A Bright House

She answered on the third ring. Ray smiled at the vision-thought of her padding across those sloped floorboards to make it to the phone in time to thwart the answering machine’s outgoing message... “Hello?” she said with a forced calmness that couldn’t betray her happiness, which made him want to wrap her up in a bear hug with a delectable kiss-cherry on top. “Hi Jenny, it’s me and I’ve arrived safely.” He heard a small exhale and smiled, leaning against the Buick, replaying their kiss. “That’s great,” she said. “I appreciate you letting me know... and, where are you?”

“I’m sorry, Jenny, but I don’t discuss the specifics of these cases. Not with anyone, well, at least not before I have offered what assistance I may. This involves missing persons and is emotionally heavy going...” His words trailed off then at the thought of Jenny’s vanished Scott, and there came a rare slightly awkward pause between them before she spoke in earnest. “I didn’t mean to overstep, Ray, I’m sorry. ” He found himself wanting to interrupt that short sentence with an ”it’s okay“, because immediately he had felt bad for his admonishing tone. “I am in the town of Kincardine,” he allowed quietly, “and most of what I have to do here is based within this area.” She began to respond but Ray pressed on. “I have so much to share with you when I get back to Toronto. There have been some rather stunning developments in my life since our first meeting, and of anyone on this planet

it is you I want to share with.”

Another short pause, he could hear her breathing. “Really?” He waited a heartbeat and when he spoke in answer “Yes, really” she had started to say something; they both stopped together, then resumed in unison “go ahead”... Ray waited long enough for it to be clear that she could speak first, and Jenny said almost to the word what he had meant to utter : “This morning was very sweet.”

He grinned. Jenny could feel it and see the crinkles around those remarkable eyes. “I have replayed this morning quite a few times” (he thought to censor himself and dispensed with the notion) “and I probably will continue to, until the next time...” There it was. A statement of intention, even hope. It floated in the space of miles between them, taking on its own form and definition. Jenny seemed to replay what he had spoken before replying simply “so sweet.” Ray could see her in mind, almost as if she stood in front of him in the Days Inn parking lot. “I’m going to go and check in now. I have one other call to make and then a good night’s sleep is vital to my day tomorrow. How about I give you a call during the week, let’s say Wednesday night?”

“I’ll be here. That sounds perfect, and Ray... ?”

“Yes?”

“Please, please be careful.”

He felt the psychic flatness slipping away as she stressed the second “please”... he sensed that she was back there, momentarily, in the black spaces spread across the years following her husband’s disappearance. To love is to worry. He spoke her name in a tone of pure emotion, though exactly what it was couldn’t be named... ”Jenny.” She listened, mute. “Careful is my middle name. I’ll look forward to speaking with you on Wednesday night. Is eight o’clock okay for you?” She echoed her earlier words : “I’ll be here.” They exchanged gentle goodbyes and Ray stood for a few moments afterward, arms crossed and eyes to the sky in gratitude without words.

He then accessed the menu in his phone to place the next call. An idea had been formulating during Ray’s drive, but had the O.P.P. investigator in charge answered his telephone, that idea would have been waylaid. As luck would have it doesn’t seem, in hindsight, an appropriate phrase for the fact that Ray’s call went six rings to an outgoing voice message. He listened to the man’s no-nonsense speaking tone and knew then that the earlier idea just might come to fruition. “Hello, this is Ray Townes giving you a little heads-up that I will be arriving in Kincardine later than anticipated tonight. I’d like to change our pre-arranged call time for tomorrow to, let’s say, Noon? I’m going to need a good night’s sleep, as I’m quite exhausted, so I hope this doesn’t inconvenience anyone too much. I’ll call you tomorrow at twelve, then, and we can proceed from there. Bye for now.”

Ray tucked the phone into his jacket and nodded. He had the files. He had a vehicle. He thus had everything he needed to get up at first light and find his way to the railroad tracks that would lead him to the scene of bizarre disappearances. Where a massive bird of prey had been alleged to have carried away a dog. He also wanted to first examine the stretch of highway where that other Buick Skylark had lost control. Where strange feathers and missing persons taunted any conventional methodology for mystery solving.

Ray knew that he would be interfered with by the local authorities. It had happened to him many times for various reasons, most of them a natural ingrained skepticism from hardened cops having to resort to the use of psychic assistance. This was a deeply upsetting combination of cases, and it came wrapped in something he had never encountered before. The alleged “thunderbird”... a palpable yet confounding tie to his newly discovered biological father... and more. Ray knew there was much more. The morning hours would hopefully provide him with space, clarity, and focus to do what had always come so naturally to him.

If his phone were to ring and the call be from anyone other than Jenny, he wasn’t going to answer. Townes opened the trunk to remove his luggage, placed the carry-on bag atop the larger one, and headed for the Days Inn lobby.

Jenny ended her call with Ray and immediately slipped into a time funnel. Back to a call made by Scott from an Esso gas station during a fuel stop on his fateful trip to ice-fish the lake Simcoe basin.

She had spoken gently to Scott about her feelings concerning the trip, but not forcefully enough to give language to what had been an intense worry over it. For all that they shared in love between them, there were several key personality differences that had not weighed upon the relationship but could not be entirely dismissed. Jenny was deeply into the arts; her burgeoning visual expressions, the collecting of vintage films, an ongoing love affair with all types of music, a passion for literature... Scott was in love with Jenny and the outdoors. He hiked, went on fishing trips, hunted for elk and caribou in Quebec, loved to scuba dive old shipwrecks off the coast of Tobermory. He had invited her to share all of these activities with him, but she couldn’t meet his passion or interests. Hunting was repugnant to her, fishing only slightly less so, though she did eat meat. Jenny found it challenge enough to negotiate through a day in the city, without feeling a need to jump from an airplane or join her husband on a hang gliding weekend.

This had been their disconnection, then. Scott loved her dearly and was sweet about her views and reticence. He stated the reasons for his love of physical activity and the great outdoors; how he felt more alive when immersed in the raw power of the elements than anywhere else in his life, except for ”when I’m with you, baby“... he didn’t press her. He didn’t let it fester or drive a wedge between them, and she returned the favor because all else between them was sweetness. Their agreement was unspoken over time: he would have his outings and adventures with the understanding that she worried intensely for his safety and the future of their planned family. In other words, Scott would be extra careful for the peace of his wife’s mind.

Jenny looked at the phone and could still feel Ray’s voice inside her. His kiss and the touch of his strong hands, too, lingering sweetly with the ease of something treasured. She wanted to retain this happy glow but here it was again; acidic worry. A worry that seemed as vivid as the one that had accompanied Scott on his final adventure. She felt strongly compelled to call Ray back, and to call him back all the way to Toronto. That would go over well, wouldn’t it? It would make a fantastic early impression on a man who showed signs of becoming her partner in some meant and diffused way that nonetheless packed promise. No, she had to give him credit for knowing what he was doing, even if it sat like a stone in her belly.

Why was it so damned easy to believe this wasn’t going to work out for her, this blossoming with mister Townes? Everything that had developed so naturally and rapidly, he had initiated first, yet standing next to the telephone with her stomach beginning to knot, Jenny found it oh so easy to slip down into the quagmire. This time around, she used to feel and was starting to again, the universe wanted to teach her something through deprivation. Abandoned, not wanted from the very outset of her life, these scars ran through her and no amount of allowance to the very real happy times could prevail when fear wanted in. She had floated home from work on a hopeful breeze. One phone call later, when she should have been afterglowing from their exchange, Jenny instead faced a fresh gnawing worry. Wednesday couldn’t arrive quick enough. After that, the weekend. Maybe then... she could come back to the place of believing.

Ray registered at the front desk with a friendly middle-aged woman, rake thin with her hair in a wild bun that looked like smoke and bobby pins in collision. She bordered on the purely nosey, asking Townes what had brought him to Kincardine before the busy summer season. He gave her a ten dollar answer that would whet her gossip whistle, saying he was scouting locations for a big budget American film but couldn’t divulge anything further. She covered her mouth with a little gasp, then an “Oh really? Who will star in it?“, niftily ignoring his avowal of discretion. “One of the biggest box office draws, ever" he said conspiratorially, “but I seriously must not say anything more... okay?” She looked up and fell into his eyes, utterly charmed. “Okay... but it sure is exciting.”

The room was adequate. Clean but tired. It smelled of carpet cleaner and lemon. His phone rang during the couple of minutes that he took to set his luggage on a dresser top, and when he picked up his message it was from the head of the missing persons investigation. Not sounding pleased about Ray’s delay, but agreeing to the later time frame. This was Ray’s unwind moment. He needed that early morning solitude and channel-path clarity, in order to best “see” and read the lay of the land. Without the just-retrieved message, his mind would not have been clear and a good night’s sleep anything but assured.

Though the hour was early, Ray felt like he could take a nap. He sat on the bed for a moment, then stretched out with his hands beneath the plump soft pillow. Just a short rest period, no sleep, followed by a brief stroll to the nearest fast food place where he could pick up something to take out. He wasn’t feeling very hungry due to the generosity of Teviotdale’s truck stop portions, but a submarine sandwich from down the street would be sufficient. Ray wished to limit his interactions with others until he had to deal with the police personnel. Another dine-in meal was not an appealing option.

From the textured ceiling above him, to the red-black of his closed eyelids, Ray saw Jenny’s face quite clearly in a brief but sweet flash. She must be thinking of me. I wonder how many times we have thought of each other since that kiss. Though Ray’s career was anything but ordinary, he had structured his life into a tidy routine. Finding a soulmate, even a lover, had somehow slipped away from his needs. It seemed too much effort whenever he allowed himself to wonder about a special someone. Was that self-subversive? Was it really such an anomaly to exist as a person content to be alone? No children, no legacy, no lasting imprint upon the raw materials of a life lived and left behind. A smooth pebble that entered the water with hardly a ripple. Ray had moved between the common lines, making the best of an odd mutation that allowed him to perceive that which eludes most. He didn’t feel like a “freak”, and even in allowing the occasional pangs of regret that he had not become a husband and father, was not embittered or made hollow as the years advanced him toward bodily death.

“Especially now, knowing what I know.” His voice vanished into the room’s thick drapery and wall to wall carpet. He could feel his legs relaxing, a slow spreading ease up through his lower back and higher; it was surprising how exhausted he suddenly felt. How well this tired old motel mattress held him there. How often was he truly lonely? The days of Ray’s weeks were filled with phone and in-person sessions; vicariously living the details of others who dealt with every kind of complication that could be imagined, most of which revolved around loneliness. In all honesty he didn’t view himself as a lonely soul. The old family home kept him company with the sounds of his tenants as they walked, watched television, called to each other down hallways. The Saskatchewan winds befriended him as he drifted off to sleep with the old window pane opened a crack, allowing those mournful prairie howls to wrap him in a lifetime’s familiar soundtrack. He did have friends, too, for Ray was a likable and very warm person. Generous to the core, always ready to help. They were, however, arms length friendships.

There was a sound reason for that. Ray didn’t want to “see” more than he was comfortable with, when it came to those closest to his heart. Furthermore, even with the generally wide acceptance of his abilities as de facto, he didn’t want the clairvoyance to play a prominent role in his friendships. He had seen it far too often how others will unknowingly go vampiric upon one such as Townes. Tell me, buddy, do you think I will get that job? We are having marital problems; do you think we will stay together? And so... Jenny, now. Ray replayed their kiss again, turned to his right shoulder to face an empty second pillow. It was neatly symbolic without bringing the cut of pain or ache of incompleteness.

He didn’t really know her, but already liked her immensely. It was the essence of her energy that shone through despite years of cocooning, alone. Her willingness to be courageous had instantly moved him. Even her gentle but earnest curiosity about Ray, when they had gone to the Toronto island for their unofficial session, had struck all the right chords within him. Then, her easy physical attractiveness. Something of greater substance than overt sexuality and its peculiar animal appeal. Jenny had depth. She had layers invisible to the majority of those who gazed upon her. She had a kind heart and more resilient core strength than she would ever be able to give herself credit for. Mostly, and it existed in the maddeningly beautiful plane outside of language to convey it, Jenny called to him in a way that he had not known. It was not about his playing rescuer, and in fact as he looked at the unoccupied pillow beside him, it would be her doing the rescuing perhaps.

Townes could also follow the symbols, nudges, signs, if he were one to place undue import within their showings. It was a seductive magic, that kind of resonance and synchronicity, those types of tandem timings. As natural as breathing, this wanting to find union to the highest degree with another to love and be loved by. At its purest, however, a unity of that special quality still had to face a reality of challenges based not only in mortality’s laws but through a gauntlet of outside forces. Chaos. Ego. Random pressure. Unreasoning emotions. The summation of each soul’s acquired ingredients through subjective experience. And scar tissue. Yes, always that.

Ray could look at that empty pillow top and so easily see Jenny there, henceforth ever beside him, sharing the remainder of their journeys made into one. Of all the women he had met, and the many who had made it apparent that they were interested, it could only be Jenny. Why? Not the timing or mysterious signs. Not even their sudden easy comfort and surprising level of mutual trust. It felt to him like something remembered and far more intricate, labyrinthian and ancient, than any other contemporary mundane human emotional explanation. Possibly he would tell her this, some night soon. As early as a weekend away. Possibly Ray Townes would be one of the oldest attractive and single men to lose his virginity and loner badge to a long grieving widow who lived in a crooked old house, ever.

His smile into the lengthening shadows of the motel room felt good. Sweet. It was brand new for him to anticipate something with the kind of life altering potential that Jenny and he seemed able to cook up together. Alchemists, ripe on the vine, almost spoiled. Just in time, perhaps? If these weekdays could tie it all together, that would be sweetest of all; if this confluence of odd happenings and those suddenly revealed life secrets could coalesce into his helping the aggrieved families... if it could also make sense of Ray’s childhood puzzle, ease what pierced him through his mother’s wasteful exit... and if he could walk and work through all of this to come out the other side in a love. In a Love.

There are those moments when the sleeper doesn’t realize that sleep has claimed the mind; often a sudden jolt of legs or arms as a lightning synapse trips across any number of stumble points. A deep crack in a sidewalk. Missed step on a steep staircase. Sudden sound. Townes felt and heard the jolt moment. One instant lost to a comfortable double mattress with a too-soft pillow, his head weaving thought nests for future eggs to hatch into... then a quick strange sound in the room that came with pressure on the bed near his feet. He lurched momentarily between realms, at once aware that he had fallen asleep and yet denying that he had. His eyes remained shut against the first bidding of his brain, and he heard a second sound that was similar but closer to his ears. The bed shook again as though sat upon heavily, and this opened Ray’s eyelids.

The light of day had almost faded between two heavy lengths of curtain. Everything in the room seemed as before. Nothing had joined him atop the bed. He calmed into the waking realization that some bizarre shallow-sleep experience had made itself known, though his heart chugged as if pumping corn syrup. What a weird sound. So real and present in the room, it seemed like. Never mind the weight of something on the mattress. What the hell was that noise? Ray forced himself to a sitting posture, swung his legs free of the mattress, and crossed the room slowly for a bathroom sink where he could splash his face. His stomach rumbled. Food, a shower, another look at the case files so tomorrow’s locations could be easily found.

That sound. It had been obvious all along, waiting for his sleep fog to lift. Large flapping wings.