Forty Leap by Ivan Turner Read Free Book Online

in embarrassment. I did not understand this, nor
do I ever expect to find an answer. It’s actually one of those
great matters of irrelevance that sparks curiosity and then quickly
degrades into fleeting memory.
    Finally, I moved past the lot of them, out of
the throng of onlookers, and into the open streets. I had to walk
several blocks before I could find a train station that was open
and running, but the walk did me good. It helped me to believe that
I was leaving my troubles behind as I left that place and those
people behind.
    I could not have been more wrong.
     
     

Chapter II
    I had left reality on November
23 rd . It was now January 3 rd , a Thursday. I
had missed the New Year, not that that meant much to me. I’m not
the party type. I usually spent New Years with the family or at
home. So I had lost almost six weeks.
    And a good friend.
    And my mother.
    In the intervening weeks she had also passed,
the news given to me by an irate message left by Jeremy on the
first of December. My brothers, who had had to deal with all of the
arrangements and the estate by themselves, were extremely sore with
me.
    Even Wyatt would not take my calls. As the
afternoon turned into evening, I felt myself entirely alone. My
life had spun completely out of control. I was at the whim of these
lost bits of time. While I had been in limbo, two lives had ended.
It got me to thinking about the changing world. What else had I
missed?
    Well I had missed more lives. Apparently, the
bomb threat called into my former office building was not an
isolated event. And many of them were more than threats. Just
before Christmas, the man who was uniting the Middle East,
Abdelaziz, had been assassinated. No one claimed responsibility.
Everyone blamed the United States. Though Abdelaziz’s successors
openly condemned terrorist activity and denied any suspicion of the
United States, every two-bit Jyhaddist in the world was out for
blood. It was a sorry state of affairs and it dominated the news
channels, of course. People were frightened and angry. There were
new laws in place and new strength to the Patriot Act. There was
talk of martial law. I hadn’t just stepped from November into
January. I had stepped into a totally different world, one that I
did not like. Imagine the effects of culture shock and jet lag
rolled into one catastrophic ball and dropped on your head. Add to
that the fact that everything looked the same and felt the same. It
all just wasn’t the same.
    I had to call my landlord and thank him for
not locking me out. He explained that he was on the verge of doing
so and it was a good thing I called. When was he getting paid? I
immediately wrote out two rent checks for December 1 st and January 1 st . I would send them in the morning. A
couple of paychecks had gone into my account during my “absence”,
but it was pretty clear where they had stopped. If I minimized my
spending, I would be okay for a couple of months, but I had to get
a job. I did not live an extravagant lifestyle, so money tended to
accumulate for me. But it would not be enough.
    On the 4 th of January, I got up
early, dressed against the cold, and took the train and the bus out
to the cemetery where Jeremy and Wyatt had buried my mother. I
didn’t quite know how to feel, the whole of it being still so
unreal to me. There was a bitter wind and flurries in the air as I
approached the grave with the apprehension of the unknown.
    The stone was new, having only been placed
the week before. Below the engraving of her name and dates of life,
my brothers had requested an epitaph. A good woman who gave
better than her best. It wasn’t a terrible way to sum up her
life. As I stood before it, though, I marveled that I did not feel
any guilt for not having been there. Truthfully, I could take no
blame for my absence. Given the choice, I would certainly have held
her hand through those final moments, giving her my love and
encouragement (how do you encourage the dying?). What I