All Maps Are Fiction

  Copyright © 2020 by Clyde E. Witt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-09833-776-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-09833-777-3

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the author

  Author’s Note

  All Maps Are Fiction is a work of fiction. Some incidents, people and places described by me are, or were, real. Others are based loosely on the truth; still others are pure imagination. Suspend disbelief.

  Dedication

  Look up the word “curiosity” in any dictionary.

  There you’ll discover a picture of Lloyd ‘Sandy’ Ellis—1936-2019.

  Chapter One

  2012

  Eric Yates kicked at chunks of slushy gravel as he shuffled along the berm of the roadway. The challenges of suicide mixed in his head with lesser challenges waiting in the office. Today was atypically warm for the last week of January in northeast Ohio. It was the kind of day that fills you with the promise of an early spring, then dashes your hopes a week later, like having all the winning lottery numbers except for the final digit. Most patches of winter’s dirty snow had already melted into puddles of dirty water. He thought of how his father, every year, said: “January thaw. The first signs of spring to come up are cigarette butts and dog shit.”

  Now, three hours since he’d received his death sentence, he hoped the walk home from Gale’s Guns & Tackle store would clear his mind; help him decide which gun to buy. He’d been sentenced for a crime he did not commit, nor was even aware—AIDS.

  He turned his back to the road and the passing traffic to stare at an open field. Clumps of dried vegetation stood like Indian tepees with no discernible pattern. He wondered what crop a farmer could plant that would not die in even rows. He used his foot to dribble a discarded paper cup back toward the grass. More than anything else, his focus for the past half hour had been on kicking litter out of the gutter, not monthly balance sheets that lurked on his desk in the office. He shrugged against the weight and warmth of his down-filled jacket.

  The walk had done nothing other than make him sweat. If anything, he was more confused: How do you choose a gun to kill yourself? He stood at the intersection a quarter mile from home, caught up in a mental wrestling match—buy the cheapest ‘cause it’s gonna be a one-time thing, or, buy the best ‘cause you deserve it. And besides, death will find you sooner than the Visa bill. He lingered and ran his hands through his sandy-colored hair while he contemplated what might happen if he quickly jaywalked instead of going to the corner to cross at the light. Should I get a haircut? He turned his face from the grit and dust churned up as a huge tractor-trailer rig flashed past. Why not just step— A shiver, not caused by the light breeze that stirred plastic bags lingering on the street, ran through his body as he ambled across the road.

  Then he saw the girl on the skateboard. Damp leaves blew past him, scudding downhill, toward her. He assessed her projected path as she came toward him. The girl was being propelled up hill. He’d seen her in action two or three times before, usually in the early morning as he headed for the office. He harbored only a slight grudge that, at age thirty-four, he assumed he was no longer young enough to give a skateboard another try. What else about life am I going to miss?

  The girl stood erect. When the wind parted her Levi’s jacket, he saw her white T-shirt as it flapped. Its pirate-skull design looked like an announcement by privateers about to lay waste to an unsuspecting brigantine. Her baggy, khaki cargo shorts fluttered. Blue and white Vans stayed planted on the board’s black, non-skid deck. A thick braid of blond hair trailed behind her. She came straight at him and exploded past. A whirring noise spun up from the wheels. How is that possible? His head swiveled to follow her and he picked up an aroma of pine trees. He thought of his near-death experience, once, long ago, while riding a friend’s skateboard. Lots of kids had boards, however, everyone knew, coasting uphill was not possible. Gravity and other universal laws demanded she push with her foot to make the board move. She seemed unaware that she nearly amputated his right foot. That aroma still lingered in her wake.

  As she approached a bend in the road, her hands exited the pockets of her shorts and rose like flowers opening in a time-lapse film. She kept her chin tilted upward and disregarded rocks and sticks in her path. Knees bent as she leaned into the turn. At that same moment the skateboard elevated to the left, the girl tumbled, bounced off the street and landed in a seated position on the grassy berm. Eric heard her yell, ‘shit,’ unaware that the word meant a stay of execution for him. He trotted to where she sat assessing damage to her board, not her knees.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She looked up, her eyes and smile seemed to signal something, some sort of camaraderie, like a shared secret. “The rear-wheel trucks seized up and dumped my ass on the street while I traveled about ten miles an hour. What could possibly make me feel better?”

  “Well, I mean, is there anything I could, or, can do?”

  “You a doctor?”

  “No. I’m a—”

  “How about electrician?”

  “Ah—”

  “Skateboard technician?”

  Eric drew in a deep breath. “Sorry, kid. I’ll be on my way, now,” he said and pushed his hands into his pockets and started to turn. Up close, he thought, this snot-nosed punk didn’t appear all that young. Probably in her mid-twenties. She can take care of herself. Road rash on her knees will heal soon enough. By then, with luck, she’ll develop some manners.

  “Hey, wait,” she said. “Sorry. I’m a bit pissed about this new board dumping me. I spent too much on these brakes for them to jam like that. Not my everyday ride.”

  He shook his head. Common sense told him to keep walking. But he knew how hard it is to take your eyes off a wreck by the side of the road. Besides, he was curious about how she was able to make the board travel up hill.

  “Those things can be dangerous,” Eric offered to ease the tension, his if not hers.

  “Isn’t everything when there’s an element of fun attached?”

  The day’s confusion that emanated from brochures picked up at the gun shop and mixed with ones provided by the doctor, began to vanish. He dropped beside her on the grass as she flicked a couple switches on a black box attached to the underside of the board’s deck.

  “Looks like a battery.”

  “Hey, you’re smarter than you look, Mister. How do you think I make this puppy run?”

  “With your foot, the way I think is how most skateboarders do it.”

  She offered her right hand and rewarded him with a smile that exposed a hint of perfect wh
ite teeth. “Okay, my name is Aston, Aston Leerie.”

  “Eric,” was all he managed as he grasped her hand. Her handshake was firm. In the brief exchange he thought he felt calluses on her dry palm.

  “Nice to meet you, Eric. You live nearby? I need some tools to work on this thing. That, or it’s a long walk home for me, today.”

  “I live just down the street. Aston. Sort of a different name. Must be a family name.”

  Her right hand rubbed the deck of the board, lower lip projected out, as if she considered several options. He thought she might not respond. A bird caught their attention as it fluttered overhead and landed on an overhanging branch.

  “Short story is, a few years ago, I knew it was time to change my name. You know, your identity is kind of forged, or branded, with your name. Your parents give you a name they like, like you’re some saint or something. I couldn’t live up to mine. So, one day while waiting in a doc’s office, I decided to unscramble all the letters on the eye chart. The name Ezoltec popped up. Didn’t like it, so I opted to draw letters out of a hat.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. Put all the letters of the alphabet into a hat and picked out five, letter by letter. Liked the rhythm of an odd number, you know, like when you name a dog. It’s always best to use two syllables. Then I laid ‘em on a table and rearranged them until they spelled something I liked—or could at least pronounce, and that people would think is a girl’s name. Turns out not to be original after all. I heard some movie star already has the name and a friend said there’s a car with the same name.”

  “Yeah, Aston Martin.”

  “That the movie star or the car?”

  Eric smiled and studied the undercarriage of the skateboard. He wondered: Am I missing an opportunity to walk away? Later he was to learn, picking a name out of a hat was one of the more rational things about Aston. Her life possessed all the normalcy of an AA meeting.

  “Phoebe,” she said, as she studied the bird above them.

  “Huh?”

  “Eastern Phoebe. Right there. Keep your eye on her, I bet she flies beneath that porch roof across the street.”

  As if on command, the small gray-black bird sprang from its branch and disappeared into the rafters of the porch.

  “Is she on a nest, already? Way too early,” Aston said, as she asked and answered her own question. She lowered her head for a better view.

  “So, that bird is called a phoebe?” Eric said.

  Aston shook her head, looked at him and used her smile to cut him to pieces. “Man, this is gonna take some time. Right, the bird’s a phoebe. Don’t know your birds, do you?”

  He stared across at the bird, eyebrows raised, the confused student who seeks clemency. “Guess not. Oh, I can tell the difference between a robin and fried chicken.”

  Aston’s head tipped back. She laughed hard; a fit of coughing mixed with laughter. Eric considered whacking her on the back to prevent her from choking.

  “I’ll be damned, he does have a sense of humor,” she said as she rocked back into a sitting position. “I was beginning to worry about you, Eric. Thought you might be too uptight; the serious business type. No smile, like maybe you needed a little fun in your life. Now, if only you would smile.”

  Eric felt the weight of brochures in his currier bag as he rose from the ground. He shifted the strap that cut into his shoulder. All the gun-safety literature, added on top of medical information, would guarantee a sleepless night. How much crap do I have to read to take one shot at really close range? A little fun in my life? Not much life left to have fun in.

  Aston stood and inspected him, again. “Well, let’s go to your place and check out what you might have in the way of tools. And on the way, we’ll think up a new name for you. Eric just won’t cut it.”

  “What? Change my name? Why?” he said, and brushed invisible grass clippings from his pressed khaki slacks.

  “Man, you don’t catch on very fast. When you change your name it’s like you toss all the past crap of your life into the river and start over—give yourself a second chance. Maybe I should change mine, again.”

  He opened his mouth and intended to tell her it was a pleasure to meet her—but he had to hurry home and rearrange his sock drawer—important stuff like that. Something else, however, came out. “Ah, what should I, we, change our names to?”

  “I’m thinking something Biblical—”

  “You mean, like Adam and Eve?”

  Again, she laughed hard, doubled over and let her skateboard clatter to the street. She rested her hands on her scraped knees and drew in several deep breaths. While she wiped tears from her eyes and snot from her nose on the hem of her T-shirt, Eric stared at the jewel in her belly button.

  “No, Eric, I think something more like Noah for you.”

  “Why Noah?”

  “Because you don’t know the names of any birds. You can ask them what they call themselves while we load ‘em on the boat.”

  Aston studied Eric’s tool supply, all neatly arranged on a four-by-eight-foot pegboard centered above the workbench. She could not discern a speck of grease, or wear, on any of the tools. Each tool was outlined in white paint like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. A smaller collection of basic tools hung at the end of the wall in a grubby apron-like holder. She shivered as she peered behind the apron, looking for a Phillips screwdriver.

  “No spiders, a good sign. You sure are a loyal Sears shopper, Eric. Don’t do much in the way of home repairs, though, do you?”

  “No, I guess not. These all belonged to my dad. He thought it was important to have the right tool for the right job. Me, I just hire someone and have repairs done correctly.”

  “Ah, man, we have so much in common.”

  “We do?”

  “Yeah, like nothing, for instance. You must make a lot of money. You just toss stuff out? You don’t try to repair it?”

  “Well, if it breaks, why keep it?”

  Aston placed the screwdriver she’d chosen from the apron back on the bench, crossed her arms, exhaled and tilted her head to study him. “So, to your way of thinking, paying twice for something is okay?”

  “Ah, can’t say that’s exactly right. If it breaks and I buy something new, the new thing has probably improved, technologically, since I bought the original. I’m not paying twice for the same thing. The new thing is a new thing. And if I hire someone—”

  “But, if the old thing did the job before it needed repair—” She stopped. “Okay, this is one of those no-win discussions. What does your wife think when you just toss stuff—just like that—or hire somebody?” She snapped her fingers and returned to the job at hand, removing screws that held the black box to the skateboard’s deck.

  Eric turned to look out the open garage door. “No wife.”

  Aston looked at him, unsmiling. Her eyes washed over the rest of the garage. The place was larger than her whole condo. “Two hot cars and no wife? The small black one’s a backup, I bet.”

  He looked at his two Porsches. “Yeah. One never knows. Emergencies and stuff.”

  Aston, tongue anchored in the corner of her mouth, returned to work on the skateboard. Movement outside the garage caught their attention. A woman muttered and strained against a dog’s leash as she walked the unruly beast across the street from where Aston worked.

  “What do you see out there?” Aston asked, and nodded in the direction of the street.

  “Huh? A woman walking a dog.”

  “I didn’t ask what was happening. I asked what you saw.”

  “What? I said, ‘a woman with a dog.’ A Siberian Husky, I think.”

  “You miss the point, Eric. The pup bounces from side to side, place to place, thing to thing. His world is totally incomplete. He sees everything for itself, new. To him, the next thing is what’s important. Each day for him is like a wee
k for us. Every step he takes is a new adventure.”

  “Huh. Maybe the critter has no interest in pissing on a particular rock or tree. I think dogs have the attention span of fruit flies.”

  “So, you’re a whole-picture kinda guy, then. Dismiss the trees for the forest.”

  “I suppose I am. Have to be.”

  “Right. Okay, we’re all done here. Trucks are on tight as I can get them, power’s kind of funky so that means I’ll have to push some, but the trip home’s mostly downhill for me. An expensive trip to the shop is in my future.” She thought about going to the skateboard shop and what it might cost to get her new electric booster board back on the street. This high cost of having fun was cutting into her food budget these days.

  “Well, glad I could help, I guess,” he said.

  “Right. Thanks for the tools—and the lively conversation. See ya ‘round the ‘hood.”

  The skateboard clattered on the garage floor and landed wheels-up, like a dying bug. Aston jammed her left foot under the tail of the board, flipped it in the air, jumped and landed on the deck. She coasted away without a look back.

  Eric watched her slalom from curb to curb until she rounded the bend at the bottom of the hill. His thoughts turned back to the office as he climbed into the red Porsche 911.

  As he walked through the door to the company his father had built, he looked back at his car and thought about stopping at the car wash on the way home, if he did not work too late.

  “Hey Katie,” he said to the receptionist.

  “Hey yourself, Boss. Have a relaxing, enjoyable morning off?” she said as she handed him a half dozen missed-calls slips.

  “Not exactly, strange to say the least. I met this really whacky skateboard chick, however.”

  “Well, if that was the highlight I’d say the day sounds promising. By the way, Roger says that we’re going to need an upgrade in the software for machine number six.”

  “Always something. We should go into the software production business. We don’t use even twenty-five percent of what that crap is supposed to do and suddenly we need an upgrade. It’s like the makers of that stuff have a license to print money. My old man is probably spinning in his grave.”