What Calvin Remembers by Harrison Kim

A wide-faced, stocky man wearing a beard and a huge T-shirt reading “Still Thinking” pulled a squeaky red wagon down the hill towards Calvin.  In the wagon, a guitar sat on top of three pink suitcases and a sleeping bag.

“Do you remember me?” the wagon man called. 

Calvin did recall someone with a stomach that size and a loud bray, usually arguing and shouting.  He felt pretty sure it was along the pastel corridors of a psychiatric hospital.  Calvin experienced recurring dreams about filling space inside this facility, either as a patient or a staff.  He distinctly recalled going into an office and pulling out his own hospital chart.  However, if he was able to go into the office, he must have had a key.  Only the staff had keys.  He wasn’t sure which role he played a part in.  In his dream, he was only an outline in an office.

But what was this guy’s name? Jim or Liam?  Most likely Liam, though hadn’t Liam jumped off the Pattullo Bridge and killed himself?

“Were you the guy who used to steal all the grapes from people’s yards?” Calvin wanted to ask. He remembered a plump man with a beard, though without a wagon, who used to do just that in what looked like this very neighborhood. Yet maybe it was Calvin himself.  He wasn’t tall, he adored grapes, and he had a bad memory.  Maybe he’d been held at the psychiatric hospital for delusional grape stealing.  

The wagon fellow stood in front of him with his wide grin.

“Do you still play the guitar?” Calvin asked, because that seemed obvious, considering the contents of the wagon. 

The guitar’s tuning pegs were off-white, with brown stains underneath, the body with a swath of grey duct tape wrapped round it

“Yes,” said the wide-faced man. “Music gives me faith in myself.  Remember when we used to play tunes together in the common room?”

He picked up his guitar and strummed a few bars, “I been down south to see my gal, my banjo on my knee.”

“Good right-hand picking,” Calvin thought.

He vaguely recalled sitting around some tables with lyrics and drawings of chords, performing folk rock songs, a ragged harmony all around. 

“What common room was that?” Calvin asked.

“You know,” said the wagon guy.   He grinned.  “You were the therapist.”

Calvin nodded.  “Could I have been that important?”

He remembered the singers in a kind of horse-shoe shaped group, some with tambourines, whacking them at odd times.

“You were in control,” laughed the wide-faced man. 

Calvin laughed back.  He decided to believe this was the Liam who jumped off the Pattullo Bridge, although this time he survived.  As he gained more faith in this theory the man’s appearance shifted, or maybe it was that Calvin now noticed more subtle similarities to the original Liam.  The gap between the front teeth, the meaty arms, the flecks of red in the eyeballs.

“You liked to play crib, right?” Calvin asked.  “And when you won, you laughed like that.”

“I guess I did,” Liam said. “Thought I was more of a philosopher than a card shark.”  He studied Calvin a little closer.  “Do you think we’re still in the same zone?”

“What do you mean?” asked Calvin.

“Well,” Liam said.  “You look a little different.  Your clothes.  And your face. Pardon me for being direct.  I see the outline of the therapist, but I think that’s not in this particular time and place.”  He rubbed his chin. “There’s the chance we’re experiencing different realities.”

“What do you mean, you see the outline of the therapist?” Calvin asked.

“It’s behind you,” Liam stated, “Like a hole in the background, and you’re the entity filling the therapist space.”

  He pointed, and Calvin turned to look, but couldn’t see anything but a fire hydrant with a seagull sitting on the top.

“Well,” said Calvin.  “I believe you might have jumped off the Pattullo Bridge. And that you’re a ghost.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” Liam put his left hand against his heart, “I wouldn’t be here today if I jumped.  Swear to God.”

Calvin scuffed his shoes in the dirt.  One shoe had a hole in the top.  The scuffing noise sounded too loud.  He looked up.  The power poles reached so high.

“Maybe in one universe I was a staff at the hospital, and in this one I was a patient,” he said.

“Maybe you yourself were on your way to jump off that bridge,” Liam told him, “And now I’ve stopped you from doing so.”

“I was definitely on my way to a destination,” Calvin said, but on the other hand, he wasn’t sure where that was, and likely the bridge would be going too far.

“Do you like grapes?” he asked Liam.  “There’s some great gardens near here and the fruit is ripe.”

“It’s April,” Liam played a few more guitar chords.  “Maybe call me in September regarding that matter.”

He passed the guitar over to Calvin. 

“If you can play something,” he said, “You might indeed be the therapist.”

Calvin took the guitar in his hands and rubbed an index finger up the strings.  “These need a little cleaning,” he said, stopping at the top of the neck.  He began to play. “Trying to co-ordinate my left and right hands,” he stated.

“You’re good!” smiled Liam.

As Calvin strummed, he began to believe.

“Yes, I’m some kind of outline of a therapist who played music in the common room of a psychiatric hospital.”

Though he didn’t recognize the tune, he had faith the name would come.  He belonged to this universe he filled with sound.  In return, the sound filled him, then he was the sound, and really, why should it matter who Liam was as long as Calvin knew who Calvin was?

Harrison Kim's short story Pushing Out The Snakes was awarded second place in our 3rd Anniversary Short Story Contest. Harrison Kim lives and writes in Victoria, Canada.  Recent stories have been published in Bull Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Bewildering Stories, and others. His blogspot, including publication credits and music videos, can be found here: https://harrisonkim1.blogspot.com/