| Rook's usual money-hoarding thoughts were interrupted when a young blond stormed into his pawn shop and demanded in a strong Brooklyn accent a fair price for her mother's necklace. "I been all over this city tryin' to find a way to earn my ticket back to the East coast by sellin' a few of my mother's things an' everyones in this dank excuse for a city's out to make a buck at my expense." "I hope, madam, that for your sake, your mother's dead." Rook allowed a moment to pass to enjoy her genuine look of distaste before he continued, "We don't accept stolen goods here." She gave him a smirk that unexpectedly sent a chill down the old miser's spine. He studied her face hard, and was struck by the notion that he recognized her from somewhere before. Had he been anyone else, he would have simply asked her if they had ever met. He didn't on the off-chance of losing his upper hand if he was wrong. Uncomfortable under his gaze, she broke the silence. "Heh. Fat chance o' that. Mother never let this outta her sight a single day she was alive. Wore it religiously 'till she wed and locked it away after that. Used to tell me that the only way to steal that thing from her was to steal something else first." Another chill. "Strange riddle. Never figured it out and there's no way to tell now, is there? Well, I guess it wasn't worth stealing anyway 'cuz no one will give me anything for it. Don't let that affect your decision, though. That's 100% gold around that stone." Rook slowly unwrapped the tissue and studied the back. "That's 10-karat gold-plated tin, at best. As for the stone..." Rook flipped it over and was speechless. "Yeah, I know," she sighed. "A plain old pebble of Tiger's Eye. A dimestore souvenir. It's gotta be worth more than $10, though. That won't even buy me a Coke these days. It's an antique. Those are worth more, aren't they? It's really old." "How old," Rook stated absently. "I know she's had it since she was a girl livin' on this same coast on San Francisco Bay, back before World War III. Half a century ago." "Fifty years..." Rook trailed off and shook his head. "Alright, I know it's not that old, I have a tendency to dramatize things. But..." "I'll give you three thousand dollars for it," Rook interrupted. It was her turn to be speechless. "And the answer to your riddle is her heart," he continued. "Huh?" "Someone would have to steal her heart before they could steal this necklace. Your mother's name was Ruth, wasn't it?" "You knew my mother?" "Quite well. But not as well as I knew this necklace. It was the envy of every soldier stationed in the Southern California Air Force Base. Anyone who tried to hit on her knew the story behind this." He clucked his dry tongue and sat down, resting his tired back against the side of the counter, and lost himself in memory. "What was the story?" she humbly asked. "Eh? Oh, right. I always had a seat near her in the pub, usually three stools south of her at the bar. And every night some young pilot who thought too much of himself would try their best line out on her, and she'd always respond with her Tiger Eye story. " 'See this necklace?' she'd start out with, 'That rock at the center's a genuine Tiger's Eye. I found it when I was eight years old. That silly, romantic age in every girl's life when they still believe in fairytales and Prince Charming and all that nonsense. Well, I found it lying on the ocean shore. A nice looking gem, shining like nobody's business and sticking out of the sand. I picked it up and studied the gold stripes and watched how they moved when you held it in the sunlight. I knew it held the secret to my one and truest love. Don't ask me why I knew this; I just did. I made a pact with the stone right there and then that if it would help me find my true love, I'd give it a home of gold over my true love's heart and treasure it always. To make it official, I made a blood pact with it. I got out my Swiss Army Knife and made a small cut on my thumb, and then tried to cut the stone. I didn't get any more than a scratch on it before I slipped and cut my hand deep. Right into the meat. See?' "Then she'd show the scar on her hand in case anyone doubted it. It just slid down her palm to the base of her thumb. 'That's what I get for trying to squeeze blood from a stone,' she'd say, which always made everyone laugh no matter how many times they'd heard the story before. " 'It surprised me so much I dropped the stone, and the tide took it away before I could get to it. I looked hard but couldn't find it anywhere. Finally I sat down and waited. And counted. My daddy explained to me once that when the tide took something away, it would give it back on the seventh wave. Sure 'nough, that little stone washed up by my feet seven waves later. I knew it was magic then. I pushed my thumb to the scratch and finalized the pact. We were blood sisters looking for my man from then on. I kept up my end of the deal, and found a jeweler who set the stone real nice, with the scratch facing front. Look,' she'd command, and the wanna-be courter would lean in close, probably to catch a glimpse of something other than the necklace. 'Now all I have to do,' she'd say, 'is find someone worthy enough to wear it.' She'd make a big show of putting the stone up to her ear, like she was listening to it, and then she'd nod her head and say, 'Sorry, fella, this Tiger's Eye sized you up and says you're not it.' " Rook chuckled at the memory. "What I would have done to have earned this ring. She was quite a looker, your mother. Truth is, there was only one guy on that base who got close to getting this from her. And he happened to share a room with me. I was trying to be a pilot, and he was training in mechanics while working as a cook in the cafeteria. We became close friends, and one night I convinced him to join me at the pub. He wasn't much of a drinker, he came along anyway. That was...August 13, 2003. No, it must have been '02, they met two years before the war. Heh. I still remember the date after all these years... "Where was I? Oh yes. I sat in my usual spot and it happened that my roommate was sitting one stool away from Ruth. I never had the nerve to say anything to her, especially because I knew exactly what would happen if I did, having already memorized her trinket story. But I forgot to warn him about it. Soon as we sat down he turned to her and introduced himself. 'Hello, ma'am. M'name's Louie LaMintz. What's yours?' It wasn't the usual cheesy line she was used to, so she didn't jump into her story right away. She just smiled and simply said, 'Ruth Barker.' "Being a pure, friendly soul, Louie just chatted away. She seemed to take a liking to him, just smiling and nodding. He explained that he'd never been in a bar before and didn't know what to order. She recommended Old Number 5, Jack Daniel's Whiskey. It was her favorite drink, harder to find now than it was then. Hard stuff for a non-drinker, but he ordered it and bought me one as well. I only heard about the rest of that evening from Louie. Being much bigger than I was he held the whiskey better. I had never had anything harder than a Cuba Libra before that. Apparently he did get to hear the story during the evening, but only because he complimented her on the necklace. And she left the discussion with her stone sizing him up out of it when she finished telling it. "After that evening, they couldn't see enough of each other. I became the trusty friend and confidante to both parties. He liked her humor and toughness. She liked his jolly disposition and kindness. They were quite a couple. Don't know if I've ever seen two people have so much fun together. Their bond became so tight between them that only a war could break it. And that's exactly what happened. "August 13, 2004. The day America declared war on China. Their second anniversary. Originally, she enlisted to complete her EMT training so she could be a firefighter when her term ended. Unfortunately, the medical division was among the first to ship out. She was on a plane to China before they could celebrate it together. The real heartbreaker was that he had already picked out a ring, but it wouldn't be ready to be picked up until the next day. I helped him choose it. It was a beautiful thing. Gold, with two diamond chips around a Tiger's Eye stone. They didn't carry anything like it, so it had to be special-ordered and made by a craftsman from Chicago. She never got to see it." "Where's it now?" she asked, timidly. "Louie was in a tight spot some years ago and had to pawn it to pay his rent." "That's too bad. I would've loved to of seen it. What'd ya do then?" "Not much for a while, I'm afraid. We didn't ship out until a good eight months later. I had been demoted to mechanics and was in the same unit as Louie. My eyesight faded along with any dreams I had of being a pilot. We spent the first months repairing ships as they came in, and Louie and Ruth remained faithful pen-pals for a while. Then he stopped hearing from her. It was a crazy time, with the threat of nuclear war ever hanging over our heads. No matter how many times it's been said it doesn't get any truer: war changes people. I did my best to comfort him, telling him how long-distance relationships never work out, but he just fell deeper into the bottom of a Jack Daniel's bottle where I couldn't reach him. It was hard seeing him like that. When they needed mechanics in China, we were the first to volunteer. He wanted to be with her, even though he must have suspected that she wouldn't be the same. We were stationed in Mongolia, in the good ol' Gobi Desert. Last time he heard from her she was in Hong Kong, on the other end of China, but that was months before. It was another year before he'd see her. Our camp was mostly quiet, since most of the action was taking place south of us. We did the repairs as they came in and took necessary action against the few wondering souls from the other side. In the Spring of '06 she came in with a haggard troop of Marines. They needed supplies and communication, and Louie was cooking them up a meal when he saw her. I was on duty elsewhere and missed the entire thing. "They talked. When the war started, things had been fine. The planes and computers did most of the work against China. She just had to sit tight in case things went wrong. The full-blown attack of manpower wasn't scheduled to happen for some time, so she didn't need to worry about her medical duties. Then things started to go very wrong. The attack was launched ahead of schedule, and the troops were in trouble against the very masses of the people, a generation whose grandparents were skilled in Guerilla Warfare and still carried the genes. It was all so confusing. Eventually, an injured troop of Marines was in need of a medic so she was enlisted to join them. She didn't have the training they did, but she fought alongside them and licked their wounds as they needed it. She was a full-blown soldier of war. Louie said to me, and I'll never forget the image, that her eyes were as dull as that desert. All the life was gone within them. "Louie didn't hear from her again until she wrote him a letter a few months later. The 'Dear John' sort. She was sorry and would never forget what they had, but things had changed. I met the 'thing' that changed by chance while I was refueling his plane. A sharp looking officer by the name of Frank Dimaje. He happened to show me a picture of his fiance who also happened to be from the SCAFB. What's your name, by the way, so I know who to address the check to?" "Aubrey Dimaje," she answered softly. "Ah. Well. There was only one final encounter between the 'star-crossed' lovers, as it were. The day our terms expired and we were all shipped back to California as honored veterans. After our ceremony we ran into her. Frank was still fighting in China and wasn't going to come back for another year unless the war ended. Fate had it that the war would end that very day." She gasped slightly. "Not December 19?" "Yes, my dear. The day of the war to end all wars had come. No amount of army strength or war strategy could affect the outcome of that World War. No. It was all decided in two professional, white-walled, top-secret government headquarters. It hasn't been confirmed which side fired first, but fire they did. The effects were so devastating that the war officially ended that day, both sides too weakened to fight after that. No more than three atom bombs were fired total. One right here in California, just north of the new Los Angeles Island. I'll never forget that day." He shook his head, looking down at the simple necklace in his hand, though his thoughts were elsewhere. Aubrey couldn't help feeling as though she were the cause of his pain, he looked so distant, so vulnerable. Not at all like the bitter old man who had greeted her originally. After a moment he blinked and looked up, startled, as though he had forgotten his companion all together. Blinking some moisture away, he continued. "They didn't get to share any more than a hug together before it hit. We felt a rumble, like an earthquake, and someone tried to explain it over the intercom. The lights went out, people were screaming. All power went out. The force from the initial blow flew over our heads before we knew what hit us. The aftermath was so powerful that it caused sections of the roof to cave in and walls to fall in over each other. A table had collapsed on my leg. In the darkness, I could see Louie lying several feet away. He was knocked unconscious by the debris. Beyond him I saw the figure of a woman. I knew right then Ruth hadn't made it, but wasn't sure about Louie. We were all trapped within that building for hours before anyone could help us. The ones who managed to survive the initial blast tried to help those who hadn't. After the wounds were attended to and the confusion passed, we waited. The actual experience happened so fast I didn't really have time to react. It was the waiting that was the worst of it. Especially the silence. It was a terrible silence. None of us knew what had happened, and our own fears and pains swallowed any conversation we might've made. The few times we had to speak it was in whispers, as in 'All you alright?' or 'Let me know if I can make you more comfortable.' The help that did arrive was from the California National Guard, who wasn't able to do much more for us than the able-bodied survivors within the building had. They removed the worst cases on stretchers, including Ruth, and told the rest of us to sit tight. A soldier gave me something strong for the pain in my leg that knocked me out before the real help arrived. I awoke a few days later under radiation quarantine, in a hastily-made white-walled tent monitored by International Atomic Energy agents in big plastic suits designed to prevent contamination. What scientists had created in the fifty years following World War II had a greater impact than anyone had predicted up to that point. I spent a few weeks in that tent, with no news of Louie or the events that had passed. My last evening I spent with a rat, and when its test results came out clear I was released. "You know most of the rest. Our base was bombed by a separate Chinese aircraft similar to the F-117 Nighthawk, not from the Las Angeles nuke as we initially thought. One of those three bombs penetrated the stratosphere and created the dreaded global fallout that has caused the mutations so common today. I caught up with Louie, whose blow to the head damaged his frontal lobe and slowed his speech and motor controls. Overall, we both came out alright. Other than the obvious gamma-ray deformities, that is," he said with a smile, pointing out the mutations scarred into his withered face. "We both got a nice check from government under the new Disabled American Mutant Veterans bill, and both used our money to open up our stores here on Chandler Avenue. I run this pawn shop, and he runs the Brew & Stew on the corner." He handed the check over to her and said, "I have something else for you," as he disappeared behind the counter. He returned with a box in his hand. She opened it, and marvelled at the gold Tiger's Eye ring inside. "I thought you said he pawned this." "He did. In my shop." "I couldn't...after the check for the plane ticket home 'n all..." He dismissed her concerns with a wave. "Don't worry about it. I couldn't sell that ring anyway. It's a cheap stone nobody's interested in. I'm just glad you're able to take it off my hands, missy. Just make sure you pass the story on so your kids don't wander in here fifty years from now trying to make a buck on a trinket no one else could appreciate." She smiled and blinked away her own unexpected tears. "Thank you so much." He smiled back. She marveled at the creases in his face. She knew she must be witnessing a rare and beautiful departure from his generally sour countenance today. "I want you to know that I'm sure you mother loved you father very much," Rook emphasized, "despite anything I've said today." "Oh, I know. They had a very happy marriage. She loved him, but I've always known that it wasn't the deeply passionate love new couples have. Like that old country song, it was the kind of love she could live with." "Not the kind of love she couldn't live without," Rook added, finishing the lyric. "But there's one thing I don't get. You said you never heard from my mother after the bombing?" "No. We read her name on a list years later that she had died on that base. The few times Louie gets a shipment of Jack Daniel's in, he waits until the level's just below the label and we finish it off together. Always with a toast to Ruth." "That's impossible," she shook her head. "My mother didn't pass away until last year." Rook wrinkled his brow. "I'm certain we read her name...it's on the Memorial Wall in New San Francisco. Ruth Barker..." "It might've been a paperwork mistake. She died Ruthie Dimaje, here in Old San Francisco. If you thought she died in the blast, where did you think I came from?" "I assumed she had you in China before she came over here." "Oh no. Do I really look that old?" she laughed. "No, she had me in New York. My dad came home after the bombing and took her with him to the East Coast for treatment. She stayed there until he passed away. She's spent the last five years here, until her leukemia finally got the best of her. I flew out to make the funeral arrangements, but I ran outta money trying to put her to rest and couldn't get back home." "You mean," Rook squinted, "she's been alive all these years and never sought us out?" "She might've thought you died, too. If she knew, I'm sure she would've tried to find you. Just like you would've done for her. If only things had worked out differently..." "Yes. If only..." Rook sighed. "Wait a minute. Y'know what? I forgot to ask earlier, I was so involved with the story," she said, fumbling in her coat pockets, "Did my mother used to call him...Louis?" "Why, yes, as a matter of fact," Rook answered, startled, "I've called him Louie so long I've forgotten he used to go by his full name. What of it?" "When I found this necklace, it was locked inside a small box and sealed inside this," she explained, and handed him a yellowed envelope. The corners were slightly marred, and it had a single crease in the middle. Rook carefully unfolded the paper and read the two faded words across its front: for Louis. He stared at it, trying to fully grasp its meaning. Finally, he looked up, and grinned. "I could use a drink. Care to join me?" he asked, reaching for his coat. "We've got an old friend to visit." "Wait, Rook," she stopped him, "are you sure we should tell him? Maybe it'll hurt less to remember her as she was, without feeling the regret of losing her all over again." "My dear, to know at last that your love was returned outweighs the selfishness of regret. Now, let me get you a new envelope." Louie wiped down the bar and turned off the neon lights of the Brew & Stew, a hint to his last intoxicated customers that it was closing time. Laughing, they paid the bill and tried to stumble away with as much grace as possible. "Hiya, Rook! Sorry it took so long tonight, but thanks for waiting. Just finished selling this year's shipment," he explained and pulled out a nearly-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's along with a couple of glasses. "Who's your lady friend there?" "This is Aubrey..." Rook began the introductions. "Aubrey Louisa Dimaje," she finished, and offered her hand. "You must be Louie. Rook's told me so much about you." "Good things, I hope. Would you like to help finish this bottle?" "I'm sorry, but I've got a plane to catch back to New York. It was a pleasure to meet you, though." She turned to Rook. "Stay in touch, got it?" "Sure," he replied. "Have a nice flight," Louie smiled as she headed towards the door. He looked at her seat and noticed something lying there. "Hey, you forgot something," he called after her, waving an envelope in his hands. She stopped in the doorway and turned, silhouetted in the streetlight. For a moment, Louie began to recall an image in his mind from years before. She had never left his mind entirely, but she had never appeared to him more clearly than at this moment, in the form of the woman standing in his doorway. "It's yours," she answered, and walked away. Slowly, he looked at the envelope in his hand. For Louis. He opened it and stared at the tiny gold necklace in his hand. Rook raised his glass up. "To Ruth," he toasted, and downed the whiskey. |
| Trinket |
| by Cyndi V |