Issue 24

Curt Saltzman

Dad and I were working the Rotary Club booth that year at the Halloween fair. We’d curtained off a space in the rear of the booth and taped a cardboard sign I’d stenciled with the words “JACK’S DIME FORTUNES” to an upright. Dad sold cotton candy and caramel apples behind a small counter in front while in the back I proposed divining the future of blasé kids loaded to the glycemic gunwales on sweets. Customers proved scarce, though, and I spent my time reading the Poe paperback I’d borrowed from the library.

It was growing late and this adult male showed up just as a gust of air shuddered the booth, so that it seemed like he’d scudded in on the wind. A balding guy in his mid-forties, tightly wound, nimble, he had the slender build and angular features of a second baseman. He resembled a slimmer, more youthful version of my father, in fact, and for a heartbeat, in the low, wavering candlelight, I thought it might even be Uncle Jim.

“Go ahead, tell my fortune,” the man whispered, taking a seat across from me and handing over a pair of nickels.

“Sure,” I said.

A garage-sale guéridon served as support for my paraphernalia; there was a pillar candle whose base I’d melted into an old dinner plate Mom let me have, and a crystal ball. Two folding chairs, one of which I occupied, completed the decor. The crystal ball was actually a snow globe Dad gifted me for some forgotten occasion. It depicted a bucolic scene that always struck me as both bogus and strangely alluring—a rustic, chimneyed cabin standing in a wilderness of pine.

“Let us see,” I commenced, “what the spirits may know of you.”

I grabbed my scrying device, shook it as if it were a bottle of pulpy fruit juice, and set it back down on the table again. A horde of particles swarmed inside the globe like a confetti parade. I gazed into this turbulence, searching for my mystic inspiration there. But then the man began speaking in a loud, slow-motion monotone, and I never did get the chance to launch into my spiel.

“Ever feel like someone else’s brain was transplanted in your skull?” he said.

I wanted to reply, but Dad drew the curtain back slightly and mouthed: “We’re closed.” From the expression on his face I could tell he was in one of his moods.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, “but I’m afraid we’re closing now. Sorry about that. You can have your money back if you want.”

The man kept staring at me like I might be the sideshow freak. “So what’s your name, son?” he inquired finally.

“Jack.”

“Jack,” he repeated with a grin, but there wasn’t any mirth in it.

“Sorry, sir,”—I examined my wristwatch—“but it’s almost midnight. We’ve closed the booth. My dad and I gotta pack things up.”

“Was driving around here one Saturday morning ’bout ten years ago,” the man said, ignoring me, “looking for the interstate.” He removed a filtered cigarette from a hard pack, leaned forward, used the candle to light up. “This little boy ran right out under my wheels.”

He seemed to be alluding somehow to my brother’s accident. On our third birthday we were playing in the front yard with our new toys, twin Tonka trucks and a soccer ball that rolled away from us at one point, which John had the bad luck of chasing into the street. Could this be the man who’d been behind the wheel that day? I wondered. Or was he simply another kook in a country where the kooks were legion?

“Came into town for the fair and spotted your dad and that sign you put up. Must’ve switched you around or something.” He exhaled a cloud of smoke that swirled and hovered like a ghost taking shape.

“Well, sir,” I said, not knowing what to say but needing to put an end to this, “I’m going to have to be going.”

I rose, licked my index and thumb, snuffing the flame, a thing I regretted immediately, as it buried us in darkness.

“Your mother shouted it. That’s how I figured this scam out,” the man said. The liquor on his breath suddenly wafted over to me. “Before she scooped you up and your dad came running, waving his arms like a lunatic. ‘Jack!’” He wailed my name like a banshee. “Must’ve been the favorite, I guess. Which is weird, because you were identical. ”

He flicked the cigarette away and shot to his feet. The table overturned—I heard the sound of something cracking—and the booth started spinning like a crazy carousel. The next thing I remember I lay on the floor. I’d fainted briefly. I lost consciousness for only a second or two. But it was enough time for the man to vanish, and for me to dream a dream that’s haunted me ever since:

Night was falling; long, wintry shadows stretched over the ground. I trudged through a density of crystalline, downy drifts and towering green conifers. The cold stung my skin, and I returned home to the log fire I knew glowed warmly in the hearth. Abruptly everything trembled; I glanced at the sky, snowflakes fluttering around me like moths around a lamppost, and noticed my father observing me from beyond the limits of a glass sphere he cradled in an enormous hand. He was beaming. I hated him. “I know I’m my brother!” I screamed, punching the air with my fist like a revolutionary. But he showed no reaction, staying as frozen as the tiny world in which I realized I’d been caged, and I felt the terror of believing my words could never reach him.