All in Good Time

Author :Red

Copyright: Red, April 2000
Rating R
Genre: General
Category: Stream of consciousness
Teaser: Benton celebrates another birthday which is totally unlike any he has had before.
Disclaimer: Yes I know these characters belong to Alliance and I am doing this for no profit at all. Just borrowing them with the greatest respect. TYK.

All In Good Time

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions, "

TS Elliot "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

All In Good Time

1
It's my birthday. I'm how old? No, an adult anyway...old enough. Old enough to have a half wolf for a companion and a father to visit me. I'm wondering, would he bother to visit today, what with it being a special day for me. It's warm so he may be busy doing whatever they do when it's early summer there...wherever he is.

It wasn't as easy to get up this morning as it normally is for me. As a rule I open my eyes at five thirty and I am instantly awake and alert. Push back blankets and stand up, a few stretching exercises, a yawn followed by a visit to the bathroom and I am ready to face the day. This morning it was more difficult as if the body recognises it is a year older and behaves appropriately. Which is ridiculous really, after all, it isn't a year older, it's merely a day older; not even that. Given that I had seven hours sleep, it is just seven hours older than when I last consciously registered the passing of time. My mind, ones mind, must perceive time differently than the body; measure it in a subtly different way. A few hours to my body clock is a whole year to my mind.
Huh.
So how does it cope with that differential?

Well this morning, this particular birthday it copes by aching and behaving sluggishly. My eyes opened on this particular Canada Day full of sleep. So my first action was to wipe it away and groan, wishing I could turn over and go back to that dreamland that had so enthralled me all night. It was one of those unusually vivid dreams, one in full vibrant technicolor in which time (ah again that word) passed slowly so that every second, indeed every millisecond, was filled with experience. It was like living life to the greatest intensity imaginable. Not a second, millisecond wasted. The memory of it disappeared almost as soon as I had my first conscious thought and in that void was left a hungering for something I couldn't describe. Still can't. That elusive Will o' the Wisp. You reach out for it and it dodges you like the eternal torment suffered by Tantalus in the lake; water and fruit so near yet so far. So you say, forget it then. There will be other dreams like that one, other adventures through the subconscious as it goes about its nightly routine of vacuuming out the mind. Ridding it of all the accumulated experiences that would otherwise keep you so preoccupied you wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything during your waking hours. Still that fruit did seem so very delicious, the water so thirst quenching that I am now left with a soul that aches and eyes that water at the mere thought.

See it's still happening; I can't focus on the task in hand which is what? Cleaning my teeth. It has taken me fully 21 minutes to get to this point. I missed my normal slot in the bathroom and had to wait for Mrs Onofrio to be done. I habitually precede her by16 minutes, she is the only other early riser in the building as far as I know. I don't know what I was doing for all that time; thinking maybe, remembering; possibly. That time is lost now, gone and I don't know what happened to it. Maybe I'll find it again tonight in my dreams.

Ray says he cleans his teeth in the shower to save time. And shaves there too. I find that hard to believe of someone so meticulous. Perhaps he was joking. Surely the specks of hair would get trapped in unfortunate places, and what about the mixture of battery power and water? I am certain it is a most unsafe habit to get into.

Next time I am at the Vecchios' I fully intend to check the shower stall for shaver, toothpaste and toothbrush. Maybe he uses a cutthroat like I'm doing now. Does he have a mirror in the shower? All that risk to save time. And what does he do with the time he saves? I must ask him when I see him.

I think there might have been wolves in my dream, a pack of them; and it was cold. I haven't fed Dief his breakfast yet, here he is clawing at the door and whining.

Okay Dief I'm done, I'm coming.



2

You know what oatmeal reminds me of? My father. My father without a beard, clean shaven. I think of his beard sometimes when I'm shaving in a morning, and sometimes when I am eating oatmeal for breakfast, especially when there is a banana also. Oatmeal and banana. My grandfather used to call it porridge.
Oatmeal also reminds me of something else: my mother. I wonder what happened to her? I used to look for clues after she'd gone. A lock of her hair, a shoe, a bottle of perfume, a book. Once I found her purse. I put it to my cheek and stroked it. It was bright yellow and made out of soft leather and smelt of the city. I remembered she told me she had bought it in a place called Ottawa which is our capitol city. That's where the Mounties train for the musical ride and I wanted to go one day and train to be a Mountie myself. So that I could be like my father and find out where my mother went. Her clothes hung in the heavy wooden wardrobe for only a short time.

That purse was a golden clue so I hid it under my mattress. Inside it was a penny and a cotton handkerchief with a maple leaf embroidered in one corner. I sniffed the cloth, it was her smell when she tucked me in at night. I cried every time I pulled it from beneath my pillow on lonely nights and I talked to it. Where are you? Why did you go? Was it something I did, or didn't do? I'll try to be a good boy, if only you'll come back.

At my grandparents' house there were lots of signs of her, lots of clues. Trouble was they were from the time when she was a little girl, before I knew her and long before she left.

They weren't things that belonged to a mother; they were toys and children's books. No, no clues there. I'll find you one day, I promised the handkerchief now grubby from my touch.

Not one birthday passes without me remembering that handkerchief, and admitting that I still haven't found her. What is the significance of a birthday? It's the day my mother went through agony to bring me squalling ungratefully into the white world; that's all. It's the day I remember my mother and start looking for clues again.


3
I'm looking in my trunk now. I do that on my birthday, other days as well when the loneliness gets too much to bear. That makes me sound like a tragic figure, doesn't it? But I'm not. Not tragic really, not like Hamlet or Oedipus or Jude the Obscure. Oedipus was in love with his mother. Hamlet never recovered from his father's tragic death. He was tormented until he wreaked vengeance. Perhaps I am like him in some things. I see a ghost too, but at least my ghost urges me on to do normal things. Hamlet went mad, I know.

Only crazy people talk to ghosts.

I'm not a crazy person; maybe a bit extreme at times but then who wouldn't be in those circumstances. Gerard killed my father. It was an extreme act of self restraint that kept me from pulling the trigger out there in the snow. I could have easily hidden the body. In a wilderness like that no one would have ever known. They would still be searching now. And later in the garage, I nearly lost it then. Something stopped me, my sanity I guess, just short of murder.

I couldn't kill her either, but I could have left with her. Would have if ... No, I can't think about that. It was a dark episode in my life which I am still trying to resolve. He didn't give me any advice when she was around, no, he kept out of the way- turning up when it was too late only to smile at me when I thought I was dying. Huh. Ghosts.

One thing's for sure, there'll be no card from him this year. No card from her either. She must be alive somewhere or I would have sensed it, we were that close. I would have sensed her death. She told me that we were soul mates, destined to be together, that I was her salvation. Where did she go?

This trunk is a time machine. Open it up and travel into the past.

My revolver..."Is this your weapon constable?" A memory that brings me shame still after all this time. Searching now for more clues. What's this? Still in it's plastic bubble: a lock. I bought it out of fear. I thought if I put a lock on my door I would be safe and they wouldn't be able to get me again. Being beaten senseless does that to you, makes you feel vulnerable. Why didn't I use it? Because I realised the greatest fear was inside me not outside. Why should I fear thugs like Frankie Zuko when there were darker places within me? I'm more afraid of the past than the future. Sometimes I make up a different past for myself, one in which I have a family like Ray's. A sister, a father, a mother. Most of all, a mother who read to me each night and gave me brothers and sisters to play with. Is that past any less valid than the real one? No one can take either away from me; the real nor the imagined.

In amongst the bark carvings there is a box in which are pictures of my father in crayon. None of my mother. There are times when I can't remember what color her hair was. A photograph: just her head and shoulders but she is smiling in monochrome. A piece of the past I can't remember any more. Eternally young; I'm already older than her, than she was when she went away.
A school book, worn with fading writing, handwriting practice.
Most of this stuff I salvaged when my father's cabin burnt down.
Another photo. Why do I still have this one? I can't even see her face properly and even if I could it would hurt too much to bear to look at it. I don't even know how I got it, who took it. Did she send it to me from prison? Possibly. Is it time to tear it up yet? No, I'm not ready for that.

No clues here then, as to why she went away. Brush the dust away.

Time to take Dief for a walk. I'll check my mail on the way back, there may be a card from home, from Innusik or Julie or Sergeant Frobisher. Or even from those of my old colleagues who aren't shunning me still.

4
"Now no matter, child the name,
Sorrows springs are all the same."
Gerard Manley Hopkins "Spring And Fall"


Hamlet had trouble making decisions. I don't. I know exactly what I'm going to do at any time, no debating. I've always been that way, decisive, maybe a little impulsive, don't you agree?

It was a long time ago.

I was in school. There was a message to say my grandmother was going to take me to her house at hometime, I wasn't to go home. It meant nothing to me short of being allowed to help feed the chickens and maybe make some shortbread with her. She sang a lot, like my mother. After that day she never sang again, she changed into someone else's grandmother. Not my mother's mother. She smelt of yeast and chicken feed and early spring flowers. I held her hand in one of mine and swung my book bag in the other. I watched it fling free of my grasp and aim for the clouds, a squat tailess bird. Then at the highest point of the curve it plummeted faster and faster whilst I watched mouth open in anticipation following its steady course into the river thick with char and full of spring thaw. It bobbed away from my cries of dismay carried swiftly on the current through the trees and on into the distance. I ran on short legs after it, oblivious to the anxious entreaties of my grandmother as she pursued and caught me. She held me in a crushing gasp as I fought her and fought my own tears of frustration. I looked up at her dear face and noticed that the smile on her lips did not reach her moist eyes. I reached up a forefinger and caught the liquid in its tip. a tear. I touched it to my own face and found moisture there too.

It wasn't until we got back to my grandparents' house that I realised there were greater losses to bear than that of precious books. I had lost something far more significant, and irreplaceable. I knew that something was different when they stopped me from rushing off to play with the dogs and made me sit, red-faced and sweating with anger on the hard kitchen chair, squirming in discomfort at the stray spells that prodded my thighs. They both crouched down to my level and my six year old world fell apart.

5
There are several cards in my mail box. I tuck them into my back pocket for my hands are full of dog treats and bagels, a copy of the Chicago Tribune tucked under my arm, resolving to look at them when I am in my room. I am not compulsive in that way, I like the feeling of anticipation you get when you make yourself wait for something: it makes the act more rewarding.

I'm eking out the pleasures of life to make them last longer.

Mr Mustafi wishes me happy birthday and asks for the return of a coffee grinder he lent me.

I nod at him as I back into my room, "Right away, Mr Mustafi, good morning to you."

I borrowed it to make Ray some really fresh coffee but first I had to sharpen the blades good and proper. I hope he doesn't mind. The apartment is a lot warmer than when I left it an hour ago so I open the windows that aren't stuck and sit by the biggest one and look at my mail. The constant sounds of traffic, interspersed with sirens, seem augmented this morning and the air more stifling than usual. At home you always breathe in crisp clean air.

I clear my throat and study the first envelope. It is large and white and the handwriting is very precise and unmistakable. Julie...Frobisher. Inside is a shop bought Hallmark card with a standard greeting to a good friend. No message just her signature and one kiss. I put it to one side and take the next one. The postmark is Aklavik and the envelope smells strongly of cheese so I surmise it is from Buck Frobisher. I carefully tear it open and I'm gratified to see I am correct. The card is actually a photograph of him and some "raw recruits having fun in the snow." I smile at a memory of when I was such a young Mountie; eager and full of hope. He says he hopes to see me soon and that Julie sends her love and talks about me often. I've known Julie most my life. Buck also. Buck, his wife, my parents used to go on picnics together and some summers on vacation. Buck visited a lot, and sometimes there was another man with him. Muldoon was his name and he was a big man, bigger than my father. I nicknamed him Muldoon the Moose. He left about the same time as my mother. Someone at school whose father was a Mountie too said something about her, was it otter boy? I think now it was. He used to tease me a lot. He said Muldoon ran away with my mother. How could he know what had happened in another town years before? I knew he was lying but the other children didn't. I hit him and that provoked the otter incident; I can feel it now, the impact of the teeth in my flesh and then the blood, so much blood I fainted flat out. Besides I knew the truth. He had fallen into Six Mile Canyon and despite the best efforts of my father he had died. Muldoon was dead.

The next card is from Elaine and then there is one from Mark, which is a pleasant surprise. A very large red one from Francesca with a heart on the front and a sickly verse inside. The sentiment embarrasses me and I wonder how I will face her next time I go to her mother's house. She is bound to make some sort of reference to it. I am pleased to see that there is a card from my former posting signed by all my former colleagues from The Territories.

"See son, you weren't forgotten after all. And by the way, mine's in the mail."

I look up and smile at him, "Dad, glad you decided to pop by."

"I couldn't miss your birthday Benton. Did you get a card from Buck?"

I nod back. "Dad were you ever lonely when...when you were away from us?"

He considers his answer and tells me he was usually too busy, "Why what's on your mind."

"I was thinking about Muldoon...and my mother."

"Muldoon belongs in the past, leave him there. You were just a child." From the tone of his voice I can tell this line of enquiry is going to go nowhere so I turn to the last card in my hand.
It's from Albert and he writes to say he'd like to visit sometime. With the family. Again.
When I look up he's gone and Dief is nuzzling my leg, "He comes, he goes.." I whisper shaking my head, he never wants to talk about my mother. I rub the wolf behind his ear and stand up. "Time to get ready for work Dief."

I put my cards up on the shelf and take my uniform from its hanger, and prepare myself for the day to come.

6
I have a late shift at the consulate today and I promised Ray I would spend some of this morning with him at the Station because he has a huge backlog of cases and knows my fast typing will help him get through the reports quicker. I'm glad to do this for him; after all he is my best friend. Elaine has come over to observe my typing skills and I thank her kindly for the card. She responds by giving me a birthday kiss, as she calls it and leaves a little package by my elbow. I feel the blood rush to my cheeks and must admit to myself that I will never get used to the boldness of American women. The memory of her closeness dabbing iodine on the glass cuts on my face is all too vivid. The way she smelt of coconut shampoo and Chanel mixed with the sharp smell of iodine and the scent of my own fear. Smells are very evocative aren't they? One whiff and you are taken on a journey through time, transported without will to a younger version of yourself.

Ray passes some comment, which, in my embarrassment, I miss but which has his colleagues smirking. I continue typing pretending I do not notice. Sometimes having well-honed senses can be burdensome.

It's a case about a missing sixteen-year-old boy. I don't really register much of what I am typing because I have found that if I get involved in the content of Ray's case notes. It takes me twice as long to type as it should. I tend to merely correct his grammar for him; Ray is actually very good at spelling. Well apart from my name; for some reason he insists on adding an 'i'. I wonder if he is merely being perverse, I have noticed that he does enjoy irritating me.

When I was sixteen I ran away from home. It was on the tenth anniversary of the day my mother d.... disappeared and I remember spending most of the day in an abandoned mine huddled in a grief I could not fully express nor understand. I slept and dreamt of flying books. I'm time travelling again, do you see? It's becoming harder to root myself in the present.

Now I find out why the boy is a violent crime case; the brother who disappeared with him has been murdered, only a matter of time before his body will wash up on the lakeshore too. The water giving up her dead, spewing them out like unwanted dreams, unfulfilled hopes. At sixteen the world was my oyster but I had never seen a pearl.

Where is my mother's body? I never had the courage to ask my Dad because I did not want to upset him. There must be a marker somewhere, a memorial of the time she spent on earth. The short time she spent here with my father and with me.

It's Ray's turn to go to the deli and collect the lunches today and I have volunteered to accompany him. I have decided that I need an excuse to get away from Elaine's attention for a while. I like her a lot but at present have no desire for a romantic involvement. Not since she came back into my life. Before the past assails me again I hear a welcome voice,

"Ya coming Frasier? Don't forget your hat."

"Yes Ray, just need to save this for you."


7
This is a familiar feeling. My life flashing before my eyes whilst I cling white knuckled to some sort of child transporter. A van that would not last a day in the territories. No road holding. I knew there was something strange about that Moslem woman. I could not help but point it out to Ray.

I agree with him, I should just let things be sometimes, but it isn't in my nature to ignore a potential crime and little inconsistencies like that one incident of eye contact irk me. Anything just slightly out of kilter really annoys me and I have to investigate. Like when my mother disappeared and no one would give me a proper answer. I dreamt about her every night for years and each time the scenario was different. Hundreds of variations on where she went and how much she missed me.

I had a beaten up old hardcover atlas that was so out of date the boundaries of Europe and most of Asia were wrong. I used to measure distances from my home on the edge of the Arctic Circle to places I thought she might be. I took into account time, distance and plausible means of transport. She could have circumnavigated the globe by foot by now at least twice.

I'm looking up at the blue sky, at the edge of a fluffy cloud and a book bird flies very slowly into my field of vision and out the other side. There's a lot of noise but it is all contracted into the tiniest space and I am travelling along a skein of time so thin and flimsy I fear I may lose it. I'd reach out and touch it but I may lose my grip and fall. My grip on what? You may well ask. Hamlet lost his grip, I believe, on reality, on sanity. He went mad.

Only crazy people pull stunts like this and I'm not crazy. Hamlet did what he had to do; it was a compulsion to avenge his father's death. I know that I have to do it too, for him and for her. I want revenge but I'm not crazy. I see ghosts but I'm still sane. I'm clinging to the back of a vehicle doing- quick calculation using the five-eighths rule-30 miles an hour in the middle of the city whilst attempting to arrest a trio of kidnappers, but I am still in full possession of my faculties. It's just this compulsion I have to discover the truth and the nagging feeling I've missed something. This weird feeling that something, some great wrong has to be avenged and the answer lies back there in my childhood. Or way ahead in the future.

Something's coming.
It's a bomb or a gun, a loud banging noise anyway.

I have to let go. I think I'm hitting the ground. I think I'm in pain.

Ray.

Who am I?


8
"If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden."

TS Elliot Burnt Norton

Have you ever had one of those dreams that seem so real you don't want it ever to end? In this dream you feel like you are fully living your life and that time is stretching on and on out of sight. There's no ending to it like the circle of the world. There are points in the dream when you can make time stand still and pause to look around and analyse and ask yourself, now why did I say that? Why did I do this? In this type of dream you can retrace your steps and take another path, remake a day or an hour or a significant minute. Undo all your mistakes. Recreate your own history. You can take a long overview of your life and judge it. You can say, "I did not make the right decision there," and change it. You can change all the outcomes and make all the might have beens a reality. You can right all the wrongs, fix everything that was broken, and prevent all the tragedies of your life. You can make for yourself a happier childhood.

Don't feel sorry for me because I'm not that pathetic. No, I am the sum of my parts, the result of my personal history. If I had had a mother I would now be a different adult. I would be a grown up who was not an orphan. I would be complete. Do you agree? No one has the answer to that. You know they say that the relationship a boy has with his mother colors his future relationships with women and that children base their own ideas about marriage and partnerships on what they observe in their parents' marriage.

My grandmother did not care for psychologists. She listened to the radio a lot, discussion programmes, and intellectual stuff, not music. Except classical music of course. Her favorite radio station was the BBC World Service. She thought it had authority.

So where does that leave me? I think the word for it now is "dysfunctional." I often wonder if my problem with Victoria is rooted in my childhood. She had black hair like my mother but that is where the resemblance ended. My mother was gentle and considerate and loving. I know I have been looking for my mother all my life but Victoria was not the answer. I thought she was at first, out there in the frozen wilderness: a wild exotic untameable mystery woman.

The snow and cold can make you mad. I think it drove us both a little crazy. I made a decision then, which I never regretted until now. In my dreams the "what if " becomes a truth, it becomes a piece of my make-believe history. If I am, like you are, the product of my experiences, then in my dreams I re create myself. My mother does not leave me, I marry Julie or someone like her, I am posted somewhere familiar like Tuktoyuktuk or Alert and we produce grandchildren for my parents. My father is never implicated in Gerard's schemes...I do not form a relationship with Victoria. I never come to Chicago. I never meet Ray or Francesca or Mrs Vecchio, or Jack or Louis or the Lieutenant, or Elaine, or Stephanie, or Jerome, or Mr Mustafi or Esther Pearson or...

Maybe there is a meaning to my reality after all. Maybe what happened was meant to be and we should not interfere with the past. Those people I met in Chicago are very important in my life; they enriched it. I know they did.
I have a fulfilling life here.

So no, don't feel any pity for me.
I'm fine really. I will be fine.

There's just that one thing I have to know...it's just a feeling I have in my dreams.

9
It's warm, I don't want to open my eyes, what I want to do is lay here and let the warmth enfold me. The pain is a problem. It appears to be located in my back, all over my back in fact, and my legs are sore and aching too. Arms feel like they are tied down. Why would someone tie my arms down? Can't scratch that itch on my eyebrow.
That was some dream.
Okay then, I'll do it, I'll open them, just stop shouting at me okay? Whoever you are just stop shouting.
It's bright, too bright. You open your eyes in obedience and what happens? Someone tries to blind you with a bright light.
"...feeling any discomfort, Constable Fraser?" Discomfort, I feel pain.
Getting a reply out is more difficult so I nod. Ouch that hurts. Head hurts, back hurts, legs won't work. What is this? A memory? Am I in hospital?

Okay so I've been shot in the back, no I don't remember. I have been in intensive care for how long? Okay. Physiotherapy in time, limited mobility for a while. I nod, yes I understand.
Just leave me alone, I feel...desolate. I feel like I've lost something very important.

Time has passed; I did not notice it at all. I think I must spend a lot of time sleeping. Every time I wake I feel stronger but I still can't get out of this warm bed. I think people have visited me. I seem to remember my father and Ray and many nurses. Strange how time runs slowly when you want it to run fast.

At the moment I think it is passing quickly when I want it to stay still for a while and catch its breath. There's a newspaper on the nightstand with a date on it. Last time I looked at it the date was two days earlier. The clock seems to change every time I turn my head away from it.

See what I mean. It slips by you then sneaks up from behind catching you unawares. Where did those two hours go?

I did remember something today. I think it was today but it could just as easily have been yesterday. I remembered a train and I remembered who shot me. Isn't that odd that I should remember his name even though I never saw him do it? It was my good friend Ray. Now I only have to work out why. I'm sure he had good reason. He never does anything without fair reason and he always warns you before he fires. So what was it I was doing that was wrong?

"You'll remember in good time," the nurses tell me cheerily as they go about their duties, bathing me, administering medication, changing drips, feeding me. Maybe, I think to myself, there are some things best forgotten. They always smile at me, painted on grins, whilst I feel miserable. One of them reminds me of my mother. She could be my mother, she looks the age she might be now if she weren't...gone. Did my mother have any friends? If so I never met them.

I feel like I am a child again whilst I am here unable to look after my own most basic needs. I long for the touch of her hand on my fevered brow, wiping away the fear, wiping away the pain. She used to feed me and bath me. I keep thinking about my books held together with ribbon, flying away out of sight. Isn't it strange how when you are ill memories assail you but they are never the important ones.

The physical therapist has made her first visit. Her name is Jill and she is quite pleasant. I don't know why she was interested in all my scars; I was embarrassed. I like her despite her nosiness and she seems to be good at her job. I don't know if she can get my legs to work, I'd much rather lie here and look out of the window.

I believe Ray visits every day; I'm more awake to appreciate it now. He brings me newspapers and books and treats for Dief.

Our relationship seems to have changed; he is distant for some reason. He is very quiet with me and does not joke as much as he used to. I think he is sad. I feel I let him down but I just don't have the energy to tell him. So the silence lies between us like a frozen river. I don't blame him; it was me that made the mistakes. I should have known better. I let myself be duped. And she still got away. If I ever do something as stupid as that again I would expect him to shoot me...again. It's no less than I deserve.

Time has flown by. I'm walking now, just about. I had to if Jill were to be saved. Unfortunately Ray got shot. It's not serious but he has to stay in for observation and has the room next to mine. For some reason we are friends again, and I believe I am forgiven. As soon as I am fully mobile we are going to the cabin to fix it up. I am looking forward to that, to showing Ray my world. Going home.

10
Another sunny morning and I wake up feeling heavy headed as if someone has hit me over the head with a book. Still I've got to get up and start the day fresh. I have a late shift at the consulate and Ray wants to me to help him with some of his typing. He is behind in his paperwork again and blames me for it. He says that if I didn't keep dragging him off on tangents (I believe he was thinking of the time I was an ear witness to a crime in the Chinese community at that particular moment) he would be able to get all his reports written up. So I guess he is right when he says I owe him.

I'm on automatic pilot this morning as if I can't shake off a dream, shake off sleep. I'll have a cold bath and shave followed by a cup of bark tea then I will be ready to face the day. It takes me several cups of tea to face the Inspector after what happened on the train. Even though it is some time ago now I can still feel that burning kiss and the draft of air on the top of my head. What were we thinking? We could have so easily lost balance and fallen to our deaths.
I don't know why she ordered me to forget about the incident and it worries me that I have disobeyed her orders and shall continue to do so. I remonstrate myself for it regularly.

I bet my father never disobeyed a direct order from his commanding officer. I bet he wasn't ever in love with his commanding officer. I often wonder why he didn't remarry after my mother went. For a long while I never even thought about it, children of that age don't, do they? Years later I heard my grandmother berate him for "not making an honest woman" of someone. Those words only gained significance when I had the maturity to put them in perspective. By then I was an adult myself, beginning my training for the RCMP, and I asked my father why he hadn't remarried. Surely he was lonely. He turned sorrowful eyes to me and said something I will never forget. He told me that for some people there would only ever be one love, one soul mate. He could never stop loving my mother and never would and no one would ever replace her. Even though she was gone he still felt her presence and indeed, often talked to her when he was out patrolling hundreds of miles of desolate snowfields. Often when I think of my father now I picture him, gruff-faced, a furred brown speck in endless whiteness talking to a ghost.

I imagine myself there with him. I am smiling a peaceful smile of someone who has found home. I talk to her too, tell her my hopes and dreams and the cases I have been working on. How much I love her still. It starts to snow and I put out my tongue to catch the coldness on its tip and catch a strand of fur along with the flake. I laugh and my parents laugh along with me and we start to sing together. Usually the song we sing is "Northwest Passage" because I seem to have known that one all my life. I think a lot of the appeal in it for both myself and my father was the fact that our name was in it; the roaring Fraser. The characters in the song were my heroes, as a child I devoured stories of Mackenzie, Franklin and Thomson and wanted to follow their tracks through the savage land to the Beaufort Sea.

My favorite lines were always these: "Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage," and "A long forgotten lonely cairn of stones," I wanted, still do, to make that warm line to find the reaching out hand and the gravestones. Morbid, I know, but wouldn't it be an adventure?

The greatest adventure of anyone's life, to make a northwest passage to the sea.

11
We went to get the lunches, Ray and I. Sandwiches from the deli in a paper package. There was a large tuna on white for Welsh, turkey on wheat for Huey and pastrami on rye for Elaine.
The sidewalk was damp, it had recently rained but the day itself was reasonably bright and not at all cold.

Things happened quickly after I bumped into the woman and apologised. It surprised me that she peered at me curiously over her sunglasses. Then the alarm began to ring and realising a crime was in progress I ran into the jewelry store with Ray following only to be confronted by three armed female diamond thieves in Islamic dress.

Ray says that I have an uncanny ability to increase his workload. It's true that I always seem to be around when crimes are being committed. It isn't a coincidence at all, I rationalise it by saying that with the huge number of crimes being committed in any one hour in Chicago, it really isn't unusual that a person with acute sight and hearing would notice at least one. Whenever he brings up that subject I remind him that I always solve the crimes I stumble upon. With his help of course.

When he feels really grouchy he brings up the addicted doctor case. "Only you, Frasier, only you could happen upon a crime whilst immobilised in a hospital bed." Then he stops before we remember exactly why I was in that bed in the first place. The guilt is there in his eyes; I see it often but never dare refer to it. I know he still feels badly about it. It was a long time before he seriously teased me again, he was always afraid to hurt my feelings, to hurt me in any way.

The thieves made good their escape with the manager as hostage, but I was quick enough to pursue and catch up with them as they powered up their van. I clung to the tailgate and attempted to clear the dirt from the number plate in order to commit it to memory. I could hear Ray shouting in concern as he ran to keep up, "Frasier!". He really shouldn't worry so much; I'm used to leaping at moving objects: animate or inanimate. He should know that by now. I know he is trying to protect me, he doesn't want me hurt...again.

The swerving of the vehicle as it turned corners sharply made hanging on a challenge for me. But I have a remarkably effective grip and I managed to make eye contact with the hostage, a very scared man, and nod at him in reassurance. I couldn't gauge my success in this instant as I was diverted into attempting to secure my own delicate position on the back of the accelerating van.

Which brings me to where I am now, clinging on for dear life again. The van makes a left turn and for a second I am holding on with one hand whilst my legs flail and my boots graze the road. A silly thought flits across my mind; will the Inspector expect me to buy another pair if these are damaged? After all, as my shift does not start for another hour, I am not exactly on Consular duty. I glance up and see the clouds again as they float gently into my field of vision and it is like I am living in slow motion. I see my books fly slowly past high in the sky on their way to the river and I feel an un-named sorrow. I lift my free hand to my face and look at my wet fingers as momentum pulls them away.

My tenuous grip loosens. I feel the van rolling away from me and see the regretful face of the hostage as his eyes track my body's progress down to the concrete. My head hits the road hard. I stare up at the clouds and wonder at the vision of my schoolbooks still tracing their twenty eight year old trajectory.

So many mysteries.

So many unanswered questions.

Uncle Tiberius died wrapped in cabbage leaves.

How did my mother die?

"I'm fine."

Is this how I will die?

12
"Between the idea/ and the reality/Between the motion /and the act /Falls the shadow
TS Eliot "The Hollow Men"

5 am. I wake to another sunny Chicago morning. I check the calendar and remember that it is my birthday.
I stopped counting them many years ago.

That doesn't mean I am not going to celebrate it, because I am. I have arranged to take the early shift at the consulate after which I will have lunch with Inspector Thatcher (at her request) In the afternoon Ray and I will play basketball with a group of youths he has been helping followed by dinner at a Chinese restaurant of my choice. After that we may go to a movie. See I am making an effort to differentiate this day.
After my ablutions I check my birthday cards. There are 12 of them in my mail box. The generosity of people I know never ceases to amaze me. I find it very touching that even Jesse and Jerome remembered. Sure the card appears to have been torn from a box and it is written in pencil in childlike scrawl but the sentiment is all too genuine. Mental note to self: teach Jesse and Jerome some handwriting skills. Better still, set up a school for the homeless. It's summer so I wouldn't need a hall to teach in, out on the street would suffice. They would benefit greatly from improved literacy and numeracy skills. I'd need some schoolbooks. Ones that won't fly away from my grasp, ones that won't remind me of the past.

I put on my newly pressed red uniform and pull on my freshly waxed boots taking care over the lacing. I really want to appear perfect today, in honor of my mother. I think I already mentioned how much I think of her on my birthday. It was her birthday too. Willy will be here soon to look after Dief for the day. I want this lunch to be perfect; nothing must go wrong.

It is nearly the end of my shift and she hasn't come out of her office yet. She has been in there all morning, busy. I have been processing some complaint forms and organising the replacement of lost passports which is routine work, not at all stimulating. I long for some conversation, to set my mind to a task, problem solving preferably in an active manner.

Despite the length of time I have been doing this job, I still can't get used to being stuck behind a desk. Even sentry duty is preferable. She hasn't had me doing that for months. I think I am growing on her and irritating her less. It has been even longer since she last fired me. We've had coffee and lunch since then, and talked and kissed and ...not that yet. We have a very strange relationship, it isn't what you might call conventional but then she is my superior and it would be a very serious breach of protocol if we were to... So we don't. But sometimes I have these dreams about her and I really truly can't help it. I try; I do try so hard to resist them, to resist the her in my dreams. It's no good, never any good.

I wanted to look good for her today; I even had my haircut yesterday and oiled it with extra oil today, something from home, something she likes. The waiting is agonising.

There is a large card on my desk but I am afraid to open it. Do you think she made it herself? I have held the pink envelope in my hands several times and felt its weight. I could bore you with how many grams it weighs... I have sniffed at it, it smells of her. You know I have such a keen olefactory system that I could easily earm a living as a perfumier, yet this smell eludes me, in fact, her scent always confounds my senses. Is it something she is able to do deliberately or is it just pheromones?

She can always tell if I am wearing scent. I know I have only that one instance to rely on but all the same I don't appear to confuse her sense of smell at all. Victoria always smelt very strongly of French perfume, very sensuous, erotic French perfume.

It's midday and my shift is over. I straighten my desk and pick up her card and wait for her by the door.

13
"Between the conception/And the creation/Between the emotion/ And the response/Falls the shadow"
TS Eliot "The Hollow Men"

In the confines of my coffin everything I am is forgotten.

My heart is beating faster than a runaway train, beating against the walls, my hands clutch something silky and I tighten my grasp on the fabric and rub it between my thumb and forefinger.

Satin.

Such a vivid dream.

My breath is laboring, my eyes tight shut refuse to obey the command to open.
I feel moistness on my lips and a glossy residue is left on them as the pressure releases.

Like a kiss.

In the prison of my body.

The world is white.

In the distance there is the sound of church music. Someone is playing a mournful tune on the organ. Tears pour from my eyes, I am unable to prevent them from salting my cold skin.

My eyes open at last, sticky from tears.

The world is still white.

My vision begins to clear and I can breathe more easily as if someone has unwrapped me from binding cloths. Swaddling bands or funeral shroud?
A gentle face above me smiles. A woman's face. She looks relieved.

Is this life?

Am I born yet?


14
"Between the desire/ and the spasm /between the potency /and the existence /between the essence /and the descent /falls the Shadow"
TS Eliot

We are in a deli called Rueben's, a short walk from the Consulate and so far things are proceeding very well. Her manner has been courteous and even friendly. I believe she is attempting to leave her Inspector persona at the office this lunchtime in favor of her "woman" persona.
I am very optimistic about the outcome.
We are having a light lunch; for me a deli sandwich, for her a shrimp salad. I gaze at her hungrily as she spears the seafood on a tine and angles it into her carmine lined mouth. Her lips part just wide enough for the fork to ingress and I glimpse the tip of a succulent tongue.
Believe me, she is all pheromones today.

She pauses and stares down intently at my plate then up to meet my eyes.

"Aren't you hungry, Constable?"

I don't need to glance at my plate to know she is referring to my untouched meal; instead I meet her gaze steadily and reply, "very."

I see she understands my innuendo and does not even twitch. Unmoved she lowers her fork and repeats the whole gut wrenching motion again, with flourish.

How can she tempt me like this? Put me through such gorgeous agony? I would not miss it for the world. She smiles at me.

I am mesmerised. Time has stopped running.

My heart is beating like a runaway. Train.

She picks up a napkin and wipes her lips in a precise and slow manner. I groan inwardly at the smear of red trailed across the white linen. Like a trail of blood in the snow.

She dropped like a sack of potatoes. In the snow.

What? What was that?

"Fraser?"

I shake my head and lift its heaviness and see she is still there. We are still in this place, the two of us, eating this unusual lunch. Her hand rests in the air, in the space between her shoulder and the white tablecloth, the blanched napkin pinched between thumb and finger, dangles there enticingly, the blood stain hidden now. It falls gracefully to the tabletop and rests besides her plate like a crumpled polar bear cub.

We lock eyes and I see in them the hunger reflected from mine. I lean towards her. She edges a little closer.
Her scent is overwhelming.

I clear my throat. "May I?"

She smiles.

I do.



15
"Time oh give me time /and time makes lovers feel /like they've got something real." Boy George

Margaret.

I know she is near, I can smell her. I can't see her. I can't see. I can't hear.

Time has stopped running. I'm in between time.

Last I remember the dogs were singing and Buck was howling and the fire was warm.

Her skin was satin, her lips were glossy, she said, "I will."

The sky was sparkling, the skins were furry, the fire was crackling, her eyes were shining, I said I was sorry.

The moose was pungent, Ray was frightened, the snow was icy, my breath was frosty, her lips were parting, I said, "I love you."

The Mounties were snoring, the moon was smiling, snowflakes were floating, our hearts were pumping, our tongues were meeting, her hands were roaming, my voice was fading.

We were loving.
Our limbs were entwining, our breath was increasing, we shouted in pleasure, my vision was failing, my mother was near.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My Dad said, "I feel your mother."

I said to him, "You are almost transparent."

I followed the path of schoolbooks, a paper trail through the ice. I knew I was getting closer.

I followed for days in hunger and in anticipation, and in sorrow. I was going to gain something precious only to lose it again.

Then.
Time stood still.

I found Dief in a mineshaft.
I'm in a mineshaft now. Muldoon is here too. I think we fell. Yes, we fell. He wants to kill me.
Dad is near but far away at the same time. My heart never felt so wooden.

Then I see her. She is not like the fairy creature I imagined. She is solid and fur clad, lots of layers. Are they the clothes she was wearing when she died? That would make sense.
Although her face is half obscured by her parka hood, I can tell she is smiling. Smiling at her son. I have a mother.

I can't help myself; I break into a huge grin.

I have a mother.

Mum? I whisper in disbelief. It is unbelievable. She strokes my face and looks at me with pride. I can tell she is pleased with what she sees.
There is no such thing as time. In that moment there is no time.
And she turns, and she clasps my father's arm. He looks at her with such joy and radiance I choke back a sob.

Here is an answer. Here is what true love is like.

And he did not need to get revenge; he did not need to stoop to Muldoon's base level.
They glance over their shoulders at me in unison. They smile identical smiles. They fade through the wall, together.

All is as it should be.
Time starts again.

I am falling.

Part 16

"..human kind/Cannot bear very much reality./Time past and time future/what might have been and what has been/Point to one end..."
TS Eliot Burnt Norton


We left the deli together. I used her cellular phone (she recharges it regularly now) to cancel my afternoon with Ray. We took a taxi to her apartment. I had only been there twice before and was pleased to find no surprises there. It was like her, clean, orderly, Spartan, no clutter. It was as if she had purchased everything en masse from a catalogue for designer apartments. No personal objects. No photos. Except for the bedroom.

A pile of books on the nightstand.

We wasted no time. We had wasted too much time for too long. We divested ourselves of our clothing before we hit the bed.

Satin sheets. White.
The smell of fresh spring flowers.
Our passion was long lasting. I told her I loved her.
Afterwards we lay and stared at each other, memorising every feature.
I walked out of her apartment in a dream.

She followed. She shouted.


I am falling.

I look into the sky and there I see a clutch of books at the apex of their flight. My eyes open wide in wonder. Then they plummet faster and faster and hit the earth with a thud.

I scream.

My head hits the concrete. Hard.

I call for Ray. I call for Margaret.

White, unending brightness.
I can't see. I can't hear. I can't feel.

Time is all mixed up.

17
"The still point of the turning world........./where past and future are gathered......"
TS Eliot Burnt Norton

"What is it you really want Benton?"

"You know, Dad, you know what I want. I want to see her grave. Until I see it I won't ever really stop looking."

"It's a long way and you look in poor condition. Are you sure you are up to it, son?"

I'm sure, I nod. "I am positive."

"Well come on then, don't hang about, open your eyes."

I blink and they open to a glaring whiteness. We are far north near six mile canyon. Why did he bury her so far away from me? I turn to ask him but he is gone. There is some sort of structure up ahead so I struggle through the flurries towards it. I notice then that I am fully clad for extreme weather right down to snowshoes. As I approach it I see that the structure is a plinth about a metre and a half high. I brush a layer of snow away from the top and see a photograph of a young vibrant woman and beneath it an inscription hewn with a hunting knife. Reading it is made difficult for each time I smooth away the snow another layer takes its place. I persevere.

"Caroline, much beloved wife of Bob Fraser, cruelly murdered, never forgotten..." The rest has been worn away by the elements. I collapse against the base of the rock and heaviness descends on me and I weep as my six-year-old self had done over thirty years ago.

My eyes begin to close, lulled shut by the whirling wind. I don't feel the cold any more, don't feel anything but an aching and a longing. There is a smell though-spring flowers and I think in the distance I can hear a voice. But it's not a voice I recognise, not Ray, not Stan, not Margaret, and besides they are calling for Mr Fraser. That isn't me. My name is-

"Benton"

"Benny"

"Fraser"

"Constable!"

A command. I have to respond to that voice. I try to open my eyes but the lids are far too heavy and require too much effort. I hear hushed voices and movement around me and the sounds of machinery. If I didn't know better I would say there was the distinct odor of hospital disinfectant and medicines. My body is leaden but I manage with supreme effort to move a hand until it meets resistance. The voices begin again and sound excited. It's too much.

I'm going away again.

18
It's my birthday. I have seven cards. They are there on the nightstand. There are other cards, more than can count. They are Get Well cards. I'm in a hospital bed.

This time it works. Time works. It has sorted itself out and found the right order.

This afternoon I woke up on my birthday. I opened my eyes and saw them all; smiling faces.
There was Ray, the real Ray Vecchio who had been so much with me whilst I...slept.
There was Stan, the pretend Ray Vecchio who traveled with me as I...slept.
And there was Margaret...who loved me while I...slept.

I shuffled time back into place.
My last memory was leaving her apartment, which was what really happened, she corroborated that, but it wasn't my birthday. No it was three weeks ago and I have been in a coma for all that time. Time is strange isn't it? The way it twists and confuses you.

A coma.

Which bits were real, which were memory and which were fantasies? I'll never know. The blow to my head was such that I will never remember who did it; never remember the pain of it. Neither will I ever be able to sort out my memories. So when I enquired of you, is the past we create for ourselves any less valid than the one we experienced in reality? I was not being whimsical. It was a question asked in earnest. Which of those experiences was a reality I invented in my dream state?

I have my father's journals and there are people with whom I shared experiences; I can ask them about some of my "memories."
I can't ask my father, I know I won't see him again.

So many unanswerable questions. It is frustrating but I'll live with it. I look up at her; she is clasping my hand and has been crying quietly for some time. She said she never wanted me to leave her again, that she would never let me out of her sight. She was devastated when she thought she could lose me forever.

So I said I would.

Never leave her...always love her...always keep in her sight.

I'll live through all of it with Margaret at my side.

The End

Thanks for travelling with me this far.

Feedback to Redhol@aol.com