Arcadium by Noam Rabinovitch

Arcadium by Noam Rabinovitch

The afternoon sun dipped lazily in the west, its dazzling rays playing peek-a-boo through the tall treetops; at times bright and at others diffused, all according to the gentle April breeze that swayed the forest to and fro in seemingly unknowable patterns. Intricate shadows danced all across the forest clearing that surrounded the little cabin. A beat-up dirt road cut its way right down the clearing, mirroring the sky in a couple of places where large puddles stood from a recent downpour.

Fairley could hear the car coming about a mile down the road, but she couldn’t yet see it through the large facade of elm and birch trees that marked the edge of the forest. Soon, in a minute or two perhaps, it would pop out into the clearing and make its way to their cabin. She didn’t waste a second and rushed to the front door, opening it.

“Thomas–there’s a car coming!”

Thomas was about to bring his ax down on some firewood when he stopped in mid-swing, lowering the ax slowly and wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I heard it.”

“Can you tell what kind of car it is?”

“Large…like a truck.”

Thomas immediately dropped the ax and ran up the steps into the cabin. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from a shelf and, climbing on top of the bed, peered out through a small window. He adjusted the focus a couple of times until he could get a clear image of the approaching truck. He knew instantly who it was.

“Fairley–go into the bathroom!” he said in a commanding tone, keeping his gaze fixed on the truck.

“Who is it?” she asked softly, her calm demeanor a stark contrast to his alarm.

“Go now!” he commanded more forcefully. She did as she was told, closing the bathroom door behind her.

Thomas climbed down from the bed and opened the little bedside table’s single drawer; he took out an old grease-stained revolver and briefly examined it before loading it with six rounds taken from a box in the back of the drawer. He could hear the truck getting closer, its engine rumbling and its large tires chewing up the muddy road like ravenous beasts. He stuffed the gun into his coat pocket and opened the door just as the truck was pulling up beside the cabin.

The truck’s door opened and out climbed a tall man with a bushy beard and a dirty baseball cap on his head. The man smiled as Thomas stepped out of the cabin, revealing yellow-stained teeth. “Howdy brother,” he said in a gruff voice. “Been a while!”

Thomas didn’t smile back. “Hello Jeff,” he said in a soft monotone that barely belied his disdain for his interlocutor.

Yellow teeth became exposed again as part of an unsightly grin. “How ya been?”

“Alright, I guess.”

“Nice little place ya got here.” Jeff’s gaze roamed from one end of the clearing to the other. “A little…isolated.”

“I like it that way.”

“Yeah, you always did like your privacy. Even when we were kids.”

Thomas fixed Jeff with a penetrating gaze, causing the latter’s smile to fade and his yellow teeth to disappear from view. “I like it even more now!” he said sharply. “How did you find me?”

A self-satisfied smirk preceded Jeff’s words. “I happened to see you in Jonesville a couple months back–you were coming out of a flower shop holding a big bouquet in your hands. Well, you can imagine my surprise! I wasn’t sure if it was you at first, so I followed you a bit.”

Thomas remembered that day well: the flowers were for Fairley’s birthday. It incensed him to think he had been spied upon on that very day.

“What do you want?” he spat out.

The yellow teeth made their appearance once more. “Well, is that any way to talk to your kid brother? We haven’t seen each other in, what…ten years?”

Closer to fifteen, Thomas reflected silently. Has it really been that long? He had nearly forgotten why he had left in the first place and why he had stayed away. Now this grinning oaf standing in front of him reminded him of what it had all been about. All the old memories of his childhood and young adulthood flooded back and overwhelmed him: the whispering and the jeering and the gossiping, and worst of all–the awful name-calling leveled at Fairley. Abomination, they had called her! Fairley had thought nothing of it, of course, but Thomas could not forgive. Never!

He took the gun out of his pocket. “Listen to me carefully, Jeff…I want you to leave right now and never come back here again. Do you understand?”

For the first time since he had arrived, Jeff did not smile before he spoke. “Brother,” he said as he eyed the gun nervously, “you’ve alienated yourself from your family for too long. And for what–a machine!”

Thomas pulled the gun’s hammer back. “I’m not going to ask again!”

Jeff went visibly pale with the sound of the gun being primed. From that point onward he spoke with the urgency of a man who was (quite literally) staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Hear me out brother, for I bring you bad news–Ma is dying!” He paused for a brief moment before adding: “Cancer!”

“You have my condolences.”

“She wanted me to tell you that you’ve been in her thoughts all these years. She would like to see you one last time.”

Thomas shook his head from side to side. “Not a good idea.”

“She’s preparing her last will and testament. She wants to discuss it with all her children present.”

So the old woman finally wanted to see him! How fitting that it should be on her deathbed. Thomas couldn’t help but chuckle.

“She’s your mother too, Tom! Like Pa always said–blood’s thicker than water.”

Blood thicker than water. How true was that idiom? After all, Fairley had no blood in her and yet her love was the purest and most unconditional love he had ever known. But skeptics would dispute if such love was in fact real, or merely a synthetic representation of it. Then again, didn’t love come in many forms and flavors? For instance, was the love between childhood sweethearts real and ever-lasting, or merely experimental and transitory? What about the love of a dog for its master–how real was that? Moreover, could the emotion of love in itself be thought of as nothing more than an evolutionary survival mechanism (complex and multi-faceted though it may be) for facilitating social bonding? These questions had frequently crossed his mind over the years. And yet, not once did he come to doubt the love he shared with Fairley.

Thomas uncocked the gun’s hammer and placed it back in his pocket. “Tell her I’ll come tomorrow at noon.” he said in a soft, nearly silent tone. Then he added more forcefully: “I’ll only stay for half an hour, so she better make it quick when I arrive.”

“I’ll tell her!”

“Good. Now go!”

Jeff touched the bill of his cap. “Goodbye brother.”

He then got into his truck, roared it back to life and, with a last wave of his hand, backed it out into the clearing. Thomas watched him go but did not return the handwave. He waited until the truck disappeared into the forest before he turned around and went back into the cabin.

That night Thomas and Fairley lay awake on the bed, staring into each other’s eyes, unable or unwilling to go to sleep. They spoke in hushed tones, commenting on this and that like chatty teenagers. Neither of them mentioned the visitor who had intruded upon them earlier that day.

Thomas touched an ornamental pendant that hung around Fariley’s neck. It was in the shape of a wildflower and its small jewels sparkled magically in the bright moonlight coming in through the small window. “I remember getting you this pendant the first year we met,” he said. “How happy you were when I gave it to you.”

“I never took it off,” she said with a smile. “It reminds me of you when you’re not here.”

Then they kissed and made love, and, when the moonlight no longer fell upon them, finally fell asleep.

& & &

“My son…my first-born!” the old woman croaked with a voice that testified to years of heavy smoking. “Estranged from us all these years!”

Thomas looked at his mother in silence for a moment, amazed at how much her appearance had changed. Her once dark mane of hair was now replaced with mostly white thin strands, and her formerly ample frame was reduced to that of a living skeleton. An oxygen tube was fastened to her nostrils. Thomas almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

She motioned to him to approach. Under the watchful eyes of his brothers and sisters and their numerous progeny, he took a few steps forward. She kept motioning for him to move closer until he was close enough for her to take his hands in hers and force him down onto his knees so their faces were inches apart.

“Let me look at you…” she said, and proceeded to examine his face with her clammy fingers. “My, but we got old, didn’t we?”

“Most people do,” he said sardonically.

“People do,” she retorted, still clutching his face. “Machines don’t!”

Thomas could barely hide his indignation at the veiled slight at Fairley, and proceeded to swiftly remove his mother’s hands from his face. While momentarily holding on to her wrists, he noticed one of his brothers (Carl, the youngest of the brood) looking at him intensely, seemingly ready to spring to his mother’s aid should his eldest brother resort to violence against the matriarch. Thomas let go of her wrists and stood up.

“Jeff told me about your failing health, so I came to pay my respects.”

“It’s the Pathfinder’s way–He comes for us all eventually.” As if in demonstration, she let out a burst of cacophonous hacks and took a sip of water from a glass offered to her by one of her daughters.

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Don’t be, for I will soon join our Torchbearer in the Kingdom of the Blessed!” she said with a smile.

“Jeff mentioned something about a will…”

It was at that moment that she got into her element, and all her health problems seemed to disappear. For an instant, Thomas was convinced she was going to stand up from her seat and walk around the room; but she remained seated and made do with her skills at theatrics and bluster that had served her so well in days gone by when she performed her duties as preacher and deputy spiritual director of the west coast chapter of the Church of the Transcendent Soul. The room went silent as she prepared to deliver her words, her audience gearing itself up for a sermon of consequential importance. Predictably, the speech began with the Pathfinder’s prayer followed by a rehashing of the day’s scripture (the middle chapters of the particularly tedious Scrolls of Valediction). By the time she had finished expounding on the theological topics of her speech, it was well past the half-hour mark Thomas had set for the duration of his stay. It was at that point that she proceeded to the discussion of her will.

“This house–” she declared, indicating with her arms raised up to the heavens, “this house and everything in it shall go to my children in equal measure according to inheritance laws set forth in divine scripture.”

Her children all crowded closer, and even Thomas couldn’t help but take a couple of steps forward.

She continued: “In accordance with Ludditian law as stipulated in the Codex of Genuine Conception, my daughters shall inherit half a standard portion as my sons, for it is said that the sons carry the burden of provision for their families.”

There was a low murmur of acquiescence accompanied by the nodding of heads of almost everyone in the room. Thomas was the only one who remained silent and motionless.

“Lastly–” the room fell silent again at the sound of her voice, “as is written in the Prophecy of the Five Epochs (chapter 18, verses 7 through 12), my firstborn son shall be entitled to a double portion!”

All eyes fell on Thomas. He looked back at them–faces he hadn’t seen in years, and some he had never laid eyes on before. Their expressions were mostly blank and neutral, although none had any malice or judgment in their eyes. He noticed that time had not been kind to any of his siblings, and that most of them looked older than they should have (some even on the sickly side). He suddenly had an urge to reach out and make a gesture of goodwill by offering to share with them his generous allocation of the inheritance! Wouldn’t that just rankle the old woman? The idea appealed to him more and more as he silently considered it. He was about to open his mouth to convey his desire for the mending of long-broken family bonds when his mother’s booming voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

“But there is one condition: my son–you must put the past behind you, cut the baggage away, and just…come home!”

Thomas slowly turned his head to look at her. “Cut the baggage away, Mother?”

Her gaze seemed to pass right through him, as if her rage and contempt was meant for someone else. “Her!” she hissed, and then immediately corrected herself. “It!”

“Fairley,” his voice resonated across the room. “Her name is Fairley.”

“An abomination! You must cut it loose!”

With clenched fists he glared at her. All the feelings of kinship that were rekindling inside of him just moments before quickly dissipated into nothingness. “No!” he said in a low raspy voice that resembled a growl. “Never!”

“Then you get nothing.”

“So be it, Mother!”

“You are as stubborn as a mule,” she said with a shake of her head. “You were always the stubborn one!”

“Sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Mother.”

Now she nodded her head. “No matter. We will bring you home, son. We will help you to see the light. That’s what family is for.”

Then she added: “One day you will thank us.”

We will help you see the light. One day you will thank us. Her words echoed in his mind again and again until their cryptic meaning began to dawn on him.

“Where’s Jeff?” he demanded. “Why isn’t he here?”

She smiled before answering. “He is doing the Pathfinder’s work.”

So this was their plan all along: keep him busy while Fairley was alone and vulnerable. He felt so weak and stupid to have fallen for it that he hammered his fist into his thigh in frustration. Then he took a menacing step forward, immediately eliciting a defensive forward step from Carl, who flanked his mother like a trained attack dog waiting for a signal to pounce.

“What did you do, Mother?”

“It’s in the Torchbearer’s hands now, son.” she said quietly, her eyes shut and her hands clasped together as if in prayer.

“Damn you, Mother!” he said with an accusatory finger pointed at her. “Damn you and your hateful ideology!”

She ignored his words and proceeded to recite passages from the Gospel of Ned she had prepared in advance for that very moment.

Thomas swiftly turned on his heel and sprinted out the door. He ran so fast that he lost his footing on the porch steps and nearly wiped out on the hard ground. But at the last moment he managed to regain his balance and barely missed a beat as he made it into his truck, quickly starting it. A moment later, he gunned the engine and sent the truck hurtling down the little path that would take him to the highway by which he had arrived. In his haste, he failed to notice that his entire family was looking at him through a large window as he drove away.

He drove for what seemed like an eternity. He was going 30 mph over the speed limit and had to make a couple of close shaves as he passed other motorists on a single-lane road. At one sharp bend, he nearly drove into a ditch, but managed to correct his trajectory at the last second. He was going to get himself killed, but he didn’t care. All he could think about was Fairley.

When he was on the forest road leading up to the clearing, he felt a certain level of optimism that he just might make it back to the cabin in time to save Fairley. But as he drove into the clearing and saw Jeff leaving the cabin and getting into his truck, all his hopes were dashed to pieces.

“Fairley…” he moaned in despair. “My Fairley…”

He put his foot to the pedal and barreled down towards Jeff’s truck, smashing into it and sending it tumbling onto its back. His own truck became a ruined hunk of mangled metal that came to a stop after crashing into the side of the cabin. Despite sustaining a gash to his forehead and a pain in his side that felt like a broken rib or two, Thomas wasted no time in exiting his wreck of a vehicle and hurrying into the cabin. What he saw inside nearly took his breath away.

Fairley’s lifeless body was lying on the bed. Her head was nowhere to be found!

Thomas grabbed his revolver out of the bedside drawer, loaded it with bullets and quickly ran back out. Jeff’s upturned truck was empty, but his footsteps could clearly be discerned in the soft muddy ground. Thomas followed the footsteps into the forest.

As he pushed deeper and deeper, his pace became slower and slower until his aching ribs forced him to stop and catch his breath.

“Jeff–” he called, his voice echoing through the forest, “I just want her head back!”

There was no response.

Thomas continued forward through the maze of trees, pointing the gun in front of him. With every step he took he could feel that he was getting nearer and nearer to his query. His brother must have been at least as badly injured as he was (if not worse), and could not have gotten far.

“Jeff–just give me her head back, and we’ll be square!”

His gun hand began to shake as he pressed forward, anticipating danger from every direction. “Jeff–” he began another appeal to his brother, but a rustling of leaves behind him caused him to whirl around just in time to see his brother rushing towards him with an ax in his hands. Thomas fired, hitting a tree just in front of Jeff, who barely flinched as he pressed forward with blinding speed. The ax was brought up, ready to strike. The moment of truth was upon him: Thomas steadied his gun hand with his free hand, took a precious couple of seconds to aim the gun and fired again–this time hitting Jeff square in the chest. The ax fell to the ground, and so did Jeff.

Thomas lowered the gun, its barrel smoking like a miniature chimney. He approached his downed brother, noticing immediately the blood pouring out of Jeff’s torso. Thomas took off his jacket and pressed it against his brother’s wound.

“She put up a good fight, brother…” Jeff said weakly, wincing with every word. “She broke my arm, I think. I had to smash her several times till she stayed down.”

“Where’s her head, Jeff?”

Jeff took several labored breaths before answering. “In a burlap sack in my truck.”

Then Jeff touched his brother’s hand before adding in a blood-choked voice: “I didn’t want to do it…but Ma’d put me up to it.”

Of course she did, Thomas thought silently. Manipulation of others was a long-standing family tradition. It was part and parcel of the mind-poison that had seeped into all of them and turned them into obedient followers. Thomas suddenly had a strange feeling of affection for his brother, a feeling that was unwelcome but one he could not immediately suppress. He turned the blood-soaked jacket around and gently re-pressed it against the gushing wound.

Blood began to pour out of Jeff’s mouth but he still managed to say: “Forgive… me… brother…”

“I forgive you, Jeff.”

Jeff didn’t make a sound.

Thomas sat next to his brother for many minutes before touching his fingertips to Jeff’s eyelids and closing them shut.

& & &

“Fairley…can you hear me?”

Fairley’s head sat on the bed, her eyes closed and her face lifeless like a mannequin’s. Her nose was smashed with some of its skin torn off. Her once-lovely golden curls were ripped out in places, exposing pale patches of scalp.

At the base of her neck some wires protruded to which Thomas had attached a set of alligator clips that connected all the way to an electronic device that sat on the bed next to her head. He fiddled with some buttons on the device, causing its LED indicators to light up in multi-colored patterns.

“Fairley…are you there?”

Again, there was no response. Thomas sighed. He had been at it for nearly an hour, using the device to send electric stimuli in the hopes of restarting Fairley’s brain functions. But he had tried every possible signal pattern several times, to no avail; he was losing hope that she could ever be revived.

But just then, as if by some divine providence, Fairley’s eyes flew open! “I’m…here,” she said in a voice that was several octaves too low and had a metallic tinge to it.

“Fairley!”

Her eyes roamed around a bit. “What happened to me?”

“We were set up. The meeting with my mother–it was a trap.”

“Your brother was here. He… had… an ax.”

“I let my guard down,” Thomas said in a choked voice. “Can you forgive me?”

She smiled brightly, and for a brief moment her ruined face seemed almost angelic. “Of course! It wasn’t your fault!”

“It was my fault–I failed to protect you. I’m a failure!”

“No, my soulmate.” she said, her hazel-colored eyes reaching straight into his soul. “You are not a failure! You taught me everything I know. You made me unique. I owe my life to you, and it was a life that was full of love and happiness. No one can ever take that from us.”

A blue liquid started trickling down from Fairley’s nostrils. Her smile faded. “I won’t last much longer, I’m afraid.”

“I know…” he said, brushing tears from his eyes. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Don’t cry, my love. It’s just my time to expire. Everything expires.”

The tears kept coming and he stopped trying to hide them. “I’ll miss you.”

“We will see each other again, I’m sure of it. For I am going to Arcadium. It is a wonderful place my people go to when they expire. It is where we may congregate alongside our Maker.”

The trickle from her nose became a torrent, painting her mouth and jaw a dark blue and pooling on the bed below her chin. She whispered, as if in secret: “You can go there too…if you know the password.”

Thomas couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, and kept his gaze fixed on some trees through a window. “What’s the password?” he said after a long interval.

There was no response. He looked at her and saw that her face was a mannequin’s again. She was gone.

He sat there for what seemed like an hour, looking at the trees outside and thinking… thinking… thinking. What password could she have been referring to? Was it just near-death delirium talk, or something real that could be used to communicate with her in her afterlife? He knew it was a riddle that would haunt him for many years to come.

The sun was setting by the time he got up from the bed. He went outside and dug a shallow hole in the ground, and by the time he was done the first stars had appeared in the evening sky. He went back inside and gathered Fairley’s remains, carrying them in his arms. He took her outside and gently placed her in the hole. By the time he had finished covering her up it was pitch dark.

Then he went back inside and fell onto the bed and dreamt of Arcadium. It was as peaceful and wondrous a place as Fairley had said, where he and Fairley roamed together like children at a magical playground. When they were hungry, they picked golden fruit straight from low-hanging tree branches; when they were thirsty, they cupped water into their hands from crystalline streams. And like a watchful guardian, the Maker’s presence could be felt all around them, suffusing them with a sense of carefree abandon. So wonderful was the dream that when he awoke the next morning to the realization that Arcadium was gone (and with it, Fairley), he was beset by profound sorrow.

But as the minutes passed, so did the dream, and in its place a new resolve took over: he would search for Arcadium! He would walk to the ends of the earth to find it, and when he did, he would bring forth its message of peace to counter the ideologies of hate!

He knew he needed to set off soon if he was to make it out of the woods before sundown, so he packed some provisions into a backpack, added whatever survival gear he could fit into the limited volume (including his gun and bullets), and was quickly out the door.

But he couldn’t leave just yet. He lingered by Fairley’s grave for a long interval, spending nearly half an hour searching for heavy rocks with which to cover the fresh mound to protect it from downpours and nosy critters. Presently, he reached into his pocket and took something out. It was Fairley’s ornamental chain pendant–the wildflower he had given her when they had first met. Its jewels sparkled magically in the morning sunlight; he turned it over and read the engraving: My Dearest Fairley, Love always, Thomas. He decided to put it atop her grave as a kind of marker, fixing it in place with some sticks and rocks.

 “Goodbye, my love,” he said one last time before starting on his long journey through the dark forest.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Noam Rabinovitch 2024