Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 22
Walter was unable to remember what had happened to the Rangers after they’d set course for Earth. That was last week. This week was a blur, and he didn’t know why. He set the paper aside and walked to church. Afterward, he stayed and talked with his parents and his brother who, like him, always went to the early service in the summer because the church’s air conditioning wasn’t the best. They reminded him that they were having dinner together at Cappy’s Crabs in Ocean City, and that his brother would pick him up later. Walter hadn’t remembered, and couldn’t remember putting it on his cell phone’s calendar though there it was, as plain as day.
When Walter went to work Monday, he listened with amazement to Mr. Ruben telling everyone about the wild stunt that had gone wrong at the Comic-Con Saturday. On his break, he went online and read the Ranger episodes he had somehow missed the previous week. He laughed at how Kelso had chosen “Stickle” as the Earth contact’s name. He smiled at how Cartoon Walter looked so much like him. That afternoon, he clicked the “Approve” button on a computer form to okay the waiver of attorney fees for someone named Vivien Benoit, Esq., who had represented a Leonard Genischewitz in his claim for benefits. She had signed the pro bono form the previous week, and now that the case was closed, it could be closed as well. “Funny names,” he thought. Funny, he couldn’t remember handling that case, but he handled a lot of cases.
The Galactic Rangers action figures migrated upstairs to a box in the closet where Walter kept the overflow of his collection. There weren’t any other figures he wanted for company while he ate his bowl of cereal for breakfast, so his windowsill became home to a philodendron. He took down the Ranger poster from the upstairs bathroom and packed away all the comic strips he had cut out and saved.
Walter’s life went on, but it didn’t feel normal to him anymore. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. He went to work the following day, and the day after that, and for many days until summer was over and the leaves began to turn. He finally finished fixing that broken screen door. He earned a high quality pay increase award at work for his diligence and performance above and beyond the requirements of his job. He bought and installed a shade on his bedroom window to block his neighbor’s floodlights. He accomplished much, but what he couldn’t seem to do no matter how hard he tried was shake the uneasy feeling that woke him up at night and made him go around the house checking the doors and windows. Maybe it was that he had found his TV and computer in a puddle of melted metal and plastic in his living room that Saturday night when he’d wandered home, unable to remember why he had gone for a walk so late in the first place. The insurance adjustor had said that faulty wiring in the surge protector caused it. Maybe it was that he had found a Prius key fob in his pocket that same night when he’d gone upstairs to get undressed and ready for bed. He didn’t even own a car, let alone a Prius. Maybe it was that he had found a pile of red and yellow bits of paper under his bed the next day when he was cleaning. “That’s a lot of maybes,” he told himself.
When he bought a pair of bright green socks one day at Drissel’s Department Store, he finally sought the advice of his dad who told him that he was suffering from burnout. Nearly four years without a vacation? Definitely burnout. He was working too hard, his dad said. Take a vacation, his dad said. He should go somewhere different, somewhere far away, somewhere he’d never been.
Walter took his father’s advice, as he usually did, and scheduled a vacation in late fall to a place he’d always wanted to go — France. He wasn’t really sure why he’d always wanted to go there, but for some reason he thought he always had. He couldn’t remember anything special about it other than that Paris was there, and the D-Day invasion had happened there, and in grade school they used to sing Sur le Pont d'Avignon. That was about France, wasn’t it? There was just a certain appeal to it, or so he told his friends when they asked him, “Why France, Walter?”
Bill Ruben wholeheartedly approved the month off, happy that Walter was finally going to use some of his accrued leave, and his friends at the office threw a bon voyage party for him on his last day before going away. They all chipped in and bought a box of French pastries from McMillan’s Bakery. Someone brought in French Roast coffee, and they made café au lait. Marilyn wanted to give him a send-off French kiss, but Walter turned that down. He preferred his kisses from Hershey.
His parents drove him to New York the next morning. On the way, his dad argued with him over who would pay for the tolls, short-term parking, and gas. His mom spent the drive going over her list of things he needed to bring, just in case he had forgotten something and they needed to stop somewhere to get it. Passport, ChapStick, credit card, traveler’s checks in Francs, sunblock for when he got to the French Riviera, a pocket French-English dictionary, his good khaki pants and a nice shirt for the day his tour group would be going to the Louvre, at least a week’s worth of underwear so he wouldn’t have to do laundry so often, his camera, and so on and so on. Walter yes ma’am’d them all.
They got to the airport, his father paid for parking, and they left him with the tour group director inside the International Terminal. She got him checked in, and he waited for two hours with the rest of the travelers in the lounge until they boarded the Air France A380 Airbus bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
One of the things his father had said when he was booking the trip was, “Get a window seat or you’ll never get any sleep,” so Walter had. His seat was 48K, a window seat in a group of three on the lower deck in the economy section. When he found it, however, an older woman was parked in it. His dad had warned him about airplane squatters and how they just took whatever seat they wanted when they didn’t get a good one because they had booked too late. You had to be polite but firm with them, his dad said.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Walter. “I think you’re in my seat.”
The woman looked him squarely in the eye and with the deadpan expression of a news anchor announcing the start of World War III, said, “I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”
“What?” Walter said.
“I was just joking,” she laughed, getting up and sliding into the aisle to let Walter in. “I was hoping it wasn’t taken. I booked late and got stuck with a middle seat. Guess I won’t be sleeping this trip.”
Walter looked at his ticket. “That’s what my dad said.”
“Smart man. Guess that makes you smart, too, for listening to him.”
Walter sighed, “Here, you take it. I’ll sit in the middle.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. I haven’t been sleeping well anyway.”
“Well, Boy Scout, you just did your good deed for the day. Much obliged.”
She slid into the window seat, leaned back, and closed her eyes. “That’s nice,” she said. “You’re a real peach, kid.”
Walter sat down in the middle seat, studied the plastic card with the emergency landing procedures on it, made sure his seat belt was buckled, checked for an unused barf bag in the seat pocket, and took two Dramamine.
“Where are you headed?” the woman asked.
“France.”
“I know that, you goof. We’re on the same plane. Where in France?”
“I’m with a tour group. I think we’re going south to the Riviera first. I have the itinerary somewhere in my bag, but I checked it.”
“Aparillo Tours?”
“Yes, that’s the one,” he said.
“Well I’ll be a drunk skunk, so are we. What are the odds of that?”
“Oh, about 16,852,456,087 to one,” Walter said.
“Where’d you come up with that number?”
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head.”
“Is this your first time flying?” she asked.
“Is it that obvious?” Walter rechecked the emergency instructions for the nearest exit.
The woman patted him on the hand and then began fumbling through her purse. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ve flown everywhere. It’s as safe as walking to the store.” When her hand came out of the bag with a pack of chewing gum in it, Walter noticed a shiny object inside among the lipstick, tissues, and other odds and ends. It looked like a metal potato.
“Here, have a stick of gum. It’ll help,” she said.
“Thanks. I’m Walter, by the way.”
“Millie,” she said, shaking his hand.
“Are you with your husband?”
“Husband? Heck no. I’m with my daughter. Here she is now. Hey, Vivy, guess what? Walter here is going to show us the sights in France.”
Walter looked up at the young woman in the aisle. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She had on one blue and one green tennis shoe and was holding a carton of chocolate milk and smiling. She had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. One was a pale blue like the sky on a day when you have nothing better to do than lie on your back in the yard watching the clouds roll by, and the other, when the light caught it just right, was a pale green that reminded Walter of his favorite shooter in his marble collection.
The End
Other Works by Larry Enright
If you enjoyed this story, please consider Larry Enright’s other works of fiction. All are available in both eBook and paperback. Samples can be found online at amazon.com and at his website:
http://www.larryenright.com
Four Years from Home is the story of Tom Ryan, the firstborn of five in an Irish Catholic family. Smart and acerbic, he called himself the future king of the Ryans. Harry, the youngest, was the family’s shining star. Sensitive, and caring, he was destined for the priesthood until something changed, and he abandoned his vocation. When he left for college, he left for good. He never called. He rarely wrote. It was as if he had ceased to exist and the shining star had been but a passing comet in the night sky.
The story begins on Christmas during Harry’s senior year at college. The Ryans have gathered for another bittersweet holiday without Harry. When an unexpected gift arrives, Tom must make a reluctant journey of discovery and self-discovery into a mystery that can only end in tragedy. Four Years from Home defines brotherly love in a darkly humorous and poignant tale told by an unlikable skeptic, Tom Ryan.
A Cape May Diamond was the recipient of a 2013 Independent Publishers Book Award in eBook fiction. Sequel to the best seller, Four Years from Home,it picks up the Tom Ryan story two years after its tragic ending in the discovery of the fate of Tom’s youngest brother, Harry. It is not required that you first read Four Years from Home before A Cape May Diamond, since it is recapped in brief in the first chapter of the sequel.
The result of a chance encounter, A Cape May Diamond can best be described as a story of life, love, and a journey of a thousand years.
This is a story of how things never quite work out the way you think. You might find a love story in here somewhere. You might not. You might find a message hidden in one of the nickel pop bottles collected by the beachcombers from some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. You might even find a little mystery, but life is a mystery, isn’t it?
A King in a Court of Fools begins with a book — The Book of Tom — a journal writing assignment from Tom Ryan’s sixth-grade teacher, Sister Jeanne Lorette. That’s what she called it. Tom called it punishment. In it, he chronicles the adventures of the Caswell Gang, a group of siblings and friends with two things in common — their love of adventure and their allegiance to Tom, their king.
The 1950s book was misplaced a long time ago, and all the children have since grown up, but Harry, Tom’s youngest brother, still remembers it and retells for us one of its stories in a nostalgic, heartwarming, and humorous way that will have you wishing for adventure, too.
Buffalo Nickel Christmas is the story of a special day. It begins with an ordinary boy in an ordinary world, but as a monster storm approaches, and Christmas Eve finally arrives, the boy discovers that he is anything but ordinary, and that the world is a very magical place indeed.
You will meet some unusual people and hear unbelievable things. You might even see a wizard and a king or two. Sixteen forevers will pass in this book. That’s a very long time, and many magical things can happen when it’s sixteen forevers and still no Christmas. Whatever you do, don’t listen to that little voice inside your head that tells you it’s illogical, that it doesn’t make sense. Listen for the whistling teakettle and be ready with your wish.
12|21|12 - The world ends for someone every day. One day it will end for everyone.
Larry Enright, Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers
