Chapter 4

For a moment, the sounds of rain lazily spattering across the skylight distracted Gcina, but only for a moment.  Blocking out such disturbances was elementary to him now, but for some reason, the weakness of a beginner had revisited him.  He lifted the black blindfold and turned toward the skylight of his office, some twenty feet above. He watched the moon break through the clouds, highlighting the residual raindrops as they zigzagged their way across the window.  He dropped his chin to his chest.  Additional focus was needed tonight. 

He turned back toward the cork wall some fifty feet away.  Affixed were bright red cutouts of cherries in random spacing.  He reached to his left where several ornate knives lay side by side.  Picking up one whose ivory handle carried a hieroglyphic carving, he held it upright directly in front of his eyes, then lowered the blindfold and reached up with his right hand, grasping the tip with his thumb and index finger, and then paused for a moment.  With lightning speed, he threw the knife.  On hearing the squeak of the cork being penetrated, he paused another moment. “To the right again.”  He removed the blindfold and walked to the wall.  Standing before the cherry target, he shook his head with disappointment.  The knife had penetrated ever so slight of center.

Unhappy with himself, he started back to the table of knives.

***

“You’ll excuse me a moment.  Opera isn’t for everyone,” Ben said as he sauntered to the far side of the barn where the stereo equipment stood housed in stacked milk crates.

Jared remained standing inside the door, taken aback by the cavern-like setting before him.  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” he said.

“It wasn’t short.  I was aware you were on your way.”  He lowered the music.

“Figures,” muttered Jared to himself as he looked around the black cocoon-like surroundings.  “Just another unanswered question,” he mused as Ben fingered some CDs.

“Among many you probably have.  Please sit down, stand up, whatever makes you comfortable,” said Ben as he changed the CD and made his way toward the kitchen area.  “A little Miles okay?”

Jared smiled and stepped to a wall where a poster hung advertising a Ben Tarsus one-man show in Chicago.  “You a Davis fan?”

“Since his early Blue Note days.”

“Huh?  You don’t look that old.”

Ben shouted from the kitchen.  “Blame it on my bota and imported Chianti.”

        Jared turned back and took in the large space once more. 

        “Before we have a chat, would you care for anything?  A drink?  Coffee?”

“Coffee, if it’s not…”

“It’s not. Just finished brewing.  No warmed-over coffee in this old barn.”

Jared gazed up at the numerous spotlights hanging from tracks.  “Interesting place you have here.”

Ben prepared the cups. “Yes, it is interesting, isn’t it, even for the venturesome Salmonites that wander in from time to time.  They say the same thing.  ‘Interesting place…interesting place.’  Cream?  Sugar?”

“No cream.  Three sugar.”

“Planning to cash in early, are you?”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, just an old habit of getting in everyone’s face.  Sugar’s a killer.  But some say so is my bota, but I wouldn’t part with it.”  He started back with the coffee mug.  “So…your father said we’d meet one day.  Just didn’t expect it so soon.”

“What’s soon? I mean, relative to what?”

Ben sat down.  “He expected our visit to happen years from now, I think.”

“Oh?  What…why do you think that?”

“He said it would be after your mother passed away, and…he said she was a healthy woman…probably live to a hundred.”  Suddenly, the realization sunk in.  “Oh, God.  There I go again.  That was tactless.  My apologies.” 

“Yeah, well, things don’t happen the way you plan them sometimes.”

“True.  So, Jared, what might I help you with?”

“Help me?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“About?”

“You’re here, Jared.  You came to see me, remember?  What do you have in mind?”

“Damned if I know.  Thought you’d be the one with some answers.”

“To what?”

“Like I said…oh, boy.  Nothin’s easy, is it?”  Jared took out the letter and map, spreading them on the coffee table.  He pointed to map.  “You’re the first stop.”

“First stop?” repeated Ben.

Jared pulled his attention to the map again.  “He left me a list of a bunch of cities with safety deposit boxes.  The one in Salmon had a note… here…” He showed Ben the note.  “Know why he wrote this little bit?  ‘Ben will help you see.’”

Ben pondered a moment, and then smiled.  “Your father always favored the oblique rather than right on the nose.”

“Meaning?”

“Your guess is probably good as mine, however….”  Ben rose and went to the curtain control.  “I don’t normally show this to strangers, but….”  He pressed the switch and all the curtains rose to the ceiling.  As more overhead spotlights came on, the two of them became immersed in overlapping fragments of reflected light.  “For Sam, the world spent far too much time hiding from the incoherency of life.”

Jared stood up and shook his head.  Incoherency of life?  He walked to his left and stood before one of the larger mirrored collages.  Standing a few moments, he allowed his reflection to be stretched, shattered, and rainbowed with fragments of colored pieces of mirror.  “And this is coherent?”

Ben gave out with another burst of guttural laughter.  “It’s all I am.  It’s what I do.  The crazy man in the barn, they call me.”

“I heard it was ‘the crazy narcissist in the barn’.”

Ben walked over and stood by him, placing himself in the reflection as well.  “Yes.  Well, I choose to think it’s kind of hard being self-centered with broken mirrors.  It’s what I like about this medium. With these kind of canvases, what’s there to get carried away with?”

“That’s why you took up with broken mirrors?”

“They keep me company.  Try moving an inch to your left or right,” said Ben. 

Jared moved and smiled at the total change in reflection.  “Weird.  You could get off on never seeing the same me twice.”

“Like I said…lots of company.”  Another burst of laughter.  “So… move a foot or two, or ten.  Kinda like the magic of the Mona Lisa.  Only here, it’s your own eyes you can’t escape.”

Jared turned and seeing Ben’s far away gaze into the broken pieces of mirror, said, “Gotta string you out at times.  I mean…” He turned back and moved slightly again, this time feeling uncomfortable with the image.  “Jesus, you’ve got your own fun house here, don’t you?”

“Fun?  Not usually.  Concave and convex, inner and outer mixed with flat pieces.  Broken up with the red and yellow plaster…yeah….”  He squinted at his own image.  More laughter.  “Guess it does make for some humor, doesn’t it?”

Jared once more moved to his left and stepped closer.  He quickly turned away and walked back to his coffee and sat.

“Too intense, Jared?”

Jared drank his coffee.  “Just kinda weird.”

“That’s what the town folk say, too.”

“But you don’t see it that way?”

Ben stood for a moment, laughter in his face folding into a pensive moment he quickly hid.

“Look,” said Jared, “I hope you can understand, but… I’m really finding it hard to enjoy this little tour my absentee father put you up to.  What did he really want me to see you about?”

“All I know is that he told me someday I might get a visit from you.  Much as I know.”

Jared stood up again and walked to the opposite wall.  “Jesus.  He must have been a nut case. He talks about rewards and damned if I’ve come across even one yet.”

Ben spread his arms over the back of the couch and put his feet up on the table.  “Ah, maybe…maybe I get it now.”

Jared turned back.  “Get what?”

“Rewards.  Most everyone that knew Sam suspected he gave away all his money before he disappeared.  Always said the real rewards were yet to come.”

“He was nuts, huh?”

“We should all be so sane.  We’ve all got a little bit of the crazy, you know.  His strange ways were just more… what?  Entertaining, and…special?”  Another burst of laughter.  “Yes, he was entertaining.  He especially liked to tease people with suggestions that he could make them rich or poor merely by their picking his right or left clinched fist.  You know, the kid game where you guess which hand has the coin?  Only with Sam, it was different.  If he liked you, it wasn’t unusual to see him reach in his hiking pants, rummage around like someone finding a quarter for a parking meter, and then play the game with diamonds. Always one in both hands.  That’s ‘cause he liked you.  Everybody always won.”  He gestured to the barn.  “How I bought this barn twenty years ago.”

“Lucky you.  All I’ve got so far is a fifty-pound safety deposit box full of worthless rocks.”

Ben chuckled.  “Sure about that?”

“Sure I’m sure.  Had them assayed.  ‘Dumb rock’ the guy called them.”

Ben laughed out loud.  “Bet you thought you’d struck the mother load when you pulled the box out, eh?”  More laughter.

“I don’t consider it funny.  I’ve got better things to do than go to a bunch of bank boxes and pull out rocks.”

“Well, you never know sometimes.  You know…the knowin’ thing…not knowing you know.”  Laughing at his own bad play on words, Ben paused and considered a thought.  “Okay.  Time to think.  Crazy, but…look, Jared, I might know why generous Sam wanted you to see me.”  He got up and motioned for Jared to follow. 

They walked to the far end of the barn where a separate piece of black duvetyn hung draped over a shape suggesting a small birdcage. “Sam once told me he wasn’t much of an appreciator of abstract art but liked what I did.  He commissioned me to create this piece.  I took about three months to finish it.  He kept it for, I don’t know, five or six years, then gave it back to me wrapped up as a gift, red ribbon and all.  He told me it deserved to be passed on to someone else, someday…that it was too personal to hang in a gallery or museum.  Said I’d meet the right person and I’d make it a gift to him or her.  Well…”

He lifted the black duvetyn and revealed a mirror-encrusted sculpture simulating a man’s skull about the size of an orange.  The broken pieces angled in all directions gave an ever-changing reflection of oneself.  At the base was an imbedded straight razor, its handle inlaid with a mosaic pattern with minute pieces of mirror.  “His commission contract only asked I make a piece everyone could understand and name it ‘Who?’  What do you think?”

“‘Who’?”

“I thought it a strange title too.”  He laughed once again.  “Even for me, I mean….” 

He noticed Jared holding transfixed in front of it.  “Fucking thing is…small.  Like…a shrunken head, for Chrissake.” 

Ben paused as Jared stepped closer and stood for several moments. 

“Would you like to take it with you?” Ben asked.  “I think your father would be pleased.”

Jared remained motionless.

***

Gcina, the blindfold raised above his eyes, leaned over his desk holding the phone to his chin.  “Like I said.  Everything is going fine.  You worry too much.  Jared’ll be back tomorrow and…Okay.  I can do that…after he gets back.” 

He hung up, turned, and pulled the blindfold back down over his eyes.  Surprised to find a trickle of sweat running down his neck, he carefully removed the blindfold, gently wiped it away, and slowly eased into his plush couch.  He reached up and turned off the desk lamp.  The darkness was a training habit now, even though years before the black of the mines had been sheer terror and had left him swearing to never venture into the dark again.  That was before the lifesaving experience with Sam and the years that followed hearing Sam repeat his mantra over and over: “always protect your rewards.”

“Oh, I do Sam.  I do.”