(final edit before the proofreaders (he said). You can read the previous version here.
Read Empty Sky Chapter 7 – Joni and Honey Fitz
Earl Pangiosi sat in the Empire Builder‘s Superliner Snack Coach’s upper level, a pillow behind his head and a blanket covering his legs, peering through dark, wraparound sunglasses at people’s reflections in the round, full length domed windows. When someone nodded off, he’d dip down his glasses and peer at them briefly, purse his lips then shove the glasses back up his face. Once in a while he’d catch his own red-haired, high colored reflection as he followed people walking past.
Earl liked being around people so he could practice. He had his own car — disguised as two back-to-back LandSea containers on a flatcar and marked “US Mail” — further back in the train. It brought a brief smile, the change in rail regulations that allowed all trains to transport freight and passengers simultaneously. It made his private car’s subterfuge possible.
But people were Earl’s focus. He tolerated the miasma of greasy hamburgers and soggy fries, too strong coffee and unwashed bodies, screaming children and louder screaming parents, and the occasional whiffs of diesel to indulge in a pastime he enjoyed since his childhood: watching people’s reflections in glass.
He first noticed his gift on an early Fall night much like this one.
Dad, suit and tie and freshly shaved and mustache neatly trimmed, drove their new, ’59 burgundy Lincoln Continental back to the old neighborhood. Mom sat opposite dad, wrapped in her furs, wearing her best clothes. Dad told her she wore clothes too tight sometimes but she told him to never mind, didn’t he want everybody to know what he had every night?
Mom and Dad left the old neighborhood a year before and never told Earl why. But once a month, maybe twice, he and Mom and Dad would get in the car and go back north to the old neighborhood with presents for everybody. Dad was in the meat business and he’d hand out steaks and chops and roasts and cutlets and hotdogs in summer and hamburger and ground pork if somebody wanted to make meatballs. Everybody was so grateful and Mom would smile and nod as she stood beside Dad, his hands reaching deep into the coolers in the dark of the trunk, coming back into daylight, his hands full of brown paper wrapped meats neatly tied with butcher’s twine. They asked questions about the new car and Dad would tell them it was a Lincoln and Mom would correct him with “Lincoln Continental.”
They drove home, the coolers empty and tucked in the trunk, heading south on a clear, moonless Sunday night. Earl saw the Rhode Island border sign. Soon Dad would slow for the Providence traffic and take the Federal Hill exit.
An only child, Earl had the entire backseat to himself. He could lie down and take naps if he wanted to. Now he sat behind Mom, his hands folded and face pressed against the rear passenger’s window, his knees pulled together and tucked under him because he had to pee but Dad said they weren’t going to stop, they only had a little further to go and Earl was a big man and could hold it, couldn’t he?
Sure, Dad.
Except Earl really had to pee. The leather seat sent shivers of cold up through his bare knees and that didn’t help. He had bare knees because he wore shorts. Shorts, a winter jacket and a hat Mom made him wear even though his cousins all wore long pants.
They already laughed at him because he had different color eyes: the right brown, the left blue. Mom didn’t say much and his cousins and some aunts and uncles said that made him a freak. She made him wear dark sunglasses and told everyone Earl had sensitive eyes.
His cousins would dance around him. “Earl has sen-si-tive eye-eyes. Earl has sen-si-tive eye-eyes.”
He caught his reflection in the window as his exhalations frosted the glass. Mom’s and Dad’s reflections, too.
He’d never noticed them before. Maybe reflections were something you only got in a Lincoln Continental? The dashboard gave off so much light.
He watched his father’s profile as they drove. Mother said things and Dad occasionally winced on the side mom couldn’t see as if somebody jabbed him with a little knife.
Mom would go ya ya ya and Dad’s nose would twitch and his mustache would rise a little then go back down. Mom would go da da da and Dad’s eye would wink shut quick and then back open to watch the cars on the road. Mom would go sa sa sa and Dad’s lips would move forward and back like he wanted to spit something out.
Earl watched his father and something happened in Earl’s head. His father stopped being a person and became a book, a map, a reference, something to be read. He tasted what his father felt. He did not know the word but he understood the emotion: despair.
“You don’t like what Mom’s saying, do you, Dad.”
His dad stared at him in the rearview mirror. He could almost feel his father’s thought; Are you asking me or telling me, son?
Earl opened his mouth to answer but Mom said, “Where does he get that, I wonder?” and looked out her own window the rest of the way home.
“That’s not a nice thing to say, Earl,” his father said. “You know that’s not true.”
Earl’s eyes left the reflection and looked at his Dad direct.
He knew what his father thought. Maybe not the exact words but he knew the feelings.
He was sure of it.
What he was most sure of, especially sure of, as sure of as he was sure it was cold and night and he had to pee, was that what he said was true: Dad didn’t like what Mom said.
He also knew that if he questioned Dad about it he would get a spanking when they got home, maybe before.
That’s when he saw the Void. He’d seen one once before but didn’t have a name for them back then, didn’t know they were just his and that no one else could see them. A little wink in the darkness of night.
The dashboard lit his father and mother and didn’t light the seat between them. He should’ve seen his mother’s purse pulled up tight against her and his father’s gloves on the seat beside him but there was nothing there. No seat, no gloves, no purse, just a child-sized bubbling hole where everything should be.
No face, no eyes, no hands or arms or legs, just a roiling blackness.
Yet he was sure it looked up at him. It knew he was there and it knew he knew it was there.
And it did nothing about it.
That made Earl glad. Finally a friend who accepted him. Oh, joyous day. Oh, happy, happy day.
“What’re you smiling about, son?”
“I like our new Lincoln, dad.”
Mom said, “Lincoln Continental.”
Dad said, “Good, son.”
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