The Book Traveler

Flash-fiction - by Karl El-Koura

He didn't realize his son had come into the room until he heard him cough. Sam Carding's vision had dimmed so much that he could only see a few feet in front of him now, even with the light cast by the ceiling fixture and both bedside table lamps.  As if the world itself were closing in on him, disappearing; or as if Death with his black cape were approaching, concealing everything behind him.

"Come closer, Ty," Sam said to his nine-year-old son. His voice was almost unrecognizable in his own ears. Despite the total degradation of his body—so much so that it had been a struggle to make the short journey home from the hospital, where the solemn-faced doctor had whispered to Cassy that her husband had "lit up like a Christmas tree" and there was no more they could do for him. Despite his fading vision . . . the heavy, lead-blanket weight of constant tiredness, the pain everywhere . . . still it was hard to accept that he'd soon be gone, extinguished from this world. But the most devastating part of all was the thought that he could've died without the chance to pass on the book to his son. And even now, he'd delayed as long as possible, afraid that his son wouldn't see anything special about the book, and its magic would die with him.

With hesitant steps, Ty approached. He looked through his eyebrows at his father, stretched out on what was once the bed they used to wrestle in when Ty woke them up too early on Saturday mornings, but now would be Sam's deathbed. No nine-year old should watch his dad die. It hadn't been part of Sam's plan, not at forty-six. Who expects to die at forty-six?

"I need to give you something, Ty. I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. I just didn't--"

"Tyson," the little voice squeaked out. "I like Tyson now."

I've called you Ty since the day I held your naked little body against my bare chest in the delivery room, Sam thought but didn't say. An hour later a nurse pricked your heel, and I called you "My brave boy Ty" and you calmed down right away.

"Tyson," he agreed. "I'm sorry."

Ty shrugged. The boy evoked his mother even in his mannerisms. But whereas her dark hair was always perfectly put together, Ty's had become unruly and waved down in curls to his shoulders.

Sam tried to turn over to get the book from the nightstand, but even that minor effort proved too much for him. He fell back onto the pillow. "You see that blue book?" Sam didn't want to say too much . . . not at first, just in case Ty didn't see anything special about it.

"Yeah?"

"That's yours now."

Ty turned the book over in his hand, then opened it to the first page. "What language is it?"

Relief flooded through Sam's brain, a burst of dopamine that shouted down the signals of pain and tiredness that had been making themselves heard with increasing insistence for several weeks now.

"It's an old language. It was my mother's book, and her father's before her. It's been in our family a very long time."

"It looks new." At five Ty had begun to ask uncomfortable questions about Santa Claus; he used the same tone of voice now.

"It does, doesn't it? But it's old. And very special. Don't worry about the words—I can't read them either. Just spend time with the book every morning. Then—listen carefully—when you're older . . . if you want to go back to any day in your past, sit down with the book and it'll take you there."

The small but bright brown eyes flicked up to meet Sam's. "To change the future?"

Sam stifled a laugh. He'd asked his mother the same question, hadn't he? "You can't change your past," he said, giving the same answer he'd received from her, "or it isn't your past anymore."

"Oh. Then what's the point?"

"One day you'll see. But—remember this, okay? It won't work if you try to use it too much. Once every three years or so. Like recharging your tablet, right? You have to give it a break or it won't work."

Ty stared at him, then turned over the book in his hands once more. "What did you do with it?"

Every few years I went back to the day you were born, Sam thought. The happiest day of my life. And I remembered—with the full force of the feeling that somehow fades with time—the joy in holding you for the first time. And that feeling sustained me until the next time.

He'd used the book one more time—one last time—when he'd received his death diagnosis.

"It's private," Sam said. "You'll figure out what you want to use it for when the time comes."

The boy shrugged again, then nodded, then sat down on the ground by Sam's bed, flipping through the book's pages.

Sam's eyelids began to feel heavier. This wasn't the time, was it? He wasn't ready, not yet. Financially, his affairs were now in order. He'd said goodbye to his wife of twenty years, more than once; he'd spent that morning FaceTiming a long list of friends, some of whom he hadn't spoken to in years.

A sudden death carried many benefits, but those two—getting everything in order to take care of his widowed wife and his child, and getting to say goodbye to them and to a lifetime of friends—were the not insignificant blessings of a slow death.

And now he'd passed on to his son their family's inheritance. What else was there to do?

"Son—one more hug?" he said. It'd been years since he'd hugged his son—not since Ty had turned six or or so, when he'd become a lot less affectionate. But before then, for those first half-dozen years of their life together, Sam would wrap his arms around his son's body and squeeze him every night after tucking him into bed. And when it was time to go to sleep, Ty always called him back for one more hug, and Sam always stopped at the door and came back for just one more, but held that final one for an extra long time.

Ty stood, and though nothing about him had changed physically, Sam knew better.

"Hi, Son," he said.

"Hi, Dad."

"How old are you?"

"I'm . . . lots of ages. All of us are here. We all wanted to come."

Sam swallowed. All of them? His eyes searched his son's face. He wanted—so badly—to hear about his son's life, to know that Ty had grown up well, that Cassy was okay, that they still remembered him from time to time. That wasn't how this worked, though. Ty had used his inheritance—all of it—to come back to this moment. It must be because—well, first, that Sam wasn't far from death—but second, that Ty had something he wanted to ask—that he'd been waiting all his life to ask—that they all wanted to hear at the same time.

"I see," he said. "Go ahead. You can ask me anything."

A smile sprang to Ty's face—childish and wise and solemn and joyful and surprised and knowing. "We don't have a question, Dad. We just wanted to be here with you. Together."

Sam took a deep breath, then choked out the words: "Will you tell me about your life?"

"I wish you could meet my girlfriend, Dad—you would've liked her."

"Tell me about her."

"We got married—four years ago. We have twin girls—Sandra and Rayley."

"That's my mother's name and middle name."

"That's right. They're such smart girls, Dad. They love playing piano. They're so good at it. I wish you could hear them. Rayley has your eyes—'cloudy hazel,' Mom calls it. She always said so, but the pictures don't do it justice . . . now . . . seeing you and remembering . . . ."

"I wish I could hear them play too. Will you give them a kiss for me?"

"I will, Dad."

"Your life is good, then? Your mom is okay?"

"Yeah, she's okay. She's told me so many stories about you. Now she tells them to her grandchildren."

The pain was gone, Sam realized with a shock. A constant, ever-increasing throb throughout his body had tormented him for almost a month now, but it had retreated completely.

"I wish you could've seen me graduate high school. I won the top math marks."

"Really? That's wonderful, Ty. I told you math wasn't so bad!"

"You did. I'm a math teacher now. Pretty good at it, too—I use the same techniques you helped me to get over my mental blocks."

"I'm glad. I'm so glad."

"Hey Dad, remember when I was five or so—it's such a vague memory for me, but it's there. You gave me a cork globe, do you remember?"

Sam nodded.

"I still have it. It means—I was about to say 'the world' to me. Mom couldn't remember why you gave it to me."

Sam smiled, remembering the tiny but serious upturned face that said to him, when Sam returned from one of his business trips, "I want to go to Paris. I want to go everywhere all over the world!"

"It means a lot to me," his son was saying. "Perra and I and the girls try to go to a new country every year for summer vacation. I put a little pin in the globe for each country we visit."

Sam nodded, his eyelids so heavy he couldn't resist them anymore. He felt himself begin to fade away. He fought to stay awake.

"You need to rest," he heard his son say after a while, and realized he must've dozed off.

"Okay," he mumbled. "Thank you for coming to see me, Ty. Tyson."

"Nah—'Tyson' was short-lived. I'm Ty, like you always called me." Then he smiled and brushed his dad's hair back into place. "I should go get mom now."

He turned to leave, but paused and turned back. "One more hug," he said, and leaned into his dad's frail and decaying body to give it a warm squeeze, holding it extra long.