Chapter Three (Untitled)

[Note: Earlier posts to this blog contain previous chapters. If this is your first visit, I highly recommend that you read the chapters in order. Also, be warned that as a work in progress, consistency is not guaranteed. For instance, based on a dream I had the other night, I have just changed the protagonist's name from Debra to Gloria. Seems like a better fit to me.]

The call came at beer o’clock that afternoon.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with beer o’clock: Monday through Friday, it’s as soon as you get home from work. Saturday and Sunday it can, and often does, arrive earlier, depending on (1) how hard you’ve been working on your projects, (2) how pleasant (or miserable) the weather is. On this day, it was spring, and it was the first day off we’d had that happened to coincide with glorious weather, and we’d been laboring for hours making Easter eggs for the American Legion’s egg hunt the next day.

So when the phone rang at about three in the afternoon, Harry was measuring Beefeaters gin and Canada Dry tonic water into two tall glasses, while I sliced wedges from a lime.

We glanced at one another.

“Don’t answer it,” I said.

The nature of Harry’s business means a lot of calls at all hours of the day and night. Lately, everyone had begun worrying about their central air. They’d hidden in overheated houses all winter complaining about the cold, so you’d think they’d be happy about the pending arrival of summer’s heat. But no. By the time the outside air warmed to match the temperature of their over-heated homes, they’d have the AC turned on and cranked down to just above freezing.

I’ve never pretended to understand it.

But Harry is successful, in part, because he always answers the phone. Which is what he did now.

I watched his face change from its usual pleasant curiosity to a look of concentration.

“I’m sorry,” he half shouted. “This is a terrible connection. You might want to — You’re who?”

I squeezed lime juice into our drinks, dropped the wedges on top of the ice cubes, and lifted a spoon.

“Orkney? Yes, and you — ”

I put the spoon down.

I knew.

That morning, I’d known somebody had died. Now, I knew it was my Gran.

“Ah. I see . . . Oh, I’m . . . Yes, but this connection . . . If you’ll give me your . . . What’s that? I see. Okay. Yes, here she is.”

Harry held the phone out to me.

“It’s about Gran,” I said.

He nodded.

“It’s a terrible connection but it seems he can’t call back,” he said apologetically.

“That’s okay.”

I put the phone to my ear.

“This is Gloria.”

The voice was distant, drifting in and out of a field of static into which it sometimes submerged altogether. I wondered briefly how it was possible to have such a poor connection in 2007. Whatever happened to fiber optics so clear you could hear a pin drop? Never trust a commercial.

“ . . . lo, Gloria . . . Captain Mac . . . about me?”

Captain Mackay, of course. I knew the name from my Gran’s letters.

Even half eradicated by static, the soft burr of the man’s voice conjured a vision of Scotland that for a moment was more real than the oak doors of my kitchen cabinets or the gin and tonic waiting on the counter — rugged purple hills under scudding clouds propelled by a stiff wind that howled in my ears like a banshee.

I had to blink and turn my head to return to the kitchen around me and the telephone in my hand.

“Gran told me about you,” I shouted, hoping that that had indeed been his question. “Hello Captain Mackay.”

I didn’t need to ask him how my Gran was doing. I already knew.

“. . . lass . . . the way . . . your granny . . . "

His next works were so garbled I couldn’t make them out. I couldn’t stand it, and I didn’t want to prolong his difficulty. He sounded like a nice man.

“She’s dead, isn’t she,” I shouted into the phone.

Not a question. A statement.

After perhaps three seconds, I heard one word of his response.

“Aye.”

Poor old soul. According to my Gran’s letters, they’d become inseparable over the last couple of decades. Who would he haunt the stones with now?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mackay — Captain Mackay. This must be — "

But he was speaking at the same time as me.

“. . . making such headway, ana’ . . . the egg . . . "

An electric jolt ran up my spine.

“The what?”

“ . . . do your granny . . . say good . . . "

“Hello? Captain Mackay? Are you there?”

But the static was gone. And so was Captain Mackay.

Harry was watching me, his concern palpable, even though he knew my Gran and I had anything but a loving relationship.

“Is she dead?” he asked.

I nodded.

Mistaking my silence for grief, he put his arms around me with one hand on my head, holding it so my cheek was pressed against his chest. I relaxed against him, against the warmth and comfort that only Harry Davidson can give me.

My eyes lighted on the Easter eggs mounded in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

As I watched, one cheerful yellow egg perched on top of the mound detached itself and tumbled with some force before landing with a crack on the formica.

rugged purple hills under scudding clouds

"Ebb-tide, Autumn, Plockton" by Peter M. MacKenna