Tag Archives: Short story

Carruthers Smith’s Museum

Carruthers Smith's Museum – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, a story about excess and secrets all in a museum built by an old reclusive Gilded Age tycoon named Carruthers Smith. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane The episode artwork this week was generated by Dreamstudio. I really need to get back to sketching.
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This week, we join a team of federal agents as they investigate a strange museum owned by a reclusive Captain of Industry that has never opened its doors to the public.

Part I.

            I arrived at Carruthers Smith’s Museum just after 4:15 in the afternoon after nearly a three hour drive out from D.C. and across the Chesapeake Bridge and most of Delmarva to Lewes, Delaware where the reclusive tycoon had taken up residence nearly fifty years before. My office began tracking his investments five years ago, when my colleague Bill Hardy was on the case, but just last week when he came out here to this beach town he never returned. My partner, Penny Wilson, joked when we were leaving the Hoover Building’s garage that Bill must’ve gotten distracted by the beach and stuck around for an unannounced vacation. Whatever the case, Smith’s file was dropped on my desk, and I was sent out to the Delaware Shore to see what became of Bill, and then to pick up where he left off investigating Smith’s Museum. There was something that didn’t make sense about a museum that had never opened to the public.

            Carruthers Smith was one of the titans of the rubber industry, his tires and tank treads had helped us win the War in Europe, for one, and he was lauded by every administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt for his service to our country as one of the good, charitable captains of industry. His father was a strong supporter of the Taft Administration, having had his wings clipped by Theodore Roosevelt’s trust busting, and his grandfather one of the great Wall Street investors that supported Republican nominees from Grant through McKinley. The Smith Company hadn’t started with rubber tires, first they were a shipping company that cornered the market for trade between Rio de Janeiro and New York. They even helped keep an eye on ex-Confederates who’d escaped to Brazil in 1865, reporting on their whereabouts to Union authorities. Thanks to their deep connections in Rio as well as New York, they were well placed to corner the developing rubber market when it appeared almost forty years before Carruthers Smith was born. All this is to say it took a lot for any federal agency to be willing to investigate a good tycoon when there were plenty of rotten ones out there who ignored their workers’ safety or were notorious union-busters or preferred to outsource their factories overseas and flood the American market with cheap goods that were easily breakable and commonly known among the public as generally worthless. Smith Tires were different, they were sturdy and dependable, far more so than any competitor. They were especially good traveling over sand, so much so that the Army still kept a contract with Smith for tires for any future desert operations.

            Still, Penny and I were there in front of Carruthers Smith Museum, our car parallel parked with the handbrake on Franklin Avenue. It was a very modern building, white walls that showed some of the characteristic curves of the Art Deco, yet it seemed less brutalist than the Hirshhorn and more akin in color to the Guggenheim in New York. There seemed to be no front door where you could queue to enter, but there was a smaller service door off Franklin Ave. that I could see from the driver’s seat. “Do you think that’s it, Pat?” Penny asked.

            “Yeah, that seems to be it. Let’s go ring the bell.”

            We got out of the car and walked into this small service driveway and up the five concrete steps that led to the service door. There was an industrial-type doorbell affixed to the wall at the top of the steps next to a door that on closer inspection turned out to be steel painted white to match the rest of the building, yet it had no window through which the respondent could see their visitors or vice versa. I rang the bell, holding down the button for a good two seconds. “Mr. Smith, this is Agents Patrick O’Malley and Penelope Wilson of the FBI, may we come in and talk to you?” We waited for another thirty before a buzzing announced to us that the metallic lock on the door was released, and we were allowed entry.

            We found ourselves in a sort of room that could be a back office, it had denim blue carpet, and high wooden walls around which were photographs of the museum under construction beginning from the laying of the cornerstone in 1942. An old wooden desk stood to my left; it reminded me of a smaller version of the Resolute Desk that sits in the Oval Office. Before us was a set of stairs that led three steps up to another door. This one had a window, yet it was high up in the door, and thus too high for either of us to see through it. Yet there was light beyond it that seemed to dance off the high white ceilings of the room beyond. I nodded at Penny, and she walked up the steps and opened the door. The room beyond seemed minimalist in nature, yet it was still quite large. “This must be the museum,” Penny said.

            “It looks that way,” I replied, scanning left and right as we entered the room beyond. There was a high angled white wall to our left in front of us, blocking our view beyond to whatever was to the south in that room. To our right the room continued for some uncertain distance, its white tile floors fading into the darkness at the far edge of the room. There didn’t seem to be any art on the walls of the museum, nothing here displayed. What could Carruthers Smith have been collecting these last 50 years? Beyond the angled wall in front of us light danced on the ceiling from something metallic. I proceeded cautiously, my gun still holstered, as was Penny’s, yet we both knew we could draw in 3 seconds at least and be on guard. The heavy sounds of our shoes clicked across the floor as we rounded the corner and found a small metallic box on a table in front of a large glass display case standing erect that housed a large rubber object, rectangular in shape, and standing at least 6 feet tall. It seemed taller being up on a podium. I looked up at it, confused what I was seeing, “maybe it’s the largest single piece of rubber the Smith Company has ever produced,” I quipped to Penny.

            “It is in fact,” came a voice from behind us. We turned to see Carruthers Smith standing there, a tall man who once might have been the eye of many a high society debutante. He was slim in frame, wearing a gray double-breasted suit of the kind not often seen since the early 1960s. “This is the largest single piece of rubber that my family’s firm ever acquired and sought to study. How do you find it, Agent Wilson?”

            Penny looked back at it, “it’s a little unsettling, how is it held up in the case?”

            “You are welcome to walk around the back and discover that fact for yourself,” Carruthers replied in a slow, tenor voice that betrayed hints of the Transatlantic accent he and his class used decades ago.

            Penny looked at me and I nodded approval, sending her around the case to its right to ascertain the supports for this piece of rubber. “How is it standing on its own?” she asked with incredulity seeping through their voice.

            I walked left around the case and found her behind it looking for where some sort of supports ought to be yet instead there was nothing. The rubber artifact instead stood erect inside the case, not leaning on it or putting any pressure on the glass that could shatter it. Carruthers appeared behind Penny, “it truly is a wonderous specimen, one that was brought to our office in Rio from deep in the Amazon in 1941, on the same day that the Japanese attacked our fleet at Pearl Harbor. My agent who ran the Rio Office then, a Senhor Dos Santos, said that anyone who touched it felt as though they were touching something that seemed alive.”

            “Alive?” I asked, quizzically raising an eyebrow.

            “Yes, Agent O’Malley, this artifact was alive when it arrived here in early Spring 1942. I had it shipped into our wharves in Jersey City where it was loaded onto a train and brought to Lewes where I could study it myself.”

            “Mr. Carruthers, I know your family’s connection to this town doesn’t go back very far, didn’t your father have a summer cottage here?”

            “No, most of the family would summer in Newport, Rhode Island with our friends, yet I was the one who enjoyed the waters further south here in Delaware and found Lewes a fine enough little town to build my summer cottage here,” Carruthers replied, never dropping his hint of a smile.

            “When did you first come here then?” Penny asked.

            “In 1932, an 18 year old looking for something profound and reclusive in life. I’d read Thoreau you see; Walden inspired me to seek new things beyond the family firm or society life in New York. The Depression brought land prices low here, and I thought I might be able to help the local people. I provided tires at a 33% discount to all residents of Lewes, which ingratiated myself to their company.”

            “Is that why you built this museum?” I asked.

            Carruthers looked around him at the cavernous space, its white walls and white tile floors made the space feel monochromatic and minimalist. “I built this museum to house the treasures I’ve collected in my years, things old and new, mundane and,” he gestured to the rubber artifact before us, “wonderous.”

            “But why haven’t you opened it to the public?” I asked, “Surely this would be a testament to your life and work like the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh or the Freer Gallery in Washington?”

            “I never felt that it was complete and ready for the public. There was always something missing, something which I couldn’t quite place. I’ve been collecting for this museum now for 58 years ever since I first arrived in Lewes, and still the museum is not yet finished. But you, dear agents, have come a long way, surely you have business to attend to?”

            I looked at Penny who nodded and walked back around the display case. We followed behind her to the metal table that stood beyond. “Mr. Smith,” she began, “we are here to ask two questions. An agent of ours, Bill Hardy, came here a week ago to inquire into the contents of this museum that has never opened and ensure they are all legally in the country, and he has yet to report back to the office since. So, we are here both to see if you know what might have happened to Agent Hardy and to complete his assignment.”

            “I met with Agent Hardy when he arrived here on the 10th, he seemed to be in a hurry to return to Washington, so I didn’t want to detain him too long. As to his investigation into this museum, you can find the effects of that effort on the table here,” Carruthers motioned downwards toward the metal table between them where a single silver box was placed in the middle.

            “Sir, are you here alone?” I asked.

            “In fact, I have one assistant here with me,” Carruthers motioned to a man who only just seemed to appear from the corner of my eye. He wore a dark green museum guard’s uniform, with a black necktie on a white shirt. “Have you met Peter Dougherty? He’s one of your tribe, a fellow Irish American born in Brooklyn.”

            I turned to see Peter more clearly and saw a wizened old man, at least 80, who looked back at me with tired eyes. “How long as Mr. Dougherty been working for you?” I asked.

            “Peter was hired by my father as a warden to keep watch over me in my youth, in 1929 I believe.”

            “That’s correct, Mr. Smith,” Peter replied in a low baritone voice.

            “And you’ve been with Mr. Smith ever since?” Penny asked.

            “That’s correct, Agent Wilson.”

            “Peter served in the first war in the trenches under my Uncle George’s command, and after the war when lost his job after Black Tuesday, my dear uncle asked my father to bring him on.”

            “So, this Peter has been working for the Smith Family for over 60 years,” I thought, “he’s loyal then, very loyal.” “Where did you serve, Mr. Dougherty?”

            “At St. Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive with the Fighting 69th,” he replied proudly.

            “We appreciate your service,” Penny smiled at him. Peter returned the smile, yet he seemed tired by the process.

            “So, you say that this box is what remains of Agent Hardy’s investigation?” I asked.

            “Yes, Peter collected the things he left here.”

            “And when did he leave?”

            “He left his investigation on the 10th,” Carruthers replied, his expression unchanging.

            “On the same day he arrived?” Penny confirmed aloud.

            “Indeed,” Carruthers affirmed.

            “Then you haven’t seen him since the 10th?” I asked, pulling a notepad and pen out of my jacket’s right pocket and opening it to a page titled “Carruthers Smith Museum.”

            “That is correct, he had a sudden change of mind and chose to end his investigation right here while he was looking over the financial records of my museum.”

            “May we see those records?” I asked, trying to understand why Bill would give up an investigation like that.

            “Certainly, Agent Wilson, will you follow Peter, he’s not as strong as he once was and could use the help lifting these boxes, unless you’d rather attend to it, Agent O’Malley.”

            I looked at Penny who gave me a glance, I knew she could do this well enough, “Go with him, you’ve got this.”

            “Understood,” she replied, before turning and following the aged soldier to the northeast across the large gallery in which we stood until they passed beyond the light and into a portion enveloped in darkness. I could still hear their footsteps as a door beyond sight opened and they passed through that portal to the collections’ storage beyond.

            “How long have you and Agent Wilson been together?” Carruthers asked.

            “She was assigned to be my partner fresh out of the academy two years ago.”

            “So young,” he pined, “but keen eyed still. Would you care to sit and inspect the effects of Agent Hardy’s investigation,” Carruthers motioned toward the box on the table.

            I sat, feeling as though the invitation was unavoidable and slid open the metal lid with my hands. Inside were several metal artifacts, a slide-rule, Hardy’s notepad, and a paper sheath for the instrument. I took the notepad out first, noting that it was closed and flipped open the cover. The first few pages were notes from other cases he’d worked recently, followed by a page with directions to Lewes from Washington. Yet after that the pages were just filled with what seemed like random numbers, ten full pages of random numbers. “Can you explain these numbers, Mr. Smith?”

            Carruthers looked down at the paper in my hand, “they refer to specific indices in my records, you can find everything you need in the documents that Agent Wilson and Peter will shortly be bringing to this table.”

            I looked back down at them, and began to mutter the numbers aloud, for no apparent reason, yet still to mutter them aloud all the same. “Seven, nine, six, five, three, one, nine, eight, two, five, three, one, eight, three, seven, six, nine, zero, seven, five, three, nine, zero, seven, two, one, six, five, three,” until I found my eyes drooping, an air of drowsiness coming over me. It seemed like a good long while since Penny and Peter had left my sight and gone into that distant room off in the dark, what could be taking them so long? “Seven, nine, six, five, three, one, nine, eight, two, five, three, one, eight, three, seven, six, nine,” I tried to stand from the table yet felt my body heavier than expected; it was a weight which felt less physical and more emotional. I could swear I saw the display case to my left open, how could that be opening?! The large rubber artifact was there before me, what a strange thing it was. I began to see the darkness consume the distant edges of my vision until all that remained was that artifact, which seemed to yawn before me. I thought I could hear Bill’s voice, “Pat! What are you doing?” but soon all was silent.

Part II.

Penny found the collections room to be far less impressive than the gallery beyond. It’s linoleum floors and light green walls seemed to be caught in a time loop going back to the late 1940s when this part of the museum was built. She followed Peter further and further back into the collections until they came to a locked metal cabinet on a nondescript back wall. Peter took a key from his coat and unlocked it, revealing nearly a century’s worth of documents behind the door. “This is everything,” he said, “everything from Mr. Smith and his father’s time leading the firm.”

            “Mr. Smith’s father retired in 1936, yes?” Penny asked.

            “Yes, he left the firm to Mr. Smith in that year.”

            “And how long has Mr. Smith been collecting for this museum?”

            “For as long as I’ve known him,” Peter replied.

            “You know, my grandfather served in World War I,” Penny said, trying to make small talk as she began to finger through the files.

            “Did he,” Peter seemed uninterested in the topic.

            “Yes, he was an ambulance driver from Kansas City, most of the guys on his crew became animators.”

            “We all have our own paths to take, Agent Wilson.”

            Penny kept looking through the files, moving fast between folders with handwritten dates and names on them. “Are you looking for anything in particular, Agent Wilson?” Peter asked.

            “Not yet just trying to get an idea of what’s in here,” she replied as she kept quickly flipping through the folders. “So then, if you won’t talk about the war, what did you do between then and when you started working for the Smith Family?”

            “I was an interpreter for a while at Ellis Island until the government closed that facility in 1922.”

            “Which languages do you speak?”

            “English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.”

            “Oh wow, you’ve got a knack for language, then.”

            “I ran away from home when I was fourteen and took a job on the Smith Company’s ships going to Rio, learned Portuguese there and Spanish on their stopovers in San Juan and Havana. I learned my French during the war. Captain Smith put me on interpreting duty with our French allies when he heard about my work.”

            “That’s Mr. Smith’s Uncle George, right?”

            “Right.”

            “So, what’d you do after 1922, Mr. Dougherty?”

            “I tried going back to the Smith Company, but they weren’t taking as many sailors for the Brazil Route anymore, so I became a policeman.”

            “You were a cop?” Penny turned to look at Peter who stood behind her still looking as tired as before.

            “I served with the New York Police Department for five years until 1927.”

            “What happened then?”

            “My sergeant had us raid the wrong alderman’s office and we were all out of a job.”

            “That’s tough,” Penny paused a moment, “I’m glad you were a good cop. My dad is a cop in Kansas City, it runs in our family.”

            Peter was silent, he still seemed reluctant to share much more than was necessary, even if it was just to pass the time.

            Penny ignored this, “What about your personal life, did you ever marry?” she asked, trying to unlock the man behind her as she pried open the files before her.

            Peter was silent for a moment before she heard a sigh, the first sound he’d made other than the odd monotone words she’d heard from him before. “I did, a long time ago.”

            Penny smiled, “what was her name?”

            “Delia McGinty.”

            “I see you stayed in the community,” Peter made no response to that attempted joke. “How did you meet?”

            “At a party in 1924 at the Hotel Commodore on 42nd Street in Manhattan hosted by one of the big Irish organizations in the city. She was there with a friend, Mary Mulroney. They were both famous for standing up for themselves.”

            “What did they do?”

            “They were suffragettes during the war, and afterwards Delia worked as a schoolteacher on the Lower East Side. She wanted to give these new kids who’d just arrived the welcome that our parents’ generation didn’t get.”

            “She sounds like an amazing woman. So, what happened?”

            Penny could feel a darkness shift over Peter’s face even though her back was turned to the older man, “We were married for nearly twenty years, but she disappeared around the time we went to war with Germany the second time in 1942.”

            Penny turned and offered a compassionate look, “I’m sorry, Peter, that must have devastated you.”

            Peter returned her gaze with a weary look, “It was a long time ago. My cop friends couldn’t find her, there was no sign of her anywhere. Mr. Smith took me in and invited me to move here to Lewes with him. I left the city and the memories and started anew.”

            Penny had reached the bottom third of the files when she found one that caught her eye, she read the label, “1941,” and turned to Peter again, “Isn’t this the year that that rubber artifact came into the Smith Family’s possession?”

            Peter’s face seemed weary, yet sharp with a renewed purpose. He reached into his coat pocket and drew a pistol, pointing it at Penny who stood from her squatted position. “Peter, what’re you doing?” Penny asked, alarm in her voice as she reached for her sidearm.

            “Don’t move, Mr. Smith said no one is to inquire about the origins of the artifact.”

            “Peter, you need to lower your weapon and put it on the floor,” Penny commanded.

            “I work for Mr. Smith, not you,” Peter said with a cold steel in his voice.

            “Mr. Smith is hiding something, Peter, why else would he order you to put your life and freedom in jeopardy by threatening a federal agent to protect it?”

            Peter gave no answer, but his hand had begun to shake. Penny stepped forward, gingerly, eyes on Peter’s. “Peter, I’m not going to hurt you, just give me the gun. There’s a reasonable explanation for all this.”

            Peter’s hand lost its steadiness, and Penny closed the gap between them, taking the gun from his hand and resetting the safety. She looked it over, “whose gun is this, Peter?”

            “It’s my old service pistol, from my cop days.”

            Penny looked at the gun, it had to be at least 63 years old, before returning her gaze to Peter, “let’s start over again,” she held the 1941 file up to him, “why is this file so important, Peter?” Peter was silent, “You were a good cop, remember, going after corrupt officials, protecting your community. Is it worth going to prison in your nineties to stay silent about this?”

            “I’ve lived a long life,” Peter said slowly, “Mr. Smith is the only person I have left. You’ll get there someday, Agent Wilson, when everyone you’ve ever known is gone.”

            “Yeah, you’re right, but for now Peter I’m with you, and I want you to understand I’m not going anywhere until you explain why you pulled your gun on me.”

            “Mr. Smith said no one should ever know what that thing really is, what it does. It caused a big ruckus in Rio when they first brought it into the warehouse. He never said what happened, just that they had to handle a police investigation over it and that some workers died.”

            “Some workers died because of that thing?” Penny was alarmed at the thought. “Pat’s in there, right next to it.”

            She ran for the door, leaving Peter behind her, pulled it open and charged back toward the table where Carruthers stood. “Where’s Pat!” she shouted.

            Carruthers turned to meet Penny’s fierce eyes, “Agent O’Malley left his investigation,” he said in the same soft, dry voice he’d used when they met him.

            Penny looked at the display case, it wasn’t quite as she’d left it, instead the front plate of glass seemed to reflect the light just a bit differently. “Mr. Smith, when I collected this file from your cabinet, your man Peter pulled his gun on me. Would you care to explain?”

            Carruthers looked to the file in her hand, “1941” he read on the label. “That file is confidential, and without a warrant I see no reason why you must be aware of its contents. Please return it to me,” he held out his hand.

            “No.”

            Carruthers’ face lost the soft glow of friendliness it’d had since they arrived, “I believe the law is clear on this matter, you have a piece of my personal property which if I’m correct in assuming you have no specific warrant to search.”

            Penny opened the file, as the papers caught the light from above, yet at that moment Carruthers moved to slam it shut, “you will not read anything in that file, it is not yours to read!” he commanded.

            “If you don’t want me reading that file then you can tell me where Pat is. When I left you, he was sitting at that table. You were the last person to see him and now he’s not here.”

            “He needed a rest from his troubles.”

            “What do you mean, rest?” Penny gave Carruthers an interrogatory look, her eyes locked on his. She caught the smallest of a micro expression, his eyes glanced slightly to the left toward the display case behind him. Penny dropped the file, revealing Peter’s service pistol in her hand beneath it, pulled the safety back and fired a shot into the display case. A second shot shattered the glass. A third pierced the rubber artifact within. An oil began to ooze out of the artifact as the air entered a newly formed chasm in the bullet’s path. Penny drew her own service weapon from the holster at her hip and pointed it at Carruthers. “Explain,” her one word command.

            “You have no right,” he whispered in a seething, quiet, and deadly voice.

            Footsteps came from behind as Peter appeared from the darkened far end of the gallery, a shocked look on his face. “Mr. Smith, I tried to stop her,” his voice faltered as he looked to the shattered display case and the fast liquifying rubber artifact. A hand appeared from within, followed by the arm to which it was attached, and soon Pat’s face and body were restored to light and air. Penny ran forward, her gun still drawn toward Carruthers. She pocketed Peter’s service weapon and caught Pat at his shoulder.

            “Are you okay?” she asked.

            Pat looked around, and caught Carruthers in his sight, “what was that thing?”

            Yet before he could respond another body appeared from the case, someone who was placed below Pat, it was Bill Hardy. He hadn’t taken that unannounced beach vacation after all. Penny got Pat onto his feet and went to help Bill who’d been immobile for a week now. “That thing ate me!” Bill shouted; his eyes blurred by the sudden shock of the gallery’s artificial light.

            There was still a good half of the artifact left, yet it kept draining out of the case, a white liquid oozing down onto the white tile floor below. Another figure began to appear, someone crouched down, kept still by the weight of the prison in which they’d been enthralled. Penny heard a sob come from across the room, and unsteady feet run forward as Peter approached the milky pool, “Delia?!” he shouted.

            Peter saw as a frail woman appeared from within, she didn’t seem to have aged as much as would be expected. She was crouched over, in almost a fetal position, wearing the same blue dress she’d worn the last day he saw her. Her eyes were glazed over, surely, she hadn’t seen daylight in almost fifty years. Yet her hair still had mere whisps of gray. Peter helped her up, though unsteady he lifted her from what remained to the artifact and set her in a chair at the metal table. Ensuring she was safe, and wouldn’t fall from her chair, where she’d begun to rub her eyes, Peter turned to his employer. “What happened?”

            Carruthers looked at the man who’d stood by his side for the last half century and laughed, a cruel, heartless laugh. “She came to me to ask about the workers who’d died in Rio. She said that she wouldn’t let it slide, and that if I was a true patriot, I would be better to my workers. Yet while we spoke, she saw the artifact, and slipped in.”

            “I didn’t slip,” Delia spoke with a defiant voice. “You gave me a piece of paper with notes about the workers to read, you told me this would have all the information I needed. You said I should read it aloud to prove to me that what you read was the truth. I read it and was drawn into that monstrous thing of yours.”

            “That’s what happened to me!” Pat shouted.

            “You had me write those numbers in my notebook, I figured they were accounting figures,” Bill said groggily. “What do those numbers do?”

            Carruthers remained defiant, keeping his silence in spite of his situation.

            “Give it up, Carruthers, you’re done for,” Peter said, standing up to the man who’d commanded his loyalty.

            “How dare you speak to me that way,” Carruthers seethed.

            Peter raised himself before the man, “You’re no better than the rest of us, you and your captains of industry. You were born into riches, but do you really know what I had to do just to survive? I’ve been watching you for sixty-one years, I know who you really are you two-faced miser. You’d happily put on the red, white, and blue in support of the war effort and to make people feel proud to buy Smith, but any chance you got to denigrate Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Truman you took. You’re one of the good bosses, that’s what you told everyone, but I know you for the weasel that you are, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. You don’t care for any of us, not a one. We could all be starving and dying of plague and all you’d do is pack up and leave us to die.”

            Carruthers was seething with rage now, “How dare you speak to your betters like that, you worthless Irish scoundrel! All of you should’ve been sent back on your ships with your agitators and your freedom fighters! And you, Delia McGinty, we had a name for you and your kind who upset the natural order of things in 1920. Insufferables you all were!”

            Penny stepped forward, “that’s enough of this,” she took a pair of handcuffs from her jacket pocket, “Carruthers Smith, you’re under arrest for kidnapping, and attempted murder.” She grabbed his wrists and placed them behind his back, cuffing him there. “Bill, do you want to help me get him to our car? This was your case first.”

            “Gladly,” Bill said.

            Pat turned to Peter, “do you have a phone? I should call the office for backup.”

            Peter pointed toward the darkened portion of the gallery where he and Penny had disappeared before Pat began to read Bill’s notepad. Pat nodded and walked to the collections room to place his call.

            Peter turned and looked back at Delia. He took the other chair at the table and brought it around to her side, sitting in it next to her. “Delia, do you remember me?”

            “How long has it been, my love?”

            “Forty-eight years, forty-eight long years,” he sobbed as he hugged her.

            She looked at his face, “you must be at least ninety by now.”

            “Yes, but you don’t look a day older than the last time I saw your face.”

            “I don’t understand it,” she said, “if it’s been forty-eight years then I must be at least ninety-five. Do you have a mirror?”

            Peter looked around and cautiously took a shard of glass from the floor and held it up for Delia to see her reflection. “How is this possible?”

            They looked down at the floor, at the milky white liquid that oozed from the fallen artifact, gobsmacked at this new lease on their life together.

Part III.

The following morning a story appeared on the newswires in papers nationwide, “Carruthers Smith Arrested on Kidnapping Charges,” the headline read. 

Carruthers Smith, of the Smith Import Company family, was arrested by federal agents at his home in Lewes, Delaware on kidnapping charges on Saturday. Among his victims were 95 year old Delia McGinty Dougherty of Brooklyn, New York, and Agents William Hardy and Patrick O’Malley of Washington, D.C. who were in Lewes investigating possible charges of art theft lodged against the accused. Mr. Smith began building the Smith Museum of Contemporary Art in Lewes a town of just over 2,000 inhabitants on the shores of Delaware Bay in 1941, yet the museum famous in Lewes for its Streamline Moderne architecture never opened to the public. 

Dr. Ronald Yancey, M.D. of Lewes inspected Agents Hardy and O’Malley, and the miraculously young suffragette Delia McGinty Dougherty, and concluded all were in good health despite the unusual circumstances of their captivity. Carruthers himself was taken by federal agents from Washington, D.C. for questioning and is being held in a detention facility in Wilmington pending trial before the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. No other arrests were made in the raid. Mr. Smith, age 76, was famous in his youth as the captain of industry who singlehandedly supplied the Allied forces in World War II with rubber tires that could traverse the deserts of the North African Campaign and the muddy fields of Northern France and Germany. For his service, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1947 by Speaker of the House Joseph W. Martin, Jr. (R-MA).

One curiosity of the case is the vitality of Mrs. Dougherty, age 95, who Dr. Yancey wrote appears to be physically fifty years younger than her age. Dr. Yancey offered no comment when asked further about her condition. Mrs. Dougherty’s husband, Mr. Peter Dougherty, age 91, of Brooklyn, has lived in Lewes with Mr. Smith since 1942. When asked for comment on his wife’s health, Mr. Dougherty said “I am fortunate indeed to have these next few years to spend with my beloved.” No charges have been filed against Mr. Dougherty. Agent Penelope Wilson, one of the three federal agents who were investigating Mr. Smith told Sophie Fleming of the Daily Whale, the Lewes local newspaper, that Mr. Dougherty was unaware his employer had been imprisoning Mrs. Dougherty in the museum. Mr. Dougherty agreed to stand as a witness against Mr. Smith in the tycoon’s impending federal trial.

This is not the first missing persons case connected to Mr. Smith. In 1941 several workers from the Brazilian branch of the Smith Company disappeared on the job Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian authorities have said they are interested in questioning Mr. Smith.

A spokesman for the federal agency responsible for the raid said no objects were found in the museum’s galleries.

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The Face

The Face – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I have a spooky short story for you, based on an experience I had over the summer. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane Photo: an empty corridor in the Paris Métro as seen by the author on the evening when this spooky story takes place.
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This week, I have a spooky short story for you, based on an experience I had over the summer.

The second evening since my colleagues had left town now arrived, I made my way down into the caverns of the metro to cross Paris from Opéra to the Maison de la Radio. The journey should only take 30 minutes, during which time I knew I would be surrounded by people, it was the rush hour after all. Yet one thing was certain about this journey: none of us would intentionally make eye-contact with each other. That is one of the great, universal, cardinal rules of public transport systems. To look into the eyes of a stranger who was stuck sitting or standing beside you in close quarters was to break some great pact of collective anonymity. I kept to this rule as well as I could, having learned it as a child and improved within its bounds in my teenage and young adult years.

That is what struck me the most about the face that I saw peering at me from ahead. At first, I thought I must’ve been seeing things, yet then I looked at it more closely and saw its eyes gazing back at me in an unbroken stare. Whose face was this that would be so flagrant in their regard for the social order of the metro? I turned away quickly and restored my gaze on the linear route map on the upper section of the walls of the carriage. It was just above the twin doors which stood before me. I was positioned in the center of the train’s vestibule, holding onto the vertical pole as all of the seats were taken, and if I could’ve taken one for myself it would’ve served little purpose, as I was alighting in only a few stops.

I looked back in the corner of my eye and saw those eyes piercing their way through the stifling air back at me. A shiver ran down my spine, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, someone really was watching me, someone here on this train. I looked up at the map again, we were only just arriving at Miromesnil. I knew I could transfer here, but it would take me out of my way, and I needed to get closer to the Maison de la Radio if I was going to have time for dinner before my concert. At Miromesnil, I looked to see if the face I’d seen was one that alighted, perhaps to transfer to Line 13 or to the streets of the 8th Arrondissement above. The doors closed as soon as they opened, and we were off southwest again toward the intersection of l’Avenue de Franklin Roosevelt and les Champs-Élysées. I feared turning to look again, those eyes could well still be there staring at me. They didn’t look friendly, I’d convinced myself. They were eyes that stood out for how sharp their whites appeared against the brown of their pupils, like a milky sea surrounding a distinct island of mahogany. It seemed unnatural in the greenish light I saw them in, a light produced by the electronic lighting on the train.

At Alma – Marceau, I knew I could transfer to the RER C, which would take me to my final destination, but I stuck to my plan, in spite of the eyes that I was sure still gazed at me. Did their owner long to know more about me? Did they think me foolish, or could they see through the sport-coat and sweaty dress shirt that I’d been wearing for several days? I let the doors close on the Alma – Marceau platform without alighting, and watched as the station flew past us until the darkness of the Line 9 tunnel overwhelmed the green light illuminating the train again. 

There they were! The eyes! Gazing at me from behind, I thought. I felt tired, weary of feeling like I had to look over my shoulder to see who this person was, like the unknown figure who’d sit behind me at Mass when I would feel too self-conscious to turn around and see who it was. That would require I acknowledge them, say “hello” or what you will. Here though, the sign of peace was not turning to acknowledge this figure standing behind me, rather to acknowledge that I could see someone’s eyes there staring at me in the window yet not turn and interrupt their privacy in so public a place by looking into them myself. So, there I stood, trying my hardest not to turn as Orpheus did and lose the love which I felt for that vaunted, phantom privacy.

At Trocadéro, I alighted with relief, and walked down the platform following the signs for Line 6. I pulled out my phone and searched in the metro’s app for my route again, confirming I would need to take Line 6 only one stop to Passy. I walked up a flight of stairs and down another, noting the Trocadéro ticket lobby was surely nearby, before I descended onto the Line 6 platform for trains terminating at Place de la Nation. I didn’t notice anyone familiar from the Line 9 train on the platform and breathed a sigh of relief. I thought about buying a bottle of water from the vending machine on the platform to help calm my nerves, but thought better of it, remembering I was hopefully heading to dinner before my concert. 

A minute later, the train arrived, its light green signage mirroring the color scheme of the Paris Metro overall. I watched it arrive, and boarded in the penultimate carriage, which I found moderately full. I had plenty of room on either side of me as I again chose to stand, keeping myself upright with the aid of the vertical pole in that train’s rear vestibule. I watched the doors close and lock, and the train begin to move, picking up speed with a good rhythm from the tracks below us.

As we reached the tunnel my relief turned to horror, there was that face again, those eyes piercing my soul with their weary look, as if the weight of a life lived well yet not to its fullest sang a plaintive hymn from their gaze. Was that what I feared about them the most? That they seemed to be tired, forlorn? Something else caught my attention though, without many other people around me, logically there wouldn’t be anyone else in this carriage’s end vestibule who was on my last train. I looked back at those eyes with trepidation and let out an audible laugh as the train flew out of the tunnel from beneath Trocadéro and onto the elevated line that took Line 6 over the Seine and along the western edge of the Champ du Mars. 

Those eyes were my eyes, their piercing stare was my piercing stare, that weary gaze was my weary gaze. I saw myself in the window this whole time and feared what I saw. I feared the figure who was trying to make it through one day to the next without causing too much trouble for himself. I was scared of failure and restless in this self-enforced frugality of expression. 

I saw the platforms of Passy station appear alongside the train, and alighted onto the platform, descending down the stairs, and out toward the banks of the Seine.

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Utopia Lost

Utopia Lost – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I have a short story for you that I wrote three years ago after the death of a dear friend. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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This week, I have a short story for you that I wrote three years ago after the death of a dear friend.

How does one convince a civilization to accept it’s moved beyond the known and into an entirely unknown and new age? How does one convince oneself of this terrifying and very real fact? It takes loss, grief, and sorrow for humanity to recognize and embrace change, world wars, revolutions, or sudden bouts of violence to remind us that time continues ever onward. Yet for me, one guy living in this world moving along, strong, pulsing like the tempo in the fourth movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, it takes something even more personal for me to admit one act in my life is ending, and that after a turbulent period of intermission that another will shortly begin. It often takes moving out of my skin, out of the comforts of my upper middle-class normality, my tree-lined block in my beautiful neighborhood in the heart of my city, out into places I’d never really desired to visit. And yet, after she died, I found the need to flee far from home, like Gilgamesh seeking a cure for death itself in the lands beyond the water.

These thoughts danced through my mind as I stood atop the rim of a canyon, a thousand miles from home, in the high deserts of the Colorado Plateau, exposed and in the open; a danse macabre moving out of place in the desert setting of a Dali or Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I was struck by the silence of the scene, the extreme quietude that reminded me of many a hymn and prayer the Jesuits and Franciscans alike offered about finding God in all things. Nature certainly is God’s canvas, just as van Gogh understood it when he painted his own vision of that Creation, and just as I, a guy trying to understand grief had heard but never fully appreciated until I saw it for myself. The starkness of the desert, the browns, greys, and dusty oranges, seemed so different from the many shades of green, the vibrant spectrum of flowers that decorate the parks and gardens of my city. Yet it was there, in that environment, so far from home, that I felt drawn to. I’d been in the desert before, in Arizona, and found it lacking in beauty, seeming to be hostile, dangerous by nature, unbefitting for someone of my origins or health. Yet this desert, as alien as it was to me, seemed gentler in a way, less severe, more textured in its variety. Here where the Yampa River flows into the Green River, on federally protected land, the wilderness seemed to sing with all its resplendent harmony. Nature cried out on the wind as if to Elijah in a whisper, in its own language, its own song. I could recognize it, but I had a hard time understanding it. I, a city guy, knew only the manicured nature of my urban homeland. I knew the landscape that had been remade in the image of the Eastern cities and their European forebearers, a landscape of verdant trees and gardens which conquered the native prairie grasses in the wake of the settlers who conquered the native peoples who had called those prairies home.

I knew my home was artificial, and so it was not fit to help me through my sorrows. When she died, laying there on the veterinarian’s table, her face was calm, at peace; she looked as though she were having the best of dreams. Long suffering from a lack of tears, even when I wanted them, I felt as if I cried enough to fill the stormy Atlantic and more. She was my dearest of friends, the one who was always first to comfort me, the one who would go on adventures with me through the parks and along the trails. She was my companion at the sidewalk cafés, her with her water bowl and a couple treats, me with my tea and a pastry or two. Neither of our lives would’ve been possible without our artificial world, we were both born in an industrial, global, civilization, created out of the migrations of countless dogs and people from throughout the globe who would carry out a few begats until we were born in our own times. Yet even then, in her long life, her sixteen years of naps and treats and play, she saw our world change again from that industrial world of our forebearers into a world of the digital, a world where ideas were spread not on paper but on screens, where her favorite toys would inevitably come not only from the local pet shop and groomers, but often from some distant warehouse, a distribution center built to cater to the needs of millions, even billions of “consumers,” as we’d become known. To them, we were just numbers, her existence was acknowledged by the fact we purchased from the dog section, but her gifts inevitably were counted among my numbers. We’d created this world where if we really wanted to, and had the means, we could ensure that we would never wont for anything again. We’d created a world where instead of settling for the same old cooking shows that she loved to watch (she knew the names of all the foods), we could now tune into cooking shows from Europe, as I learned French, hoping she might pick those food words up too. I dreamed of a reality where we would always be together, where she would be as wonderful and dear a friend to my kids in the coming decades as she has been to me. Yet time marches on, and with it we age. Unlike Gilgamesh, I knew I couldn’t stop death, like the Swedish knight, I knew even if I kept the game going, eventually Death would reach checkmate, yet in my dreams at least she was still with me, still snoring next to me every night, still leading me from one blade of grass to another around the neighborhood as she sniffed for traces of her dog friends’ adventures.

In my dreams then, I hoped I might hear a familiar pattering of her paws on the rocks leading to the canyon rim, only to turn about and see her trotting over to me, tail wagging with glee. Perhaps a part of me truly believed if I went out into the desert, I might just see her again, if only in a greater clarity in my mind’s eye, in my memories. I stood there on the canyon rim, and listened to the silence, hoping dearly she was coming, wishing she could’ve seen that sight as I was seeing it that day. I could hear her snorting, and smelled that she needed a bath, something she was often proud of, though never appreciative of when she was bathed. Yet I knew, all too well, I wouldn’t see her again until I too had crossed the water, however distant that day would be. As much as I spent our days together worrying about the world around us, and what might well be beyond what we know, she spent those same days curious about few things, simple things, but most of all she was sure about love, and its importance and meaning. I understood it in those last moments before she died as she kissed my face for a final time. It was clear to me that as much as I could speak French when in Paris or Montréal, so too I could communicate with her, by letting her do “gross” things like jump on my chest and kiss my chin, or listen to her growl and whine at me, to let her have her say. I would reply each time, telling her “I love you,” and meaning it. Even if I was leaving the house to shovel the snow in the winter, I would look her in the eyes and say, “I love you,” so that she knew it well. She was as innocent as she was mischievous, her favorite game was running around the house with the end of a roll of toilet paper in her mouth, decorating the rooms and halls with that ribbon of white. It annoyed my family to no end, but I could see she was having so much fun doing it.

The desert, a place I traditionally thought of as dead, hot, lonely, seemed full of life, and while I could not see birds fluttering around the far rim of the canyon, I knew they were there. I could feel the breeze as if it were in part propelled across the chasm by the fluttering of many little pairs of wings beyond. It was as though they were singing their own hymn to being alive, to the radiant Sun in the blue sky, to the scrub and the rocks laid down there over millions of years. This place had seen many ages even before the coming of the first humans. To it, my little artificial urban island in the seas of prairie grass must have seemed both a cute human attempt at recreating nature in humanity’s own image, and a threat to the current vitality of the wilderness itself. Far overhead, the trails of passenger jets remained the only sign of the civilization beyond the canyonland before me. Sitting in those planes, focused on evading humanity’s worst bogeyman, a specter named boredom, the passengers surely didn’t notice what wilderness was below them, and if they did look out the windows, from 30,000 feet they would well have been at a loss to truly appreciate what they were speeding over on their way to the great cities of this country and beyond.

I thought of Elijah, hearing the Voice of God in the faintest whisper of the wind, and imagined what the Divine might say to me. Quickly though, unlike other daydreamed dialogues, I found myself at a loss for imagined words and banter, unsure of how to speak for such a concept as an omnipotent and omniscient God. Maybe then that’s the real beauty of Elijah’s experience, he heard God in a whisper because we humans can’t really understand what it even means to hear such a Voice. I tried fantasizing about it even more though, doggedly not wanting to give up too easily, and found myself afraid, scared at the idea of even hearing such words, the power and presence they would command would be the same that creates realities. The idea itself was but a micro fraction of a particle of a grain of sand when compared to the consequences of the Divine. My importance was duly minute, yet without my imaginations would I really recognize any of this? Would I hold out hope that my dog recently deceased would appear to me wanting to play there on the canyon rim knowing all I know about how this reality operates? In the great cosmic totality, I began to wonder how much her life really had meant. A little eleven-pound dog, who couldn’t put on a fierce face to anyone, or serve as much of a herder. If anything, she was best at being a friend, the best of friends. 

If her life had any consequence, I realized, it was in loving everyone and everything she met, in that unblemished innocence, that unconditional affection for life itself. She served as a role model of sorts for all the rest of us, especially for me, having lived with her for so many years. Even someone as little as her could plant a seed of love and charity in the minds of others that one day could restore the Utopia that seemed lost to me at her death. I stood there as the day continued on, and through the setting of the Sun, and watched as Venus, the evening star, rose overhead, bearing behind it the curtain of darkness that is the twilight and eventual nightfall. I was soon laying on my back on the canyon rim, not caring about the dust or the bugs, just awestruck at the sights above me as one star after another appeared in the darkening sky. The ancients believed the dead could be found among the stars, though my own ancestors passed down a belief of an earthly paradise on an island of eternal youth, something which as skeptical and scientific our world becomes, I still find myself believing in. If for nothing else, that light in the darkness of even the emptiest of cloud covered nights has kept me warm company in my thoughts. From that far distant island I thought I could hear her calling, her bark and wagging tail inviting me to come, but in my own time, not too soon. Even in this most dystopian of days, I thought, tears streaming down my cheeks again like on the day she died, there is still hope to be found, utopia restored, after all behind every cloud glows the light of some distant star. I laid there looking up into the starry night, through my tears singing a song I used to sing to her, hoping, believing, knowing somewhere she was listening.

Someday, however soon or far, I knew I’d see her again, once the boatman calls upon me. Funny enough, for someone who enjoys life as much as I do, the simple belief that I will see my dearest and sweetest of friends again is enough for me to look forward to that reunion across the water on the far shore.

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A tiger staring at the camera through two fences.

A Tiger in the Sun

A Tiger in the Sun – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, I have a short story for you, in the style of an Irish aisling, a dream narrative, about a tiger basking in the warm February sun. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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This week, I have a short story for you, in the style of an Irish aisling, a dream narrative, about a tiger basking in the warm February sun.

On a sunny, warm, and blustery day in February I left my desk in the afternoon for a walk at the city zoo. You could never really know how many warm days you’d have in February on the prairies, a time of snow, cold, and gray skies. I showed my member’s pass at the gate to the clerk and strolled between the polar bear’s wide enclosure and the lorikeets’ walk in cage towards the penguin house where I often liked to stand quietly and watch the birds waddle and swim about. There was something wistful about these penguins today, their black and white feathers glowing with a renewed exuberance from the lengthening days outside. I’d seen these penguins in all seasons, confined to their Antarctic chamber with many good places to swim, enclosures, and crevices that even I hadn’t seen. Worlds still unfamiliar to my eyes yet already known to my imagination which saw places where these birds could play and rest away from human eyes.

I left the penguins and began to walk further into the zoo towards the Asian and Australian animals who I hadn’t seen in my last few afternoon visits. I’d read that a new pair of Sumatran tigers had been brought to the zoo from another facility on the West Coast where they’d been born into captivity. These animals it seemed had a comfortable life, if confined as they were from the wilds their ancestors had once known. My walk took me past the alligators still hidden indoors and the camels who wandered about the edges of their sandy glade looking for new grass and leaves to eat. 

After passing the pelicans I came to a grand sign displaying a portrait of a tiger, in all its majestic ferocity. The entry to this Asian walkway was marked by a fleeting glimpse of another red, black, and white animal whose furry legs and tail darted behind a wall to my left. I walked onward and rounding the wall met a red panda on a stroll within the confines of its fenced enclosure. I stopped to look at the red panda who climbed a gangway that’d been set up for its enrichment and admired its ease of movement, the jolly grace of its demeanor. Yet still, the hairs on the back of my neck stood tall, alert. I knew the tigers dwelt behind me, yet they could’ve been anywhere in their terraced enclosure. I turned and caught the yellow eyes of a cat staring back at me, its orange nose wreathed in a beard striped black, orange, and white. This new tiger was smaller than I imagined, perhaps little older than a cub. It lay there on its side like my own cat often does, finding a nice place at the highest point in its home with the sun’s rays glittering down upon its neck and back between the barren branches of the cottonwood grove which towered above both feline and me.

I stood stock still, my nature sensing some intrinsic danger in my situation despite the double layers of fencing between us. This was a tiger after all, a hunter who if in the mood would gladly seek prey from either myself or its red panda neighbors across the path. Who was I to say I was any finer a creature than this one, who was lounging the afternoon away in the warm winter sun. It had no need of work or time; no economy or politics furrowed its brow. Here was a creature free of all our worldly concerns in its terraced enclosure. I would soon have to leave this tiger and continue on my way. My walk in the zoo was merely a distraction from my labors, an escape from the small walled enclosure of my desk where Sisyphean work awaited my attention. What time did I have to lay out in the sun and cherish the day? I walked on, my body moving back towards my work, yet my imagination remained. I dreamed as I walked of adventures I might have, greater escapes from my work, and of absconding for more than an afternoon from worry.

As I rounded the corner past the lower terrace of the tiger’s enclosure my phone began to ring. I pulled it from my pocket and caught myself seeing the number, “213, who’s calling me from Los Angeles?” I answered, looking up towards where the tiger lounged high above me. “Hello?”

            “Hello, I’m calling you about your application for the archivist position at the Space Science Center.”

            “Oh yes, how may I help you?” I asked reflexively, a knot building in my throat worried at what word might come next after so many rejections.

            “We would like to offer you the position here, if you’re still interested.”

            I caught myself in my jubilation, remembering I was in public, “Oh!” I cried, “what wonderful news!”

            “So, you’ll take it?”

            “Yes,” I stopped myself from being too exuberant, “It would be an honor to work with all of you there.”

            I thought I heard a smile from the other end of the phone. “I’m glad to hear that. Can you be here later this week to start?”

            “Later this week?” I asked, stopping in my tracks near the entrance to the kangaroos’ enclosure.

            “Yes, we’d like you to take over the work from our outgoing archivist who’s retiring at the end of this week.”

            I looked at my watch, it was nearly 3 ‘o clock in the afternoon. “Well, it’s Monday now, I can be there on Friday morning if that’d be alright with you.”

            “That’d be fine,” the herald of good news replied over the phone. “We’ll see you on Friday morning here in Pasadena.”

            “Thank you again!” I said as I heard the phone on the other end hang up. “Friday, Friday morning in Pasadena. I need to start packing,” I turned from the kangaroos and was about to walk past the building ahead when I remembered that path was closed for winter renovations. I turned back again towards the gate and strolled through; my head held higher than before with a newfound exuberance. Soon I wouldn’t be scraping by just as a freelancer, my four part-time jobs would have to go. Now, I could really earn enough to begin living my life.

I passed the Australian birds in their walk-through enclosure and was amused to see they were all standing stock still on various fenceposts. One squawked at the world, in what seemed to me a jubilant chord of praise for the wonderous afternoon sun.

If I was going to be in California on Friday morning, I would need to leave at dawn tomorrow. I could drive to Denver on Tuesday and stay at my cousin’s house there, if he’ll have me, and then cross the Rockies and the high deserts on Wednesday. I’d driven most of that route before one summer vacation several years ago, but the Rockies in winter would surely be an entirely different challenge than they are to cross in summer. The last time I drove through the Eisenhower Tunnel that bored its way beneath the Continental Divide I waited to use my breaks for just a few seconds too long on the western side and nearly ignited them in their furious efforts to slow my car down as it pulled into a parking spot along a creek in the village of Silverthorne. Should I get my snow tires out then, and have those on in case the interstate was slick up in the mountains? But I wouldn’t need them once I reached Utah where the high deserts would surely be dry, and possibly still hot despite it being February.

Once in Utah, even if my tank was nearly full, I would still stop in Green River, the last town before nearly 125 miles of open desert to ensure I wouldn’t run out of fuel on that other most dangerous part of the trip. I’d avoided that part of the interstate last time, taking a smaller high mountain pass through Central Utah. This time though there was no avoiding the desert. Once I made it to the junction with Interstate 15, I could turn south and make my way to my second overnight stop in Las Vegas. I figured I might not be the only traveler passing through Sin City who wasn’t there to gamble or for the spectacle. Then at last, on Thursday, I would finish with the last leg of the drive southwest across the California border and to Pasadena where my future awaited me. Work, to be sure, was something that drove me forward, the aspiration that I might make something of myself, that I might better my stars and spend my days doing something that both kept the lights on and fulfilled my dreams.

Like the tiger, I would perhaps have time to rest in the sun, to enjoy the afternoons on a park bench near the science center. Surely in California, I would never have to shovel snow again, or scrape the ice off my car in the cold January mornings. Wasn’t California where that tiger was born? I thought about that for a moment as I walked along the path. To my left the local kangaroo mob lounged and grazed on the grasses of their meadow. A kangaroo stood and stared at me. I warily watched it, silently snapping a photo of it with my phone, and continued on my way, keeping ever a respectful distance from those remarkable creatures.

But what of my cat? How would she fare the long voyage west? Would she appreciate so much time in the car? She’d never been one for car rides even to her vet just a few blocks away. Perhaps she’d rather stay with my parents, they always enjoyed her company and she theirs. She was surely napping now too, finding a sunbeam somewhere near a south-facing window where she could enjoy this lovely day like her far larger yet far distant cousin. It would be a great change for my cat, as much as it was for me. We’d have to travel light, perhaps I could send for the rest of my belongings, especially my books, after we settled into our new abode. 

I paused at the southern gate leaving the kangaroo enclosure. Before me one of the camels stopped its grazing to stare back at me as I stood there, deep in thought. I could see my life in California well. I’d probably get a space in the basement of the science center, somewhere with no natural light where they kept their records. My domain would exist in the deep darkness there, somewhere I could make my own. Maybe I’d be far enough away from the rest of the staff or the general public to bring a radio in and listen to baseball games during the season like my grandmother used to do in her kitchen. There’d always be a part of me that would yearn for home of course, for the prairies and woodlands of the Midwest. Who would I be without this place that I came from? What would my life be like so far from everyone I know and love? Could I really separate myself off, devote my working hours to a place where few would understand what it meant to be from here, where few would understand me?

My mind returned to that tiger lying there in the sun, content with its lot in life. There was a creature that could try to hunt and prowl, perhaps it did so in its dreams. What are dreams but the longings of the subconscious? I’d always been a dreamer, an imaginer of wonders near and far from the truth. Do dreams then tell the truth, or is there such a thing as truth in the surreal realm which we imagine? I remembered a story I read as a child, from P.L. Travers’s original Mary Poppins novel, of a scene in which the roles were reversed and all the animals of London Zoo were gawking at the humans in the cages. Was fantasy so different from reality that it could not be informed by the real but instead kept unreal? 

I felt I had to return to that being whose yellow eyes had so deeply captured my thoughts that even now as I planned the monumental voyage of these coming days, a week spent crossing half a continent in winter, I couldn’t shake the image of those deep yellow eyes. I followed the path back towards the tiger sign that greeted visitors to the Asian footpath and ignored the red pandas in all their charm and found my captor laying there still. Those eyes caught mine again, and they seemed to recognize me from only a few minutes before. In those eyes I saw a truth that life was meant to be enjoyed, to be lived, yet in my eyes I was sure the creature could only see fear and wonder. Without these fences we both knew those yellow eyes would be a death sentence for me and that my power was devised in only the most artificial of means. The tiger was the real power, the true monarch of our shared domain. And yet it blinked at me, slowly, a signal that my own cat offers when it feels comfortable around me. Could this tiger feel at ease in its enclosure or is its ease perhaps from its inherited knowledge that nature gave it the upper hand over feeble, clawless, scaleless, featherless, furless me.

I didn’t feel the need to speak, this tiger could understand my expressions. I gazed into those eyes deeper, feeling my thoughts free fall into that yellow sea of potent grace. Did these eyes envision things like mine did? Could this tiger see things unknown to it in its dreams? Could it imagine a Creator? Would I still feel such a connection when I retired from my native place to that basement archive where surely, I would spend my waking hours? I wasn’t sure that the adventure of it all would be worth the query, yet I felt my nature pull me towards exploring further and deeper. I heard a noise from before me, a deep hiss emanating from a striped sea of orange, black, and white. The tiger had enough of my gaze, and with a hiss told me enough, “move along, leave me be.”

I backed out from the tiger’s view and turned away, looking to the red panda who seemed unfazed by the hissing hunter across the way. Move along indeed. In this adventure I’ll learn more about myself, and what I am capable of. When I reach the end of the line on this drive, when I arrive in California, there will surely be many new possibilities and wonders to behold. How often had I experienced a warm, sunny day in February here on the prairies? Wonderous things remained for me to find beyond my desk. I walked back to the front gate of the zoo and felt something new inside of me glow with confident glee at the thought of all that was to come.

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