "Then let me talk to Cathy."

  His mouth filled with the taste of rust. "No!"

  "Do I have to come over there and visit her personally? Maybe Monday when you're at work?"

  And then the thought hit him. "Oh my God. . . do you...do you have something?"

  The chuckle sounded hollow over the line. "AIDS? No, Randy. Don't worry. No AIDS. In fact I was just tested this week. Negative."

  "Then do you. . . want money?"

  There was a flat silence. When they came, the words cut like a knife of frozen fire. "Have I ever asked you for money? Ever?"

  "I ...

  "I don't want your money, Randy. I want you. Here. In thirty minutes." There was a final click, and, after a moment, the dial tone brayed.

  Randy hung up and looked at the clock. 8:30. He jammed his wallet in his hip pocket, took some coins and tokens from the dresser, then opened his underwear drawer and dug beneath the unfolded briefs until he found the keys to Alan's apartment. Then he walked down the hall and into the kitchen, where Cathy was still sitting with her third cup of coffee, reading a Danielle Steele paperback.

  She looked up at him with eyes too clear and open to be suspicious. "Coffee, hon?"

  "No thanks." He sat down across from her, picked up the paper, and turned to the theater section. "Oh hell, this is the last night for that Herzog revival. You want to go?"

  "I don't know . . . Herzog. . . Is that guy in it, the guy I don't like?"

  "Klaus Kinski? Yeah." Please, God, he thought.

  "No, you go. He gives me the creeps." She turned back to her book and coffee.

  "You sure you don't mind?" Thank you, God. And thank you, Klaus, you creepy fucker, you.

  Randy took a cab to Alan's building in the west eighties, unlocked the front door, and walked past the doorman's post (had this place ever had a doorman?). The tired Otis elevator wheezed and clanked its way to the eighth floor where it rattled open, revealing the paint-peeled door of Alan's apartment. Tonight, even though he had the key, he knocked.

  Alan opened right away, as though he'd been standing on the other side. He was wearing his usual hang around home garb, dark tank top and denim cutoffs, exposing most of his massive, tanned thighs. He smiled warmly.

  "Welcome, babe. How did you get out past mama?"

  "Klaus Kinski," he muttered as he walked in.

  Alan chuckled. "If it weren't for revival houses, you'd have no sex life at all."

  Randy threw himself into the rocker, the hardest piece of furniture in the room. "Look, I'm not in the mood for jokes. What do you want?"

  Alan walked into the small kitchen, from where he could still see Randy, and opened the refrigerator. "You want a beer?"

  "No, I don't want a goddamn beer! I want to know what you want."

  Alan pulled the tab and took a long swallow. "I want to talk," he said quietly. "I want to talk about you and me and life and death. I want to talk about your leaving Cathy to live with me."

  The nausea hit Randy in a flat, unrelenting wave. "Are you crazy?" he managed to get out over the lump in his throat. "I can't do that, Alan."

  Now Alan stood over him, looking down with hard eyes. "Yes you can. And you will. You tell her or I do."

  "You always said we could keep it the way it is."

  "Well, things are different now." There was no expression on Alan's face.

  "Different? How?" Randy stood up, face-to-face with his lover, so that Randy looked directly into his eyes, seeing nothing there but truth.

  "I'm dying, Randy," Alan said. "Dying."

  Randy shook his head. The words didn't register.

  "I'm dying. And I want to spend the time I have left with you.",

  Then it hit, and Randy shrank back. "I thought you said on the phone. . . about AIDS..."

  Alan turned and sat in the armchair. "It may be reassuring to know that gay men can die from things other than AIDS. I have lung cancer, Randy. Twenty years of Marlboros, no doubt." He laughed.

  "Don't laugh like that! How can you joke—"

  "It's my death," Alan said. "I can do what I want with it."

  Randy slowly walked into the kitchen and poured himself a bourbon, not because he wanted it, but to give himself time to sort out his contradictory emotions—grief, loss, fear, panic, and just a little relief. He went to Alan and put his hand on his shoulder.

  "Alan, I'm sorry. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I'm so very sorry."

  "About what? That I'm dying, or that you won't stay with me?"

  Randy swallowed heavily. "That you're dying. But as for staying with you. . . I can't."

  "I don't think you understand me, Randy." Alan stood up and moved to the doors of his small balcony. "You will stay. You will leave Cathy, and you will stay with me until I make the last trek to the hospital or until I decide to finish it myself, which is much more likely." He opened the balcony doors, then added, almost as an afterthought, "I hate hospitals."

  "No," Randy said. "I can't, Alan."

  "Then would you like me to make some calls? To Cathy? To the head of your department? To your saintly mother? Look, when I'm gone you can go back to Cathy. She doesn't have to know a thing."

  "How the hell can I keep it from her?"

  Alan smiled. "You're the clever one, Randy. You can explain a two or three month absence."

  "Two or three. . . is that how long . . . ?" He stopped, wondering if he sounded as anxious as he felt.

  "You bastard," Alan said. "You'd like it to be tomorrow, wouldn't you? Then you wouldn't have to worry about your wife and your job and your reputation." Then he walked toward Randy, a new expression on his craggy face. "Or is it something else? Is it that you really don't love me anymore?"

&n
bsp; Randy thought of grabbing the straw, of telling Alan that he hated him, to go ahead and take an ad in the fucking Times if he wanted to, that he'd deny everything.

  But he couldn't. He still loved Alan, and he couldn't lie to him. "No, I love you. I still love you. But you're . . . so different now. . ."

  "Selfish?" Alan grinned. "You're right. And I deserve to be. I can't take anything with me, and I don't expect anything on the other side, so I'm going to get what I can in the little time I have left." His voice turned softer. "And I'm going to get you."

  Randy sat on the day bed, shaking his head, wondering how his life had come to this moment. Alan sat beside him and took his hand. "You know you want to stay with me, don't you? You know you don't want to leave."

  "Alan, I just—"

  "Look at me." Alan took Randy's face in his hands, turned it toward him. "Look at me, Randy. Look in my eyes. See my face. I want you to remember it. Long after I'm dead I want you to see my face. I want you to..."

  For the first time since Randy had known him, Alan wept, and Randy held him and comforted him. Then they were lying on the bed together, and the caged grief and fear turned to passion for relief.

  When Randy awoke, he looked at his watch, saw that it was two in the morning, then searched his mind desperately for an alibi to tell Cathy. He was pulling on his pants and putting the final touches to a variation of the oft-told tale of running into an old friend from college, when Alan awoke.

  "Are you going?" Alan muttered sleepily.