Jackie the Beanstalk
Chapter 2
Crossing Denial River
Mile 147
“YOU THINK I’M my mother’s daughter?” I asked Misty as we drove down the twisting road along a river. It bothered me. I just killed some hombre—I think. Maybe I should be in the cell next to my mother. How could people just ignore that and not even call the cops?
“Honey, you’re asking the wrong person. My sister is fifteen years older than me. By the time I knew who she was, she was married and living two states away. And I didn’t know her husband at all, so I couldn’t tell you if he deserved killing like that bastard back at the diner. I know Mam and Pop weren’t that surprised,” Misty said. She reached over and patted my thigh.
No flashing red lights had come tearing up behind us, so I was guessing nobody cared about the guy I offed. Still couldn’t believe I killed him with my mortarboard. At least I think I killed him. I never actually examined the body. Maybe it was all a set up.
“Well, I wiped most of that from my memory. Maybe someday a therapist worth her wage will dissect my brain and discover what kind of childhood I had. I really don’t care much anymore. About either of them,” I said. I looked at the twisting river off the side of the road. Seemed like it was getting significantly bigger as we traveled. “I’m sure I remember some town along here that Mam and Pop took us to so we could see the Christmas decorations. Are we still on the same road?”
“There’s no town marked on the map along here,” Misty replied. “Looks like we cross the river in a couple of miles and continue on the other side. But no town.”
“Well turn up the radio. Let’s find out what station we’re listening to.”
We rode on and found the bridge. It looked like a pretty nice and fancy bridge to be out here in the wilderness like this. Even had streetlights marking it.
“Now this is just too strange,” I said. “Who puts a bridge in the middle of nowhere with streetlights on it?”
“Oh, what was that story? The one where the kids climb in the closet and come out in a different world. There was a lamppost there.”
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We are not in Narnia. My head can’t accept that. There must be some more logical explanation.”
“Yeah. How about if there’s a troll who lives under the bridge and he likes to be able to see what he’s eating,” Misty giggled.
“Oh, thanks a lot. That image will haunt my dreams. You’re gross!” We laughed and kept driving, but I yawned pretty powerfully. “Do you think maybe we should find a hotel or something for the night? I’m getting tired.”
“You think?” Misty asked. It took a second before I figured she was responding to the idea of needing a place to stay. “The TripTik says turn left and go to campsite 33.”
“You’re kidding. Turn where?”
“There!”
I slewed the car around and just barely made the corner into a campground I never even saw a sign for. I wasn’t sure what good a campground was going to do us when what I wanted was a nice hot bath and a hotel bed.
“You could have given me more warning!” I yelled as I started looking for the campsite. Being told to camp here seemed just as normal as anything else that happened today. I was still hoping to see a Holiday Inn at the campsite. These were my travel documents Misty was reading from. I probably had a reservation.
“I swear it didn’t say anything about a campsite when I was looking at the bridge location,” she pouted. “Over there. That’s site 33.” I pulled into the campsite and stopped the car. The campsite had the same logo on it that I wore on my gown. WW with a flaming basketball. Fuck!
I got out of the car and stretched. It was actually a pretty comfortable ride, but too long in one position makes me crazy. Roadkill jumped out of the backseat and found a place to relieve himself before he even started sniffing around. Didn’t blame him for that. I spied a washhouse just a little ways away.
“I’m headed for the girls’ room,” I called to Misty.
“Okay. I’ll get some water for Roadkill. Whole campground looks deserted.”
“Well, keep an eye out just in case.” I wasn’t sure I knew in case of what. I wasn’t expecting to have to throw my hat at some phantom rapist or anything. Course, I didn’t expect to do that the first time. I gathered up my robes and perched myself above the stool. Place looked clean enough, but why take chances with your butt? I had all kinds of images of rattlesnakes or something coming up out of the toilet. I got done quick and went out to wash my hands. There was even hot water in the faucets. I looked around and saw shower stalls with actual doors on them—not just a plastic curtain. I guessed maybe I was overreacting to the idea in my head about snakes.
I left the washroom and nearly stepped on one.
I screamed and the snake slithered away. I know, it was probably more afraid of me than I was of it, but I could scream louder. Roadkill and Misty reached me at a dead run.
“What is it? What happened?” Misty gasped. Roadkill started sniffing around.
“A snake. That’s all. Just scared the shit out of me.”
“Didn’t you do that in the toilet?” Misty said. Roadkill rubbed up against me. “Well, while I’m down here, I’ll empty the bladder, too. Um…”
“Roadkill and me’ll wait here for you,” I said. She smiled and nodded.
A few minutes later, she came out looking much refreshed. “Hot water!” she said happily.
“I figure I’ll make use of the shower in the morning,” I agreed as we walked back up to the campsite.
“Uh… Do we have a blanket or anything?” Misty asked. It was cooling off here in the foothills and we put our arms around each other as we walked.
“Not that I know of,” I said. “Pop always keeps an emergency kit in the trunk of his Fusion. Maybe there’s one in the Fairlane. I think we could put the back seat down and open the hatch. We might have enough room to lie down and Roadkill can keep us warm.” We reached the campsite and Misty went to brush off the picnic table and pace around. I unlocked the hatchback and looked inside. “Misty? Did you do this?”
“Do what, hon?” She came around to look in the back. Roadkill put his front feet up on the opening so he could see in, too. The back was packed tight with everything I could think of that we’d need. There were sleeping bags, pillows, a tent, camp stools, a cooler, two huge backpacks, and my teddy bear. Don’t laugh. A girl needs something nice and soft to cuddle up to at night and all I had was a teddy bear. “I guess we get to camp out,” Misty said. She looked at me as if I had all this planned. I just shrugged my shoulders and looked right back at her shrugging hers.
We went about making camp, setting up the tent, and putting things away inside. Then Roadkill came up to me dragging a dead tree limb behind him.
“I don’t think we can play fetch with that,” I said. “But we could build a fire.” I looked in the car and sure enough, there was a camp saw, a hatchet, and a bunch of fire starters. We learned to make those in Girl Scouts when I was in junior high. They were just sawdust and paraffin, poured in a paper muffin cup. I started breaking up the smaller bits of the limb and sawing off bigger chunks as Misty rummaged around in the trunk to see what else we might have.
“The packs have clothes in them.”
“Huh. I was kind of getting used to the gown.”
“Isn’t it scratchy?”
“I think it was when I put it on this afternoon. Maybe I’ve just sweated and wiggled enough that it softened up. It actually feels kind of comfortable now. More like a bathrobe.”
Before long, I had a fire going and Misty was heating water for instant hot cocoa. Roadkill had finished his kibble, done his business, and settled down on my feet. It had been my own sense of rebellion that inspired me to wear my boots under my gown. And nothing else but underwear.
We hummed happily and sipped our cocoa, watching the campground darken outside the range of our firelight.
“Uh… Excuse me… Pardon me… Not to intrude, but would you kind people have a cup of that you could spare?” a voice asked out of the darkness. I was startled. Misty was startled. Roadkill was asleep. Good guard dog. Not.
A kind of scarecrow-looking guy was standing at the edge of our campsite, looking longingly at our cocoa. By scarecrow, I don’t mean tall and skinny. That’s me, remember? I mean he had kind of ragged clothes on, a straw hat, and an old flannel shirt that looked like he’d slept in it under a pile of dead pine needles. He had kind of straw-colored hair sticking out under the hat in all directions. He was leaning on a walking stick almost as tall as he was and had a backpack on. Misty recovered first.
“Got a cup in your kit?” she asked. “We can spare a packet of cocoa and hot water.”
He swung the pack off his back and detached a tin cup from the side of it. This he handed to Misty and then dragged his pack closer to the fire so he could sit on it. Misty prepared his cocoa and handed it to him, then picked up her own cup and started to sip.
“Thank you. Thank you kindly. Travelers need to help each other out,” he said. I listened carefully. His voice sounded more cultured than he looked.
“We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing out here,” I blurted out. “Nice to have company.”
“I haven’t much, but I’ve a little prime ganja I’d be willing to share.” He rummaged around in a side pocket of his pack and pulled out a baggy and a pack of papers. Misty and I just looked at each other with big eyes and grinned. A little weed would make our impromptu campout a lot more pleasant.
Now, it’s not like we’re big potheads. I mean that, really. That doesn’t mean we’ve never toked up a bit, though. It’s never really a bad thing, and a guy who’s high on weed is usually too mellow to be a threat. I didn’t see where he pulled his lighter from and didn’t see him put it away. He took a big drag and held the pinch out to me. I sucked in a bit and held it, passing the blunt on to Misty. She always gets to coughing on her first hit, but she sucked a second in and managed to hold that. She held it back out to Scarecrow, but he already had another in his hand and was lighting it up, so she handed it back to me. She had that same look of almost instant change of space I knew I got when I smoked. I sucked in another lungful of the potent weed.
“This is good shit,” I said, using as little of my stored breath as possible. He waved his arms around a little and ended up pointing downriver.
“Got it down that way,” he said. “Traded some work for it.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I asked, weaving a little. I expected him to have been planting crops or something. Misty held up a burning twig and I lit the blunt again.
“Oh, you know. ’Bout the same as you, I ’spect. I fix stuff for people. Broken things, mostly,” he said.
“Like… uh… teapots?” Misty asked. I looked at her trying to figure out where that example had come from.
“I guess I could glue one together. Mostly, I fix people,” he answered. I nodded knowingly.
“Like setting bones?” I asked, remembering there just happened to be a doctor in the diner who looked like most everyone else. I took another hit. I was not high enough to understand what he was saying yet. Misty took it from me and had a nice long drag.
“Oh, no. You know. Like broken relationships, broken promises, broken homes. Basically, just try to fix broken people.” I needed another toke before I let that truly sink in. He must be like a psychiatrist or something.
“That seems like a noble calling,” I said, thinking about the fact that all I’d done since graduation was drive and kill a robber. “I seem to specialize more in breaking things.”
“No,” he drawled. We were all dragging out our words a bit. The smell of weed hung around us like the smoke from the campfire. “Well, maybe you break the peace now and then, but I can’t see you breaking anything valuable. We might fix different kinds of things, but I’d say you’re a Fixer, too.”
“Tell me more about that, please,” I said. I was fascinated by listening to him talk and found I didn’t want him to get up and leave just yet.
“That noble dog you have at your feet,” he said. “I’d say he was broken and alone when he found you. You gave him hope, friendship, food, and love. You gave him the ability to rise above his lowly station to become your faithful companion.”
“Not much of a guard dog,” I chuckled. “Let you walk right up to our fire.”
“He knew I was no threat. You see, here’s the thing. There are people in this world who are out of whack. They become obsessed with their own villainy. Some of them go so far as to deny the humanity of everyone but themselves. I can’t do anything about a person like that. He’s not just broken, he’s shattered. But you… You can give him peaceful rest. Take away his burdens and stop his madness. It’s your way of fixing things.”
“Kill ’em. I’m not sure I like that.” I hadn’t thought a whole lot about what motivated that nameless guy in the diner. Was he just a man who was broken beyond repair and I sent him on to his permanent rest? I didn’t want to dwell on that. It was killing the high.
“Well, a warrior needs to be prepared to go to war when the cause is just,” Scarecrow said. “You’ll find strange things that people need to be protected against. Things those people can’t protect themselves from. You’ll rise to the occasion and find a way. You, Miss Warrior Wizard, are the hope for hundreds of people you’ll meet on your journey. You’re a different kind of fixer than I am, but you fix things I can’t.” He stood and rinsed his cup under the pump.
“What do I do?” Misty giggled. Yeah, she giggles a lot when she gets high.
“Oh, that’s easy. You fix her,” he said. “And a fine cup of cocoa. Thank you kindly for that. It will keep me warm all night. May the road rise up to meet you and may you have a gentle breeze at your back. Something like that.” He shouldered his backpack and pulled a couple more blunts out of what looked like thin air and handed them to me. “You might need more later. Journey on.” He thumped away with his walking stick and disappeared into the night.
“What do you think that was all about?” I whispered. Misty moved her stool over closer to mine and leaned against me. She held the last of the first roll against my lips and managed to not burn me when she held the flame to it. I sucked the hot smoke into my lungs and she dropped the remains before it burned her fingers. We just sat there while the fire crackled and enjoyed the high, looking up into a star-filled sky.
“There’s so many stories in the stars,” she sighed. “Heroes and legends and tall tales. We just met one of them and he got us high and left us dry. I’m just a speck among the stars sent here to be your fixer.” She started giggling again and I joined her. We scuffed out the fire and poured another pot of water on the coals, then crawled into our tent. She’d arranged everything inside the tent with our packs on either side of the door, a place for us to put our shoes, and our sleeping bags laying open with one on top of the other.
“We sleeping in the same bedroll?” I asked stupidly.
“Somebody’s got to keep me warm.” She pulled her clothes off and crawled under the covers. Roadkill came in and lay down across the entrance to the tent. I zipped it up in case there were bugs flying around in the night. I slipped off the gown and the stupid mortarboard. Set my boots aside and crawled in with her. She was right. The body heat with both of us under the cover was pleasant and we’d be asleep before long. I went over all the strange events of the day. I thought it was going to be a normal high school graduation day. Instead, I heard a mysterious voice while the stadium seemed frozen in place, I was given my grandfather’s prize ’68 Fairlane, my aunt hopped in the car with me and my dog, and we took off on a road trip following an antique map that suddenly appeared in my diploma folder. Then we stopped a robbery, I killed a man with my mortarboard, we found a campsite where none had been marked on the map before, and a strange scarecrow of a man sits down with us and shares a smoke. And weird stories I was sure I was supposed to understand more of than I did.
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I whispered.
“Hon, we were never in Kansas,” Misty giggled. “But I think you’re right. I think the minute we got in that car, we went off to a different world,” she said. It was my turn to giggle.
“You been reading that Hobbit stuff again? Or Harry Potter? Maybe we should light another joint.”
“I’m bein’ straight forward honest about this as I see it,” she insisted. “Pop gives you a car he’s had for fifty-three years. Just hands you the keys and says, ‘Bye-bye.’ We take off and you’ve got a TripTik in your diploma folder—no diploma, I noticed. Every time we want something, it’s suddenly marked on the TripTik where we should get it.”
“Yeah. I see where you’re going with this,” I said. “We stop at a diner and everything looks normal except they let Roadkill in and feed him right alongside of us. Then a guy tries to rob the place and shoots the cashier, so I kill him with my cap. And everyone acts like that’s all normal. They give me his wallet and gun. A doctor happens to be there and says the cashier will be fine. A sexy waitress cleans the blood off my mortarboard, which shows no sign of having been used to kill someone, and puts it back on my head. Then they give us our meal for free, including packing us a to go bag for breakfast. We just walk out and get in our car and everybody waves like we’re some kind of heroes.”
“You. Like you are the hero, my sweet niece. But listen. It gets better. Just when we decide we need to stop someplace for the night, the TripTik points us to this campsite that’s marked with your varsity letter. Then we discover the car is packed with everything we need to make camp.”
“Oh, wait. Wait. You forgot the part about me getting scared half out of my wits by a snake in the toilet.”
“It was in the toilet? I thought…”
“Okay. I imagined it was in the toilet. It was really in front of the door,” I sighed. “And then we sit down for a nice cup of cocoa in front of our little fire when a fixer-upper shows up. He trades a cup of chocolate for a couple of MaryJanes. And tells me I’m a fixer, too, but some other kind.” I yawned, certain I was about to drift off to sleep, but we had something important we were supposed to get to. “It’s all a bunch of strange stuff that combined to make a strange day. But nothing that couldn’t possibly be explained away with a little logic and reasoning. Like the robber might have just been scared when I threw my hat at him and they tossed him in a dumpster to teach him a lesson. And that we just missed a turn-off into town at the bridge that was lit because we were too obsessed with scaring ourselves with stories of trolls. It’s all simple stuff. There’s no otherworld stuff going on.”
“Do you know how many coincidences have to be stacked up on top of each other to equal the load of bullshit you just dished out?” Misty asked. “You read that philosophy book in school, just like I did. The simplest answer, no matter how improbable, is usually the right one. It happened when we got in the car and started it up. We were moved into an alternate universe in which all these things make sense. Put an arm around me. I’m still cold.”
I wrapped an arm over her and we stopped talking. The thing about weed, though, is that after the initial high and talking and everything, I end up lying there waiting for it to be over. Like, okay, I’ve had enough of this now. I’m ready to not be high anymore. Okay?
Misty was asleep a long time before me as I kept going over and over all the things that happened and tried not to agree with her conclusion. I failed as I finally fell asleep.
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