Serial: Down the River – Chapter Forty-Eight

I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!

Today, Dave finally gets his own ghostly visit, and it’s about time, or maybe just in time…

< Read Chapter 47

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Chapter Forty-Eight
The Arboretum

The weather was unseasonably cool, with playful gusts of wind gamboling through the tree canopies above like great invisible squirrels, scampering from one branch to another and sending pollen showering down everywhere.

Dave sneezed. He was strolling through the Arboretum, virtually abandoned on a Sunday afternoon this late in the school year. In another week or so, the students would be gone for the summer, and ownership of the campus would temporarily return to folks like him who wandered in from River Park, East Sacramento and Campus Commons for the peace and quiet the nearly-abandoned campus offered.

He loved summers on campus, when it felt like someone had constructed the whole place just for him. When he’d lived in Carmelina’s duplex, he had often ridden his bike there, locking it up and strolling under the great trees, imagining himself in a vast natural forest. Sometimes he’d stop by the Student Union first to grab a quick coffee, then stroll back across campus to this place of almost magical natural beauty.

Today, he’d driven across town to visit it once more, aware that he might not be able to see its verdant abundance for much longer.

He found a quiet bench at its heart, one of his favorite places to regard the gardens, and plunked himself down on it. The old wooden planks groaned under his weight.

Not as thin as I once was. Or as young. No one was ever as young as they once were, a thought that amused him, but failed to bring much in the way of actual comfort.

He let his head fall back and stared at the bright blue patches of sky, visible here and there between all the bright green leaves of spring. He closed his eyes and listened to the myriad and wonderful sounds of the world.

Off to his right, a squirrel scampered through the grass and up the trunk of a pine tree, stopping every few feet to check for predators, or maybe to consider where to hide the acorn it held in its little paws.

Wind whipped through the trees above, partially masking the whoosh of the cars on J. Street, maybe fifty meters away, andnd the rumble of a big truck as it trundled by.

A crow cawed off in the distance somewhere, and footsteps announced the passing of another visitor. Or two.

Dave opened his eyes and watched them go by. An older couple, dressed far more warmly than the weather warranted, holding hands with their heads together, sharing secrets and laughter. Maybe two professors, talking about their classes? Maybe a couple lovers who walked across the Guy West Bridge from Campus Commons, imaging themselves in San Francisco as they crossed the red suspension bridge, recalling moments from their youth spent under these very same trees.

They smiled at him as they passed, and he nodded at them, giving them a fond wave.

How long until I can no longer see these things? The squirrel scampering up a hoary old oak tree. The wind blowing the branches about, making a sound like water through the birch tree leaves. Two people holding hands, remembering things only they could recall?

He closed his eyes again.

The boards of the bench creaked of their own accord. “Indulging our morose thoughts again, are we?”

Dave snorted. “Took you long enough to get around to me.”

“Not surprised to see me, then?” Brad sounded almost offended.

I should be the offended one. Took you long enough to get around to me. “Nothing surprises me all that much anymore. And besides, I can’t see you. My eyes are closed.”

“Touché.” A long silence. “You’re really not surprised? I thought you might be thrown by the whole… you know… dead friend thing.”

Dave grinned and opened his eyes. “Marissa mentioned that she’d seen you. And Ben. Poor guy. You went and left him in the lurch, didn’t you?” He glanced over at the apparition that had once been his friend.

Brad looked away. “Not by choice.”

Now I feel like an ass. Besides, Brad wasn’t even real. He was just a manifestation of Dave’s own guilt and sadness. Wasn’t he? “Are you real?”

Brad looked back at him, eyes narrowing. “Define real.”

“Are you really my friend Brad?” He really should be more freaked out about the whole ghost on the benchthing. But Brad would never do him harm. In any form.

“Ah.” He leaned forward, hands on his knees, as Dave had seen Brad do a hundred times. “Honestly, I don’t know. I feel like me. I mean… how do you know you’re real?”

Dave thought about it. He held out his hands and flexed his fingers. “I don’t know. I just do. I am.”

Brad laughed. “Yes. Exactly.”

Dave snorted again. “All right. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Just do what you came to do. Tell me something all afterlifey and inspirational, and then you can go away. Mission accomplished.” He was in no mood to be lectured by a phantom. Better to get it over with. He shook his shoulders and arms to loosen up his body, and the leaned back against the bench. ” Hit me.”

“You don’t get off that easy.”

Dave turned to stare at his old friend.

Brad was looking off into a stand of cypress pines.

“Seriously? You come back from the dead, and you don’t get off that easy is all you’ve got?”

Brad shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

Dave fumed. “That there’s some reason for hope? That after my vision goes all dim and gray, I’ll still have a reason to get up in the morning? That my life as I know it isn’t coming to a dark and depressing end? I don’t know. You’re my spirit guide. Just pick one.” He sat back hard on the old bench, and it creaked under his weight.

“Sounds like you’re doing a pretty good job with that all by yourself.”

Dave growled. “Not very comforting.”

“That’s because it’s not supposed to be.” Brad got up and began to pace back and forth in front of him. “Do you want to know why I’m here?”

“Yes. Isn’t that what I’ve been asking?” It was suddenly cold in the little clearing.

They were interrupted by a woman in pink Nike running shoes and matching track suit, blond ponytail streaming behind her like race car flag. She waved at him and then she was gone, swallowed up by the gardens.

When Dave turned back to Brad, he recoiled at what he saw.

Brad’s face was drawn and angry. “I’m here because I went into the hospital last week, and now I’m dead. And from here in this gray afterlife, I see the lot of you sleepwalking your way through your own lives. Marissa has a dead-end job. Diego has his apron strings wrapped so tightly around Gio’s neck that it’s a wonder the boy can breathe at all. Ben has taken all the blame onto himself for the loss of his girlfriend. And on and on and on… every last one of you is stuck. And you—you’re the worst of all. Sure, you’ve been given a horrible diagnosis. No one wants to go blind. But you have something far more precious to see you through… a man who loves you, and a handful of years to spend with him. You’re one of the lucky ones. Can’t you see that?” He threw his translucent arms up in exasperation. “So rather than moping around this empty garden full of memories, why don’t you go to him and figure out how you want to spend all that time? Because lord knows, if I still could, I would.” Panting, face flushed, he collapsed back onto the bench next to Dave.

He’d had never realized a ghost could seem so alive. “I’m so sorry, my friend.” He knew how brad felt. He’d lost his first love, John, now fourteen years past. How can it be that long?

Some wounds never entirely healed.

Brad crossed his arms, staring at the trees. “My chance is gone. What are you going to do with yours?”

Dave looked away. It felt… wrong to stare at his friend, ghost or not. “I suppose I need to get my shit together and figure it out.” He rubbed his shoulder absently, staring at the little tree next to the bench. A cucumber tree. At least according to the tag. Do cucumbers grow on trees? “Do you think I should—”

He’d turned to ask Brad a question, but his friend was gone.

He sighed. Brad was right. He still had a life ahead of him, if he reached out and embraced it. He chuckled. “Dave, you’re an old fool.” He was only useless if he let himself be.

With one final snort—it seemed to be the afternoon for it—Dave eased himself up. “Time to go. Take care of yourself, old friend.” With one last look around, he turned to head back the way he’d come, toward the car. And then Marcos.