Endless Blue Horizons

by Jack Phillips Lowe

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

“John must have told me some time.”

“No. Emily said it was their secret. He never would’ve told anyone.”

“Emily told you.”

“That’s different. We were friends.”

“John and I were friends. Men talk too, you know.”

“You never liked John, not like I liked Emily. You used to call John a ‘dumb Bohunk’.”

“He was a dumb Bohunk. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like him.”

“You never liked him and he never would’ve told you their secret.”

“Christ, Helen-”

“Don’t say ‘Christ’ like that!”

“Whatever. Why do you always play these games when I’m driving? You wonder why we don’t take vacations. I can’t concentrate with you grilling me. Who knows where I heard the word? Maybe old Mrs. Hoidas spilled the beans. She was the neighborhood snoop.”

“I don’t believe that. Emily swore I was the only one she ever told. Unless...”

“Unless?”

“You found out about it in some other way.”

Isburg conked himself on the forehead with the heel of his palm .“Oh hell! That’s just perfect! Perfect!”

“What?” Emily reached over and put her hand on Isburg’s shoulder.

“Quit gabbing and look!”

They pulled up to a solid row of cars. Further down the highway was a large orange sign that read RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD.

Isburg rolled down the window and stuck his head out. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this traffic jam must be three miles long! We’ll never get there now! Why, oh, why couldn’t we have just sent flowers?”

“Stop blaspheming. You insisted on taking the highway,” said Helen. She opened her purse, removed a tin of lip balm and applied it carefully with her pinkie.

* * *

Isburg drummed on the steering wheel with his thumbs. Helen sat and gazed out the window. Every so often, the traffic jam let them inch forward.

“Look at the time,” said Isburg, shaking the wrist his watch was on. “It’s already four o’clock. We’ve been sitting in this mess for half an hour!”

Helen kept her face to the window.

“We’ll never get there. I wanted to breeze in, pay our respects and breeze out again, before the rain and the rush hour. Now, we’ll be stuck in the thick of them both. Thanks, Helen. We could’ve handled this with a phone call, but you had to be there, in person, to say goodbye to someone you haven’t seen in over ten years. Thanks a lot!”

Helen did not answer. Isburg shrugged. He twiddled a few knobs on the car’s air conditioning system, peeking at Helen all the while. He adjusted the little air vents on either side of his seat so they were blowing directly on him. Finally, he turned to his wife.

“All right, let’s have it. What’s bugging you now? After all that witty banter, has the cat stolen your tongue?”

Helen turned to Isburg. “No. I’m wondering how you found out about that word.”

Isburg closed his eyes. “God, you’re still on that! Let it go, will you? What difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference. I can’t understand why my husband knows a neighbor-woman’s innermost secret.”

“You’re right, Helen! I know what you’re getting at. The secret’s out, nobody can fool you! For years, Emily and I were passionate lovers! Can’t slip anything past you!”

“No, I didn’t imply-”

“You’re right. I knew what the word was, because I read it every Friday night as I nuzzled her breasts! You never found out, because you were out playing bingo, and we had fruity Frank playing lookout at the front door. In fact, Frank was mine! He was my son-”

Helen reached over and slapped Isburg’s face.

Traffic had ground to a standstill. Isburg stepped out of the car and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Helen sat in the car wringing her hands.

Isburg hobbled back and forth. “It’s going to rain,” he mumbled. “It’s going to pour. What does that little punk know? ‘It’s clear and sunny’. Ha! The leg aches, so it’s going to rain.”

Helen cracked her window. “Richard, get back in here. People are staring.”

Isburg climbed back into the car. He looked at his watch.

“Richard, stop checking the time and look at me. I know that quiver in your voice. I want you to be honest with me.”

“Helen, forget it. We’re just upsetting ourselves.”

“How could I? Out of the blue, you blurt out an intimate secret you couldn’t possibly have known. Why don’t I deserve an explanation?”

“Because you’re a digger, that’s why! Always digging in the dirt! Rooting up old bones that should stay buried and forgotten. You never consider what might be down there! I don’t remember where I heard the word. Let’s just drop it!”

“Richard, I know you’re hiding something. The One who hears all and sees all knows you’re hiding something.”

“Will you please-”

Helen’s eyes locked onto Isburg’s. “Would you want to face Him, like Emily is today, with a soul that’s tarnished by guilt?”

Isburg allowed his head to fall back against his seat, but his eyes remained fixed on Helen. “You won’t let up. You never let up, ever.”

“Things between us will never be the same until you come clean. Just say it and it will be out and over with. What are you keeping from me?”

Isburg squeezed the steering wheel. “It’s like that, then, is it? Okay. You want it, you got it. It happened. Years ago.”

“When?” Helen leaned in closer to hear.

“The last time you were in the hospital. After the last baby. Doc Quinn had sedated you and he sent me home to get some rest. I felt like dying.”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t want to go, but he made me. So I went home. But I didn’t go into the house. I sat on the front porch. I hate to admit it, but I started crying. I couldn’t help it. Emily saw me and she came over. John wasn’t home. Emily tried to comfort me. She held me in her arms.”

“Go on,” said Helen, biting her lip.

“The next thing I knew, we were inside. On the couch. Only one single time, I swear. I didn’t plan on it. I was out of my head with grief, see? That was when I saw the tattoo.”

Helen pressed the Mass card she was holding to her chest. “So that’s it. While I was in the hospital in agony, you were sinning — in our home — with another woman.”

“I knew it, I knew you’d put it that way. Listen to yourself. Sitting there all innocent and righteous, talking about how I sinned against you.”

“Not against me, against God!”

“God, always God! What about how you sinned against me?”

“My sinning? You’ve lost your mind! How have I sinned against you?”

Isburg shook his finger at Helen. “By keeping yourself from me for all those years! After we lost the first baby, you became holier than Moses himself. Every day to church, rosaries and prayers all the time! You barely let me touch you. Then, when the second baby came, you wouldn’t even let me stay in the bedroom with you. I knew if we lost that kid, you’d never let me back in there. I knew you’d blame me for everything!”

Tears streamed down Helen’s face. “Yes, on you! It was you who never showed proper respect for Him. You never minded God!”

“You were so busy minding God, you forgot about me! Just because I couldn’t be a saint, like you. For that, you never let me back in that room. I had to go somewhere for relief.”

“So it was more than one time!”

“Of course, it was. I’m human, what else can I say? I won’t apologize for that.”

“And to think of how John loved Emily, how he treated her!”

“Quit sprinkling sugar and deal in facts. You remember all those nights when their fighting kept us up, and how many times Emily went running back to her mother. And I remember John bragging about his conquests all over the neighborhood. He had a woman in every town and Emily knew it. Everyone knew, except Saint Helen.”

Helen dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “I don’t know you. I don’t know you anymore.”

Isburg tugged at his collar. “You never made the effort.”

“Oh, I always knew you were a nobody. A nobody who never had the guts to make anything of himself. A nobody who was never man enough to give me children, who practically dared God to take them from me. A nobody who walked around passing judgment on everyone, as if he were God. Walked? Why, you don’t even have two legs to stand on!”

“Don’t you talk to me about this leg, the leg I sacrificed in service to my country! You know I was wounded-”

“On Pork Chop Hill, yes, with John Wayne and Gary Cooper! I could recite that story in my sleep! And you’ve told it so many times, you’ve come to believe it. I’ve backed you up on that lie for half of my life, but I won’t do it one minute more!”

“I served in Korea!” Isburg’s upper lip drew back and exposed his teeth.

“Miles from Pork Chop Hill or any other battlefield. You were a supply truck driver. You know you hurt your leg when you got drunk and rammed a truck into a tree!” Helen’s expression mirrored her husband’s.

Isburg stabbed the air with his hand. “I’m through with this! No more!”

“Your ‘heroic’ image was only a story. A story a nobody tells, to make himself somebody.”

“Enough! I said enough!”

Both stopped long enough to hear the angry chorus of car horns behind them. Isburg, wiping sweat from his face, noticed that the traffic jam had broken. The road ahead of them was clear.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, pressing the gas pedal. “We’ll be there in no time.”

“Richard, I want to go home,” Helen sobbed.

“Let it go, Helen. Emily’s dead. Let it all die with her. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters! It matters, if it happened two years, twenty years or a hundred years ago! It matters and there is no way I’m going to that whore’s wake! Turn this car around now!”

“Look, here’s an exit. We’ll get off here, find a restaurant, have a Coke and cool off. Then we’ll go-”

They heard a loud pop and the car started slowing down. Isburg spied a yellow”Check Engine” light blinking on the dashboard.

“Richard,” Helen screamed, “what are you doing?”

“Nothing,” shouted Isburg. “The engine’s stalled!”

“Pull over, for God’s sake, before you cause a wreck!”

“I’m trying, damn it! The power steering’s out, too!”

Isburg wrestled the car onto the shoulder of the road. He opened the hood, got out and checked hoses and belts. Unsatisfied, he tottered around the back of the stalled vehicle. He attempted to bend down and look under the car, but stopped and held his bad leg.

“That little greaser! I’ll kill him!” Isburg shouted, pounding his fist on the trunk. “With his own knife! See, Helen? I told you those people were no good! I’m calling my lawyer! I’ll see him in jail! Helen? Helen?”

Isburg looked up. Helen had left the car; she was walking down the exit ramp. His leg was aching badly. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

Open Challenge 281...