Chapter 21 of No Romance

This one needs some revising, but it's acceptable enough that I'm putting it up here.

Chapter 21 “Not Your Grandmother’s Retirement Plan”

“About that...” said Ann Paula, a little nervously. ‘Ann Paula’ seems a little strange, but I was unsure what to call her---I could swear there was some Paula still inside. “I---”

She was interrupted. By me. I decided right then to stop hiding from people who were no threat to me, like I had done to such ridiculous extents last night. So before Ann Paula could say anymore, I stood up from behind the stainless steel sinks. There was no reason to hide from this man. If he were with the real actual flesh and blood Paula, sure, but he wasn’t, although I would have to act like he was. I didn’t know if he knew about Annie’s persona anyway.

“Golbez,” I said to the startled man. “Or, Dad. I don’t know, that still sounds strange. Golbez. I’ll just call you Golbez.”

It was immediately and embarrassingly then that I realized I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. Words of comfort? I had no pity for him.

Golbez began tugging at his white mane of a beard. “What! Jackie, old boy, where have you been? Were you listening in?”

“I was listening in. I wasn’t sure of the situation, and needed to be clear on whether or not you wanted me dead. I do hope that Vanasmas didn’t order my arrest and death on your authority.”

“Is that what that little rat did?”

“If that’s what getting shot at by your men on his orders is, yeah,” I said, nodding. Golbez looked like he was about to erupt, and worked up to it by swearing up a storm. I was used to that kind of thing, being a swearing man myself, but I observed Ann Paula as she covered up just one ear with her hand. Interesting.

When it seemed he was winding down, having lost much of his energy and sweating and heaving like a fevered hippopotamus, Ann Paula spoke up.

“That, Golbez, was the other part of my secret mission. Helping Jack,” she said. “And investigating Vanasmas in the process.”

“And you followed him? Why didn’t you stop him from finding my gold?”

Both Ann Paula and I looked at each other and turned away simultaneously. We didn’t want to let Golbez know that we had accidentally led his mortal enemy to his treasure. That would be cruel, and a rich old man in the twilight of his phase didn’t deserve cruelty. Maybe he did, but still.

“There was no stopping him,” I said. Lies came to me easily when the situation required them. “He had guns on me. And her. A crossbow, actually. The Johnson tribe knows now, too. It was impossible to keep them from knowing the secret.”

“I thought they might,” said Golbez through clenched teeth, still catching his breath. “But how? How? How did they find it? They’ve been looking for it for ages, my sources tell me! Why now? What changed?”

I said nothing. If he was going to find out that I, his son of all people, was the stick in the spoke, he would have to figure it out himself. But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. The gods would keep it from his mind, if that’s what they wanted. That raised a question: what did they want? What were they trying to get at through all of this? I honestly didn’t know.

I unconsciously reached behind me and passed my fingers over the map-wrapped scepter. As I touched it, the question was...answered. But not to me. Not consciously, anyway.

Now the question for myself: what did I want from him?

“Golbez, you were talking a lot about retiring and leaving this isle. I want to go with you.”

Golbez’s mood turned on a dime.

“That would be splendid, old boy, splendid! You know, all I want to do is make up for lost time. Get to know you some more.”

“I know, I know, you said that before. But really, there’s not much to know more than we’ve talked about. Unfortunately I don’t have much depth of character.”

Golbez wasn’t listening to that. He had apparently gained an idea right in the middle of my words and began bouncing up and down with excitement.

“I know what to do! I know what to do. Right now. Jackie, old boy, I want you to meet someone. Come with me. You too, Paula. Oh wait---before we go, there’s something else I want to tell you. Are you ready for this?”

Golbez looked at both of us gleefully, like he was withholding an evil secret.

“Didn’t I ever tell you...that you two are brother and sister?”

Wow. Talk about an evil secret.

We looked at each other, mortified. But no, that didn’t quite work. She had told me about her parents...and Golbez had talked about trying to force himself on her...

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Golbez guffawed. “But still, now you can’t get the idea out of your head, can you?” And he roared with laughter as he led the way out of the kitchen.

Ann Paula and I were slow to follow after him. Our eyes looked every which way but at the other. Embarrassment and relief at the same time. When finally our gazes did lock, we paused for a brief moment before laughing nervously.

“Yeah...” I said as I passed her and entered the restaurant’s empty dining area before going out the same door Golbez went through.

“Jackie old boy, come walk alongside your old man! I have woes that need listening to,” he said as he strolled down the deserted roads. I jogged to catch up with him. “You see all this? Boxcutter Bay. Soon Butterknife Bay is going to look exactly like this, as well as all the other desolate blade bays out there. Sad, isn’t it? What’s the word I’m looking for...mournful? No. Melancholy, it may be melancholy. A grim fate it is to have to retire because you lost, and not because you won. Sad. Very sad. Business just isn’t what it used to be.”

            ”Oh, is hot air not worth as much anymore?”
            “No, no, no. It’s worth more than ever in today’s world.”
            “Then why quit?”
            “This business model just doesn’t work anymore. Smugglers aren’t needed. Things can now be transported using ray guns and magic dishwashers.”
            “I’m pretty sure none of that’s real.”
            “Really? How can you be sure?”
            “I suppose I can’t.”
            “Hm. I thought I read about it in a book somewhere. It was written in a very easy to believe manner. Tip top, that writing was.”
            “Doesn’t make it any truer.”
            “Oh hush with that, old boy. Let an old man take pleasure in self pity. Look at it!” He stretched out his arms to the empty facility. “The ruin of my kingdom.”
            “So what are you doing here, if it makes you so sad?”
            “For exactly that reason. It’s comforting to feel sorry for one’s self, even when no one else will. That just makes it better. But I’m ALSO here to---well, to visit the person I want to show you. You came to this place to visit me, did you not? And prove yourself damn useful in solving my problems, but that’s secondary, that’s secondary, I know. Say, what’s that you got on your back?”
            My mind blanked as I realized I had the map and the scepter (which had stopped glowing for a particular reason) out in total plain view. But luckily words came to mind eventually.
            “An interesting stick I found.”
            “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. You remind me of Blake. Taking pleasure in the small things of life. The stuff of nature. May I see it? It just may offer me some cheer.”
            “I can’t do that. It’s very breakable. That’s why it’s wrapped up.”
            “Then describe it to me.”
            “Oh, I’d rather leave that to Blake. I’m no poet.”
            “Excellent! Because there he is!”
            Golbez pointed and I looked. There was Blake, over near the train station---the last station the train would pass through before leaving Rainswept Isle. Golbez turned his pointing finger into a fluttery dance and Blake waved back.
            “Let’s go visit him after this appointment. Say, where’s Paula?”
            “She’s right---”
            I checked, and no, she was not right behind me. Hm.

Then I looked at the rest of my surroundings. We were approaching a giant tent. A tent shaped like a building, but with canvas and cloth instead of bricks and mortar. Long curtains colored mauve and maroon draped over its sides, and a very powerful scent emanated from it, something like ginger. It reminded me of the tent I woke up in at the Cardaccians.

“Jackie, old boy, I may have shown you her before, but this is the home of good old Mother MacDowell, your grandmother. Or gran-gran. Maybe gangy. I’m not sure what you usually call her.”

My grandmother. Mother MacDowell. Scot MacDowell’s wife? Still on the island. Or had she come back with Golbez, after many years away? That didn’t matter. This was my grandmother. A woman I’d never met, but who was vitally crucial to my very existence, as ancestors are. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that. (I felt similarly awkward about Golbez being my father.)

He opened the tent flap invitingly with his arm, motioning for me to enter. I had some reservations about this, but meeting family was what this trip was supposed to be, after all. I just found it hard to meet new people, especially new people who I was supposed to grow to care for as family even if I was just meeting them for the first time. That’s a heavy responsibility, and all you married folks know what that’s like.

But I went in.

The tent was so elaborate that it had a foyer with corridors going to the left and the right, presumably to other rooms, and another room, separated off by another curtain of canvas, right before us. Golbez, after following me in, went to this curtain and spoke through it.

“Mata, may we come in? It’s Golby! And I have a surprise for you!”

“Enter, my boy!” croaked an old, accented voice on the other side.

Golbez pushed back the curtain and I got my first glimpse of my grandmother.

She sat cross-legged on the floor. Her skin was a deep brown, much darker than Golbez’s, and folded and creased with thick wrinkles, especially in her face. Her long white hair was tied in a braid that fell across her shoulder. Her eyes were closed; I wasn’t sure if they were like that because of the wrinkles or because she was just old or because she was blind. She looked ancient, and spoke in an elderly, ominous voice.

“A great storm is coming, my son.”

“How can you tell that, Mata?” Golbez said.

“It’s very windy outside, dear boy. But I suppose it may pass by the island without harming it. That is up to the gods, is it not?” And she laughed. Quite heartily, for an old woman.

As the curtain had been drawn back, the smell of ginger penetrated all my senses; I felt I could practically see it, hanging in the air over everything inside the tent. When I opened my mouth it was like breathing the herb in straight from the plastic bottle.

“Hmm...” she said. “I sense something. A presence I haven’t felt since...”

“It’s Jackie, Mata! Your long-lost grandson! I’ll leave you two alone.”

And he disappeared back through the curtain. Leaving, as he said and intended, me alone with her, a grandmother I never knew. I huffed and sat down opposite her on the soft floor.

“Oh, yes, Jackie’s such a fine boy, isn’t he?” she said sweetly, apparently intended for Golbez though he had left the room. It seemed she was indeed blind.  “My grandson is such a kind young man, so loyal and loving to all his little friends and brothers.”

But wait, why am I telling you that when---

How did she know about me? Enough to call me a ‘fine boy’? Old age, maybe? Dementia? The mother of Golbez, I did not doubt.

If that was the case then, Oh Great. What Am I Supposed To Say Now? was the feeling I was feeling.

But I didn’t have to say anything. She supplied enough words for the both of us.

“Jackie, for some reason the gods are making me think of a possession I possessed a very long time ago that has been since been stolen from me. And it has probably been stolen time and time again afterward, as it is a very valuable possession which I possessed. To me it was more valuable than it could be to anybody, because it was the last gift given to me by my sweetheart soldier before he vanished. Oh, how I miss him!”

She spoke remarkably good English for having such a thick accent. Indian, it was. Of the East Indies. Just like the Cardaccians. I wondered if there was a blood connection.

“Jackie, that is really you, isn’t it?” she said in a cracked voice.

Wrong-footed, confused, but hesitantly I answered in the affirmative.

“Yes...”

“He always talked about treasures. Treasures this, treasures that. But when I became his bride, his exotic bride, I became his true treasure!”

Great. An old woman going off on a story from her past. Sure, I could have made her day and listened attentively, caring and all that, but I, quite literally, had a train to catch. That became my goal. That became my motivation. And suddenly I felt anxious. My body and mind were filling up with stress and restlessness. I wanted to get up and run somewhere.

“Before treasures, it was Beverly, Beverly. The girl he had hooked back home that was trying to hook him back. But I showed her! I got him. I married him. And I knew I would be rich and living fancy for much time to come. Beyond the dreams of my village, who I promised to come back to one day and save. But when I came back, they were gone. I do not know where. I wanted to share my riches with them, the glories of the west. But they were gone. And so, I knew, was my handsome Scot.”

Scot MacDowell. He married an Indian girl and took her---or sent her---back to England. Or Scotland. Maybe Wales. Didn’t matter.

“He sent me one last parcel before he disappeared. In it was the thing I sense around me today. The thing the gods are whispering about to me right now. The treasure that my Scot gave his life to give me. It is here. I know it! It is here!”

Aaaaand that’s when I grew very self-conscious about the bleeping treasure map I was wearing on my back, and knew I had to get out of there, even though it had been less than a minute.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising to my feet and bowing to her. “Excuse me.”

I pushed aside the curtain.

And found Golbez standing there. He had been listening. It wasn’t hard; the curtain wasn’t too thick. He was staring at the map on my back.

---

Let’s skip all the human drama. All the father-son crap about disappointment and failed expectations, about trying to sneak past a sleeping parent who knows you’re three hours past curfew, about hiding guilt from your indignant dad’s perceptive gaze. Let’s skip all that, because it’s really not what this story is about. Human drama? Pah.

But it did happen. And I felt like a child.

“Let’s go for a drive and talk about things,” Golbez said.

Hoo boy.

“I’m disappointed in you, son.”

“I know.” Wasn’t I supposed to be wishing that he was outraged, not disappointed? Wasn’t quiet disappointment supposed to be worse than red hot anger?

“I thought you’d be helping me out. Like sons do with fathers in the yard on a Saturday afternoon.”

“I know.” What an awkward car ride.

“To be perfectly honest, my boy, you’ve hurt me deeply.”

I kept my eyes on the jungle outside the jeep.

“And I’m considering taking you out of my retirement plan.”

As long as I’m still in the will.

But wait, maybe that was the will.

“Am I still inheriting?” I mumbled into my hand.

“No jokes from you, old boy. I’m being serious here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Now don’t try to distract me. I just want you to know the seriousness of what you have done, in leading a descendant of your grandfather’s mortal enemy to the treasure that was keeping this family afloat. And now, because of you, we may have to downgrade and move into some apartment somewhere.”

“I thought you were already planning on downgrading. Isn’t that what the retirement plan was all about?”

“Yes, but that happened because of your actions! You had my map somehow and you let the enemy---our enemy---manipulate you!”

“Dad, I couldn’t have helped that. The gods forced me to---damb it, I called you Dad.”

I sighed.

“What’s wrong with calling me Dad? Though I would prefer ‘Super Pops’.”

“I just don’t feel a connection!” I burst out. “That’s why I’m not affected by your disappointment. That’s why I don’t really care what you feel about me at all. I don’t feel like you’re my father. And I’ve only known you like three or four days. So how is anything we have between us a legitimate link? How are we a father-son duo? I’ve given it a chance, and I haven’t gotten any of the answers I came here for. I’m even more confused about myself than I was when I got on that seaplane.”

With that outburst I really did feel like a teenager again. I couldn’t think of any other way to express those particular feelings. Is my maturity imprisoned too?

Golbez, though, got really mad.

“WHAT---!” he roared after my rampage. “That’s it, old boy! You can---”

“---walk home?”
            Golbez left his mouth hanging open after I finished his sentence. Then he frowned grumpily and his tone turned into blue fire.

“You can say goodbye to any inheritance.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And you are completely left out of the retirement plan.”

“What is the retirement plan?”

His tone suddenly changed to a very business-like one, anger forgotten.

“Golbez Industries will be relocating. We’re packing up shop and moving to a nice beautiful Italian countryside. I’m taking my top staff and the Cardaccians as servants and we’re going to enjoy the spoils of our smuggling for the rest of our lives. And we’re leaving all of this behind. No one’s going to have it in the end. Dr. Aperture’s diabolical volcano will see to that. Haha!”

At this point I echoed Golbez’s earlier exclamation, except in my head.

            WHAT.

And memories of all the loose threads in this story came flooding into my brain, accompanied by fast, intense, revelatory music. The kind that is supposed to blow your mind as images flash across the screen.

Annie’s struggle with Paula and Poppy.

Vanasmas and the Johnsons in the temple.

The liberation of the Cardaccians.

The rivalry between the tribes.

The purple cantaloupe seed that symbolized peace and brotherhood.

The fate of the gold.

Golbez’s melancholy.

And most of all: the eruption sequence. Nineteen hours. A countdown, damb it all.

With this quick-cut montage, I felt like I had been given an infusion of...caring. I actually cared about how these things would turn out. I wanted to help the Cardaccians. I wanted to pass the purple cantaloupe seed on to Djetta, and perhaps unite the warring tribes. I wanted to make sure Annie turned out okay in the end...

But I was sure it wasn’t real. Mostly sure. Caring, at this point, was not my style at all. And in this I felt the greatest intrusion of the gods in my mind I had felt so far on this island. Isle.

So I decided to finally face them.

---

“In the name of Dalton, stop that music!” Jack cried, shaking his fist at the heavens.

They always look up. Really, Jack, do you think we live in the clouds? We’re always above you, and always around you. We inhabit another spatial dimension. We can see you, but you can’t see us.

He, meanwhile, was still in the jeep with Golbez, who we caused to notice nothing. In fact, Golbez actually started humming to himself.

“Just stop the damb music!” he shouted, hearing us speaking directly to his brain.

Sure. We’ve stopped the music. The music has stopped. Now what do you want from us, Chosen One?

“I get it. I get what you’re trying to do here, with me, on this island.”

And what is that, Jack McDowell?

“You want me to do all these things, jump through your hoops, so you can have a nice little adventure story with chase scenes and action sequences and plot twists and character revelations. You want me to solve all these problems so whoever it is reading or listening or watching this stupid story can feel satisfied by conflict resolution.”

Interesting theory.

“But you never take notice that I’m a real person, too! I have my own private conflicts that you just ignore! You care about the Cardaccians, but not me! You want their plots to be resolved, but not mine! I’m completely neglected, and I’ve had enough of it!”

Jack, never suppose to tell us what our purposes are. Because while you claim yourself to be an individual with thoughts and feelings and emotions, you forget that we, too, are individuals, and we have our own problems that we need solving. Our world is as limited as yours is. We, like you, must act within our medium, and this is the medium---the world---that we’ve been given. In sending you here to this isle, we have set about accomplishing our own goals. Goals of which you are unaware. Goals that need to be achieved. And you are vital to that work. We’ve chosen you for that.

“You’ve chosen me for far too many things,” Jack grumbled. “I’m not a slave---”

But then he stopped and thought. He was kind of a slave. Like the Cardaccians. The Cardaccians were imprisoned too. Jack started to sincerely care about them, about their plight. Though he wasn’t sure if this feeling was from the gods or from himself. But either way, he wanted to help.

“Okay, you’ve got me there. The Cardaccians. I’ll help the Cardaccians. But nothing else.”

That matters less to us than our true mission. Our focus is on someone else. For our own reasons, we cannot give you specifics.

“Then I’m not doing it!” Jack said petulantly, even going so far as to fold his arms and frown like a child.

Then you will not leave this island.

“Are you offering me a deal?”

You always have this deal. You do our work, and when the challenge is completed, we release you for a time.

“I want more than ‘a time’,” he said. “I want to be free.”

Oh, Jack. If only you knew what that meant. Sadly, no, we cannot do that. You were willing and able, born to do this work, literally.

For a brief time it looked like he was thinking, and somehow we were walled out of his mind. Then he broke, easier than we had anticipated.

“I’ll do it if you give me more reasons to care,” he said, a hint of desperation in his voice. “If you can make me want to succeed, I’ll do whatever the hell you people want.”

We already have, Jack McDowell. We gave that to you at the very beginning.

The image of a short-haired brunette in a trenchcoat and hat, scribbling notes on her pad of paper, floated in the air in and around the jeep. Jack stared at it desperately, his heart sinking as he realized what he had to do. The primary help we had given him.

            “No...” he said, shaking his head. He looked weak. “No, you can’t make me do that. You can’t make me do it that way, depend on her for this. That’s unfair. Please, no.”
            But even as he tried to deny it, the truth pressed down on him. He liked her. He did. And knowing she had chosen to be Annie, knowing she was on his side...well, it caused a little light to enter his lonely soul.
            Though it had originated as a convenient, nigh inevitable, relationship---he was there, she was there, so it might as well happen---it had come down to choice. California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander didn’t just like him because he happened to be there; she chose, actively chose, when given other choices, other lives to lead, to be with Jack, and at the same time, be a better person.
            And now Jack was given the same choice. Success and completion of the tasks he had been given, and a fulfilling relationship with a woman, or constant weariness, discomfort, isolation, and rebellion. What he wanted or...what he wanted.

The tension was hardening, growing taut, and Jack knew that sometime soon it might very well snap.

The gods faded from his mind and “reality” returned.

Golbez had started belting out a few lyrics.

---

“This is a wonderful drive, isn’t it, old boy? It’s nice that the sun is shining again. In fact, it’s melting away my bad mood! Maybe I can include you in the retirement plan after all. Here, take a look at it, tell me what you think.”

He leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out what looked like a folded-up map. Not a treasure map, but one of those travel maps that families use when they’re on vacations. But it wasn’t that, either. I unfolded it to discover the full, documented retirement plan. Diagrams and graphs and charts, the major finances of Golbez Industries and descriptions of ideas in impossibly illegible handwriting.

I looked at it without seeing it. My mind was whirling. My brain was hurting.

Then came crackling words over the jeep’s radio.

“Golbez, sir, the train has come in. They’re ten minutes early. We apologize.”

“Apology accepted,” Golbez said gruffly into a handheld receiver. “And?”

“And we await your keyword.”

“Hold off on that for now.”

“Roger that.”

“My name is Golbez, you twit. Not Roger.”

“Sorry about that, Golbez, sir.”

“How dare you address me by my first name!”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Now what’s your name, sergeant?”

“Ignadjus, sir.”

“And you’re in charge of the train?”

“Just the station, sir. I just started at this position two weeks ago.”

“Well you’re doing a damn fine job, you hear that? Tell everyone around I said that. And hand out punch and cookies while you’re waiting for me. You’re doing good work.”

“Yes, sir!”

Ignadjus.

The train. My escape.

“Are we getting on that train, then?” I asked Golbez with no small measure of anxiety.

“Eventually yes. But you’re still on probation. So I should say, eventually maybe. Like a flock of doves maybe surviving a humble hunter’s AK47. But we do have a time limit on it. Gotta beat that volcano!”

            And again that flood of subplots rushed back into my brain. The volcano. I had to stop the volcano. I had to free the Cardaccians. I had to get Hilti and Clara Higgins out of there. And I had to make sure Annie got on the train safely too.
            In that moment, I accepted my fate. But only on the surface.
            But really, where was Annie?
            The radio came alive again.
            “Golbez, sir, something’s happening here at Butterknife Bay.”
            “That’s where I’m headed, Indigo Man.”
            It was indeed. We had just ascended a series of switchbacks leading up a cliffside, and now we were traveling down the winding road alongside the cliff’s edge---the Cliffs of High Depth. Retreading the route I had first taken with Golbez a couple days ago.
            “We’re going to need your authority here as soon as possible, sir.”
            “Indigo that,” Golbez said, then put down the radio. “Well that doesn’t sound great, does it old boy?”
            I said nothing. But I remembered Annie having disappeared behind me as I followed Golbez to Mother MacDowell’s tent. I wondered what she had been doing that required stealthily escaping the both of us.
            Whatever it was, I suspected it would set something off that couldn’t be undone.

---

The scene was stunning.

On the clear, open beach of Butterknife Bay, right under the supports of the train track, groups were forming up, being organized. Scuffles, scraps, wrestling around on the beach. Punches being thrown, spittle being spat, swears and colorful phrases resounding in the air. The groups were gradually coalescing into two distinct sides of about a hundred each; one side wore dirty rags, the other wore camo-themed attire. Both sides had men with guns in their hands, though not everybody was armed. One lone black-clad figure was moving amidst the guards’ ranks, shouting more of those colorful phrases at each man she passed. Her long, gold-streaked hair danced in the sea breeze, dazzling against the patchy gray clouds in the sky.

Paula had freed the slaves. And given them guns.